Confessions of a listener
This is a great essay by Garrison Keillor... it's basically a love letter to radio, and also an explanation of why he's not worried about the right-wing blabfest that has taken over the AM band.
"Or you find three women in a studio yakking rapid-fire about the Pitt-Aniston divorce and the Michael Jackson trial and the botoxing of various stars and who wore what to the Oscars. It's not my world, and I like peering into it. The sports talk station gives you a succession of men whose absorption in a fantasy world is, to me, borderline insane. You're grateful not to be related to any of them, and yet ten minutes of their ranting and wheezing is a real tonic that somehow makes this world, the world of trees and children and books and travel, positively tremble with vitality. And then you succumb to weakness and tune in to the geezer station and there's Roy Orbison singing "Dream Baby" and you join Roy on the chorus, one of the Roylettes."
posted by Lee H. @ Tuesday, May 10, 2005
4 Comments:
The biggest shame is that no way in hell could this man be President. I imagine FDR as being sort of like GK, all cuddly and warm but capable of some incredibly incisive moments...
President Keillor! Now THAT is a campaign I could get behind... :D
(I hear the Ketchup Advisory Board OWNS him, though.)
This was probably my favorite line from the whole essay:
"What I want is to be surprised and delighted and moved. Here at the low end of the FM dial is a show in which three college boys are sitting in a studio, whooping and laughing, sneering at singer-songwriters they despise, playing Eminem and a bunch of bands I've never heard of, and they're having so much fun they achieve weightlessness--utter unself-consciousness--and then one of them tosses out the f-word and suddenly they get scared, wondering if anybody heard. Wonderful."
LOL - I love that. I like college radio for the music it plays, but sometimes, I wish there was a way to send cancer up the radio waves to the punky little DJ's. :D
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