Regarding Radio

TharpSter April 25, 2020 in Humor, The Latest Verbal Brilliance Tagged coronavirus, COVID-19, quarantine, radio, Rush, Sunny, thunder - 6 Minutes

Deer…neer neer neer

Neer neer neer

Lord only knows how many assaults have been dispatched to the worldwide web over the years which began with a salient quote from a book, a poem, a song, or even a naughty limerick.

It’s occurred here a few times that I can think of.

This one and this one come to mind, however I would endeavor to guess there are other instances.

Whereas I haven’t indexed the content on this vast repository of evidence for my eventual competency hearing in a manner where it’s easy to extract, you’ll have to either just take my word for it or go find the indiscretions yourself.

While you’re doing that, consider this.

The very post you’re reading now which you will either read to the end or abandon in a matter of moments has been kicked off with the same type of quote.

Certainly, it could have started with the opening lyrics to the song or even a screen shot of a treble clef, a series of horizontal lines, and a smattering of strategically placed dots among those lines designed to represent the music being played.

That stuff is old hack and cliché.

How many times have you ever read a post either here or elsewhere in which the vanguard was comprised of an onomatopoeiac representation of the guitar lead which introduces the song?

Quick side note.

I had a Dickens of a time spelling that word. My whole foundation of reading and writing is based on “sound it out”. Given that the word itself is a definition of words which are used to initiate the sound of something, the fact that I couldn’t type it up based on how it sounds without getting one of those red squiggly lines underneath is a bit disappointing.

So much for fonetic wordplay.

Irregardlessly, the song in question came to mind last night when the subject matter of today’s post flew through my mind in the midst of an abbreviated YouTube binge.

I’ve got to be careful whenever I go out there.

I start by seeking out a live performance of a certain song or two. The next thing I know, I’ve got all types of ideas of how to build a drink cooler for the back porch that I probably don’t need. Once that idea is firmly in place I’ve moved onto other things and less than a half hour later I’ve slipped into the void and am now seeking out voyeuristic clips of a upchucking giraffes.

Last night I was at the beginning of that particular session and still locked into the musical elements of my next great guilty pleasure.

In these times during the quarantine, the purveyors of the non-essential entertainment industry have been releasing content to the web which would generally be unavailable otherwise. It’s all part of their business continuity plan in order to remain relevant while movie theaters, concert venues, sports fields, and bath houses remain barren.

Okay, that’s a little cynical.

The additional content is also being put out there out of a love for the fans and to help boost morale while we’re all locked up in our abodes looking for the next best thing to occupy our short attention span. I can’t really fault them for that, because I’ve enjoyed the content I’ve found.

I ran across a concert which was filmed around 10 years ago by the band Thunder.

Any band which drew its inspiration from the rock and metal sounds of the late 80’s didn’t have much of a chance in breaking onto the scene in the early 90’s, no matter how good they were. Thunder was one of those bands.

When I think of Thunder, I think of the one CD of theirs that I possess.

I just did a quick check and found that only 6 songs from that CD are on my phone, but that’s immaterial to the current narrative. I’ll figure out why the other ones are missing later on.

When I think of that one Thunder CD I possess, I think of my veterinarian, and the song “Mary had a little lamb”.

S ix Degrees of Keven Bacon, you’re up in five.

Back then when Sunny the Golden Lab was still with me and she needed medical care, I would remove the handset from the cordless phone mounted on the wall and then punch a series of buttons on said handset to contact the vet.

The phone number for the vet back then, and now for that matter, just happened to parallel the notes to “Mary had a little lamb”.

Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep.

Spooky, I know.

After all these years, I’m pretty sure the vet is tired of hearing about it from his patients.

I used to listen to the morning DJ on 96 Rock. If you don’t believe me, I can show you a picture of the old bumper sticker affixed to the blue file cabinet out in the garage that still has Sunny’s medical records and various notices of rate increases on my car insurance.

One morning, the radio station had some free crap to give away so they called upon the audience to call in and play a song on the keypad of their phone that could be recognized.

I called and I got through.

I then played “Mary had a little lamb”.

Later that afternoon, I drove downtown to Alamo Plaza for the first time, found the station office, and collected my prize. It was the aforementioned Thunder CD.

If you don’t believe me, I can show you a picture of Alamo Plaza and a wild-ass guess of about where I think those offices were.

It’s been a few years since I even bothered to listen to a morning show on any radio station, be it a talk or musical format. The reasoning behind that gets into a whole different subject matter which I’ve yet to generate the desire to discuss. It’s just too darned boring compared to shillyshallying stories about winning CD’s from the radio.

I can think of three other interactions I’ve had with radio. One of them got some space here on this very site. Another one didn’t rise to the occasion.

The other one involved me solving a math problem (three cubed plus two) in order to earn my way into a Rubik’s Cube contest at the Ramada Inn. We had three minutes to knock that out and only one person managed to finish at the very last second.