I think I have a fourth arch-nemesis now.

[napoleonherself]

I am a person of wide and sometimes confusing musical tastes. I favor both death metal and delta blues; gangsta rap and goa trance; country and classical; jazz and... whatever Richard Cheese is. But my oldest love, all the way back from when I was in junior high and listened to nothing else, is oldies. Diana Ross, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles. Fifties rock, sixties pop. It makes me feel happy in a strange place deep within my spleen.

Where I grew up, in Orange County, California, there were... I think four oldies FM stations. KRTH, K-Earth 101, was my favorite, and I still remember its little station ID jingle to this day. Here in Madison, though, we've just got one -- and it's AM. Me with my FM-tuner-equipped mp3 player, sittin' at work, can't really take advantage of that. I could buy a radio, I guess, but... blah.

And then, today, I was flipping through the band on Eustace after the Stephanie Miller Show signed off the Mike for the day, and what did my wondering ears discern but that oldies classic, Stand By Me. On Q 106.3. Which is one of the like five country stations in the area goddamn it Midwest I mean seriously how do you even have the population to SUPPORT that. I was thrilled! Could it be that one of the country stations changed format to oldies? Hurrah! I dashed off a gleeful email to mecha, then continued to listen.

Then I got curious and Googled up this.

A Madison country radio outlet since 1981, Q106 abruptly changed its format early Monday morning to playing pop oldies, but it appears the switch is a tease to promote a revised country station.

What.

"I can tell you that tomorrow we won’t play any of the same songs we play today," said Q106 program director John Sebastian. [...] "This is the entertainment business," he said, "and we’re doing some entertaining today."

I hate you, John Sebastian.

Q106 was amongst my car radio presets -- it's the best country station in the area, I think, in that it tends to be more self-aware of just how goofy modern country is -- but when I got into the car to go home this evening I replaced it with the local student radio station. You broke my heart, Fredo.


Coming later: details of our adventure downtown on Saturday! Mecha has to get pictures up on Flickr first.

Comments

[darnn.livejournal.com]

That is pretty ridiculous.

But, as far as your player not being AM-ready goes, I've heard there's this thing called the Internet, where you can download songs by your favorite artists for free!

I bet there are some hundred-gig torrents that cover the range of anything that might get played on an oldies station pretty accurately.

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, I know, but... there's something about listening to the radio, where the selection is random and I don't know deep down that I have perfect control over which song comes up next, or which I can listen to repeatedly or skip. You can't duplicate that with downloaded music, unless someone else downloads it for you, doesn't tell you exactly what's in the mix, and physically restrains you from modifying the playlist.

I think I'm becoming a Luddite in my old age. Pretty soon I'll be refusing to listen to anything except wax cylinders.

[darnn.livejournal.com]

Well, admittedly, wax cylinders are pretty awesome.

Anyway, what I'd do is this. Get a couple song names that have words distinct enough that no other song titles have them. Tough but not impossible. Then just search torrents that contain that in the filename.

Download one or more of these, then get a program that can apply mass changes to id3 tags. Replace the tags of everything with 'Surprise!', or, you know, what have you. Then get another program that'll help you rename the files 001.mp3, 002.mp3 etc. in random order.

Heck, if you're a fancy programmer now, write some kind of script or batch file or what have you that would do this for you, so you don't have to look at the file names.

I'd say that'll get you pretty close.

Also, and I suppose this would take more effort, your filthy American radio stations appear to publish the playlists, so you could just download according to those.

And cut off your hands so you can't skip songs.

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

You almost kind of had a point up till the last bit there. :P

[darnn.livejournal.com]

Anyway, yeah, get a radio.

[emsworth.livejournal.com]

Clearly toes no longer satisfy him. Victor now craves hands, with their tasty FINGERS! FINGER FOOD!

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

The FIEND!