So far, the worst day of my summer has been the day the Eagle died, and by that I mean the day Sam in the Morning went off the air. Sam and the Eagle were great for two reasons: one was that the station played good music (it wasn’t college radio station awesome, but it was definitely soft rock free—it never once gave me a “peaceful, easy feeling”), and the other was that, with the exception of the “Flagstaff Insurance” jingle, nothing on it ever really annoyed me.
Sadly, however, that is something I can no longer say about the Flagstaff radio scene.
In fact, now I am annoyed almost hourly. Part of this is because the station that once was the Eagle has switched to an all talk (or rather, “all vent”) format. This means that when I want to hear music (which is almost every time I am in the car—I like “Car Talk” and “Fresh Air” as much as the next person, but when I’m driving I prefer something with a beat) I have to flip around from station to station to find something to listen to. And because I am not listening to just one station, but rather five or six, that means that I have to listen to the same annoying Pink song over and over again. I’m not sure if they all have it in constant rotation, or if I am just really unlucky, but I would estimate that in the last two weeks I have heard “Glitter in the Air” about five thousand times. Which, in my opinion, is about four thousand nine-hundred ninety-nine and a half times too many.
Hey, I like Pink. I like her look, her voice, the fact that she drinks red wine while riding her skateboard—I even like her professional dirt biker husband. I wasn’t rooting for her to fall off of her swing at the MTV movie awards, and I didn’t laugh (much) when her giant sling shot smacked her into the ground in Germany this summer. But, my god, that new song of hers.
First of all, the music is crap: it sounds like it should be on a “Love Metal” compilation along with the Scorpions’ “All My Love” and Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorns.” But, amazingly, even worse than the music itself, are the lyrics.
Have you ever tossed a fist full of glitter in the air? Are you crazy?
No, I have never tossed a fist full of glitter in the air, but I’ve lived with people who have, and let me tell you, it’s not pretty. It gets everywhere: inside the couch, on the walls, deep in the carpet, on the dog, the cat, the fish—everywhere. And then it comes back out, a little at a time, so that months after the glitter tossing incident has passed it will make an appearance on your clothes at the most inopportune of times, like a job interview, or at a DUI checkpoint. (Yeah, try explaining that you weren’t coming from a party when you have a hair full of glitter.) In fact, glitter is so insidious that I know of teachers who would like to install glitter detectors in the entrance of every school.
Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air? Have you ever been attacked by a roomful of angry mothers?
I can’t believe that stations can ban a song like Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” on the grounds that it encourages violence, but are completely willing to play a song like “Glitter in the Air” every five minutes—and during summer break, no less.
It’s incredible. It’s unconscionable. It’s immoral.
And I am sure that if Sam in the Morning were still on the air, it would most certainly not be happening.