'Tis the Season

It took me some time to find a radio station that I really liked. I have rather odd taste in music. Mostly 80s, but an occasional current tune, if it's good enough...which isn't often.

I found my station about this time last year. The morning show was clean, so I could listen in the car, and the tunes were adequate. At the end of January, they changed everything up and totally removed my morning show. Turned out okay; they replaced it with another show, equally as humorous, equally as clean, still played the awesome 80s tunes.

All was happy in QueenLand. And then it happened. About a month ago, I happily sang along on the way to work and school. Got in the suppository at lunch and lo and behold, they were playing some terrible, awful, not-very-good music. Okay. Minor programming glitch. I can forgive that.

But it happened the next day. And again the next. Something was fishy here. I checked their website and found that the station had been sold. Just like that. No phone call, no note, nothing. Just sold off my favorite station and started playing crappy music. Bummer.

I had to find another station. Fast. So I went back to an old favorite. I won't mention any names, but this station has been around town forEVER and they're very clean and slightly funny so I figured they'd do. I listened for about a week.

Then they did something horrible. Terrible. Ridiculous. They started playing Christmas music. On November 5th.

Now I'm all for Christmas music. In December. But hello, it's the beginning of November and we're playing 24/7 Christmas music. Give me a break.

I've learned a few things in the past couple of weeks. Like the worst things about 24/7 Christmas music:

• If you listen for an hour, you'll start hearing the same songs all over again. Oh, they may be sung by different artists, but there just aren't that many holiday songs to be sung, so you're going to get repeats.
• Old Christmas songs aren't that bad, but the newer ones are pretty much depressing. I cite "Feed the World" as my example and leave it at that.
• No one should ever, I repeat EVER, be subjected to Alvin and the Chipmunks singing anything on the radio.

And the best things about 24/7 Christmas music:

• Christmas songs do put me in a holiday kind of mood. They're festive, and I like that. Sometimes.
• They play a lot of religious songs (go figure), so Jesus gets some pretty good plugs that normally don't get put out there on, say, Groundhog Day.
• If you listen long enough, you may hear Neil Diamond. He still doesn't get as much airplay as he deserves, but it is increased during the holidays.
• If you're really lucky, you'll hear Adam Sandler's "The Hannakuh Song." That makes it all worthwhile.