"Make This Go On Forever"
Snow Patrol

Please just save me from this darkness

They need to double the 101.  That’s now the worst freeway.  East or west of the 405, it doesn’t matter.  And stunningly, the 134 east of Universal City is bad TOO!  Utter fucking gridlock.  If I knew I was going to Burbank twice a month to podcast at Rhino I would have bought a Prius, just to be able to drive in the diamond lane.

And there’s that late afternoon/early evening syndrome.  The whole day has gone by.  You’re driving west, with the sun in your eyes, merging and re-merging.  The only thing to save you the radio.  You’re just hoping something bounces down from the sky to save your life.

And I’m pushing the buttons on Sirius and I hear something.  I can’t tell what it is, because as I’ve stated previously, it takes a seeming eternity for the titles to come up in the display.  But the singer’s voice, the simple piano, they speak to my frustration, my feeling that not only my car is stuck in place, buy my life.  Remember when music spoke to your life?  Soothed and explained mysteries to you?

For all I know this Snow Patrol track could be getting significant airplay on some terrestrial radio format I no longer follow.  Shit, do ANY of us have our finger on the pulse anymore?  If you’re familiar with MediaBase numbers than you must work for a record company, because the rest of us just don’t care.

And this leaves us out of the loop.  We want new music.  Different from the old music.  But no one’s serving it up to us.  Except maybe satellite radio.

I’m gonna give you a clue.  It’s not about the niche, it’s not about research, it’s about TASTE!  Mike Marrone’s cohort on the Loft is suddenly absent for a medical problem and Mike has been forced to fly solo on his XM channel, and suddenly it’s STUPENDOUS!  I like Kate, but she comes from a different demo, what she plays doesn’t speak to me.  Whereas almost every track Mike plays is a GEM!

We don’t need celebrities.  We need more people like Mike, whom we can TRUST!  To be our guides.  I mean who can you trust today?  Everybody’s selling.  I’m not selling.  Nor are the potential listeners.  Which is why they’ve tuned out.

Shit, I could sell Snow Patrol’s CD door to door just on the strength of this tune.  If you lived through the seventies, if you lived through Supertramp, in the era of "Crime Of The Century" as opposed to "Breakfast In America", you’re probably gonna like this.  It’s got a similar FEEL!

"Make This Go On Forever" is 5:47 and that’s not long enough.  You want to play it again and again and again.  Especially late at night, when you’ve got more questions than answers.

And don’t tell me it’s an analogue of Coldplay.  If for no other reason than there’s no Chris Martin.  Snow Patrol is faceless in the old way…it’s about the BAND!

Go to: THE HYPE MACHINE Type "snow patrol make this go on forever" in the search box.  And then click on "listen" in the results that come up.

Don’t do this with another person in the room.  Do this when you’re alone, not in a rush, when you’re open, to someone CONNECTING with you.

"Cold Gin"
KISS

Heard the very same day as the Snow Patrol track above, but on XM’s Boneyard five minutes before I switched to Sirius, whilst I was still on the 134, when I hadn’t yet merged onto the 101.

I HATE KISS!  I’ve only admitted to liking "Lick It Up".  But the guitar on THIS!  It’s that same AC/DC sound!

I wanna ROCK!  Isn’t that what Twisted Sister said?

I don’t want to go to the club and bump bodies.  Hell, I’m too insecure, I’ve got too much social anxiety to do that.  I want to go to the show and have the guitar twist my GUT!

Stupid lyrics.  Bad vocals in the chorus.

Hell, you’d probably decry the change just about three minutes in.  But it all WORKS!  When they come back to that distorted guitar sound I feel like I’m EIGHTEEN!

"Better Not Look Down"
B.B. King

I wondered if I had Bluesville on.

This is why I love XM.  On the Vault or Classic Vinyl on Sirius you’d never hear this.  No, you can’t test the limits of the audience, you can’t give them anything they don’t expect.  But on XM’s Deep Tracks??  Shit, the music may be old, but you can STILL be turned on to great stuff.

Sure, I know "The Thrill Is Gone" and there was that duet with Bonnie Raitt but really, I’m B.B. King deficient.  But just shy of Santa Monica Boulevard today, on my way from the doctor back home, when I heard this guitar I was happy in the way you are when you’re on a long drive and the rest of the world doesn’t matter, it’s just you and the RADIO!

God, XM should have a NO CELL PHONE ad.  Something that makes people THINK!  You can turn off your cell phone if you have XM.  You won’t want to talk when you can LISTEN!

"Montego Bay"
Bobby Bloom

Maybe they play this on KRTH, but I won’t listen to that terrestrial oldies station because I have to endure not only too many commercials but I have to hear the same damn songs over and over again.

The seventies were a downer.  The sixties were about optimism.

This is pure sixties.

Heard on Channel 6 on Sirius.