Entries Tagged 'Complaining' ↓

The past couple of weeks I’ve been listening to the Christmas episodes of one of my favorite podcasts The Quiet Village.  There was one last year and two the year before, and they’re wonderful.  They feature Christmas songs in a Hawaiian/Exotica vein and the selections are pretty much perfect.  One of the things that I love about it is that I hear songs I never hear anywhere else unless I bust out my Ultralounge Christmas albums.

This of course gets me going on the local Christmas stations - why won’t they play any of this stuff?  It’s not like the songs are unfamiliar to people.  They’re traditional songs and no one’s going to shut off the station is they hear Les Baxter’s version of Sleigh Ride instead of Debbie Gibson’s.

One other thing, when did Dean Martin’s “Marshmallow World” get taken off the Christmas playlist at these stations?  Did someone decide that Bob Segar’s horrible version of “The Little Drummer Boy” needed to get more play?

I seriously don’t get what the big deal is. Sure it’s nice that you can buy digital copies of the songs but it’s not like you couldn’t buy a physical copy and rip it to your iPod. NPR’s story about this (and really NPR I expect better out of you) said this was more a symbolic victory for Steve Jobs and that’s fine, but why is Apple treating this like some kind of huge event?

The iTunes page for this is big and if you didn’t know better you would think that the Beatles’ songs were completely unavailable up until this point.  I guess Apple feels the need to play this up but it just seems a bit silly.  Buy the physical album or just swipe them online if you just want a single song,

Just like every other year Kansas City has two radio stations playing continuous Christmas music.  Unlike every other year I don’t find myself as irritated with it.    Two possible reasons:

• My oldest is four years old now and really likes Christmas music, specifically the older stuff like “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” and “Here Comes Santa Claus”
• It may be my imagination but the playlists seems to focus less on the usual limp-dick lite rock stuff and more on standards or at least stuff with some energy behind it.  That being said, I’m hearing Neil Diamond’s “Merry Cherry Christmas” (or something like that) a lot and I would probably rather listen to his covers album than hear that song again.

But I got to thinking about this - Christmas is the only time you hear people like Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Gene Autry on terrestrial/commercial radio.  Obviously these aren’t the only good songs that these people have but you never hear them the rest of the year.  I wonder if eventually some artists’ only legacy will be their holiday music (although Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra’s songs will always be around as long as there are Italian restaurants).

One other thing too…this could be my imagination also, but terrestrial radio stations play a shitload of commercials.  I had XM several years back and listen to NPR a lot since I canceled my service so that my impact my view of this.  I just find these stations unlistenable due to the frequency and length of their commercial break.  Kansas city has a great local political talk show but it seems like between the commercials, traffic, news, and weather you only get about 20 minutes of actual show per hour.  Of course I’m too lazy to actually time it so that’s just a baseless guess.

Kansas City has two upcoming Christmas shows - the Rockettes show and Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  From what I’ve heard about last year’s and this year’s show, the Rockettes’ Christmas is supposed to be a great time.  The problem is the date, November 19th.  I might end up enjoying it but I’m ot really interested in dropping the cash for a Christmas show a week before Thanksgiving.  I’m barely in the mood for Christmas after then, but a week before?  Forget about it.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra has the opposite problem.  They’re coming to Kansas City December 29th.  By then I’m already sick of Christmas and I’m disgusted by the news stories showing people exchanging their gifts so it’s not something I’m up for.  In this case at least the whole show isn’t based on Christmas so I could see myself going to this before I would go to the Rockettes’ show too early.

I realize that these shows need to make money and that they wouldn’t be coming to Kansas City after Christmas unless there was a good chance they would turn a profit.  I would just be curious about how many people attend these two shows this year especially compared to last year.

When I was eight years old my mother won two tickets to go see Elvis preform at the El Paso Civic Center and for whatever reason she decided to take me.  There are only two things I remember about the concert:  a comedian was the opening act, and the concert (to me anyway) was very very loud.  My life is no better or worse for going to that concert other than the program I still have which I have delusions of selling for a small fortune on eBay one day.

Keeping that in mind, I was a little saddened at the end of last week’s Roger Waters show when I saw a parent carrying a sleeping (what looked to be) four year old out of our section.  There was so much wrong with that, from the $99-plus-service-charge the parents spent to get her a ticket, to the thought that this kid just wanted to be at home playing with her toys instead of having to sit in one place for two hours listening to music that her burnout dad got high to back in the 80s.  I didn’t take my four year old to see Yo Gabba Gabba live this past weekend because I knew he would get bored before it was over and that thing is aimed for kids (and stoners too, but that’s beside the point).

Then there was the six year old I saw at Iron Maiden or the guy who brought his wife and three kids aged five to twelve to Anthrax at the filthy Granada in Lawrence.  I try to keep my television references limited to The Simpsons or Arrested Development, but this thing reminds me of the episode of Full House where Bob Saget tried to convince his kids how cool he was by being in a band but the whole thing came off horribly awkward.  That’s how I feel with these guys, they’re not satisfied with just being the kids’ father, but somehow they need them to thing he’s just as cool as their friends.  But the thing is, going to see an over the hill metal band doesn’t seem the right way to do it.