Wednesday I drove to work listening to the tail end of NPR and the beginning of the music show that follows—like I do every day. After a song or two, the DJ began rambling—like he does every day. I shall try to remember here the way it went down:
“If you’re like me, you’ve been waiting for the HBO series Rome to start again. Well, your wait is over because it starts again this Sunday.”
This DJ then played Tony Bennett singing “When in Rome.” Afterwards, more rambling:
“That was a young Tony Bennett with Bill Evans. He has dark hair on the album cover*, instead of the white hair he has now. He also looks very slim. And so does Bill Evans who is sitting next to him. Well he always looks slim. Was it drugs? Once again the HBO series Rome starts again on Sunday.”
Okay. Last straw. What does any of that have to do with anything? This man is getting on my nerves. I say “starting to” because when I first started listening to him, I was not so frustrated. In fact, I thought the music he played was sort of refreshing. I was used to the hoity toity classical DJs in Houston that follow their version of NPR, so a guy who colors outside the lines a bit and plays things like Ralph Stanley every once in a while is okay. That said, he doesn’t color too far outside the lines. His selections are typically roots oriented, the way everything in Austin is. But the free associative rambling has to stop.
Here’s another example. After playing a song by Yusuf “Cat Stevens” Islam this morning, Mr. DJ went on like this:
“That was off the new album by Yusuf. It’s called An Other Cup and on the back he is drinking a cup of coffee. Bet it’s strong. The way i like it.”
WHO CARES HOW YOU LIKE YOUR COFFEE? And you’ll notice he doesn’t mention that Mr. Islam used to be Cat Stevens. That’s because he’s mentioned it before on previous days. Previous days when he’s played the same thing. Which brings me to another complaint about this particular DJ: He gets into ruts. He finds something he likes and then he plays it over and over. And mind you, I only listen to ten minutes of his show, so it’s probably even worse than what I’m describing.
For a while Mr. DJ was playing the same Ray LaMontagne song at the same time every day. Now, I actually liked that song the first couple times he played it. But every day at the same time for a week is too much. It possibly offends me because it reminds me too much of a certain other DJ who played a certain Titanic theme song every day. Possibly. But more likely it offends me because THERE IS OTHER MUSIC OUT THERE.
Hypocrite! I know that’s what you’re thinking. Or at least, if you ever listened to any of my radio shows, that’s what you’re thinking. It’s true I repeated things. But I would like to remind you that my show had a limited scope, what with the only playing Texas music; was only on once a week; and wasn’t paying me a dime. So there are at least excuses for my repetition. The rambling, though, I have no excuse for.
We all have our jags, where we like to obsess about something. Whether that’s music or fashion or, say, an iPhone (hypothetically, of course), but it’s a mistake to think that everybody else is on the same jag. It’s a bigger mistake to attach meaning to things that have none. There is no cosmic significance involved if you see a photo of somebody drinking coffee while you happen to also be drinking coffee. Not even if the person in the photo happens to be holding the cup in the same hand as you. Humans are pattern recognizing machines, but patterns aren’t always there, so resist the urge to order.
I know I was going somewhere with this…hey did you notice how many of these red dots are in blue states? Do you suppose that’s why they are blue? Because they are sad about all the dead soldiers? There are an awful lot of them from Southern California. I was just in Southern California a couple years ago. I didn’t see any soldiers while I was there…
*Note that he did not actually hyperlink his rambling, though that would have been pretty cool if he did.
I haven’t heard this show (maybe I should check it out) but often these guys get in the mode of thinking that people actually want to listen to them, or care about them, as opposed to the music they’re playing.
If someone has something interesting to say about a particular song, then I don’t mind listening to them talk a little bit. But I heard some show on NPR where they were interviewing a band, and they started playing a song from the band and then cut in over it with the interview. That really pissed me off, because I figure that if the band has anything to say, it should be said first through the music. Plus I was just starting to kind of get into the song, which I had never heard. I mean it wasn’t like they were interviewing Van Halen and they were playing f’ing “Jump” in the background or something …sheesh.
It gets down to the whole on-air personality thing. I think some people just let it get to their heads and they really do believe the show’s about them and that everyone thinks they’re charming and interesting and clever and funny, just like someone who’s had about 6 beers. (believe me, I know…)
Musicians themselves are often not particularly interesting to hear talk (I recall an interview ages ago with an extremely brain-damaged Jeff Beck, where he kept mumbling over and over about “making a record for the kids, y’know, for the kids…” – it was pathetic). They’re one step above athletes as far as interviews go. “Well, I feel like if we go out and execute, and give 110%, then we’ll win”. Gee, really. Here’s an idea: Shut up and play. Good advice for DJs and musicians as well…
I always die a little inside when NPR waxes philosophical about the next big (no)thing. Like the time this pathetic, unlaid trollop interviewed that dill-hole from that satanically terrible band The Decemberists. It was the usual you-can-read-and-have-a-large-vocabulary-thus-you-must-be-in-a-good-band measure of what makes a particular musician worth listening to. Pardon me for sounding cranked up here, but since when does being literate make you a good musician? Those guys are grad school clever, and they also happen to be totally fucking unlistenable. The two are mustually exclusive. She went on, prattling about how they used the word that describes the little basket elephant riders sit in in one of their tortuous songs. She was so excited, I was sure that we would be hearing the sound of her unzipping the bespectacled guy’s tweed pants and blowing his bedraggled member. The British painter of frightening and challenging canvases on a soft day, Francis Bacon, was literate, and you don’t hear about NPR critics falling over themselves to stroke his pretensions now do you? Safety is so overrated.
This blog is exactly the reason that I absolutely hated to listen to KTRU, KPFT, and any other independently minded radio station…this includes stations all across America, not just Houston, and I don’t give a fuck how good the music is, they all have the same thing in common: The DJS simply will not SHUT UP. They all, every single one of them will ramble on forever about absolutely nothing, and each and every one of them also thought that they were the cleverest person at the station and every single one of their in-between-song one-act plays was just filled to the brim with enough wit, wisdom, and poignancy to send us all running for the Eckerd Drugs to gather together a vast variety of school supplies so we could immediately begin construction on our very own homemade shrine which would surround the stereo and thus be worshipped every day in their honor. During one dubious individual’s show, we actually clocked him talking for exactly 22 minutes in between songs…and he probably spoke less than a couple hundred words. Just one long “WWOOOOOOOOOWWWWW, MAAAAAANNNNNN…only the coolest people know what this record is, uh……….wwwwwoooooooowwwww, man.” Simply unbelievable. At least the silly fuckers on the Morning Zoo’s will just say “That was Celine Dion doing ‘Shook Me All Night Long’, and we’ve got Nickleback coming up right after this!” And they’re out. Christ.
Since I have been working on this podcast deal, I realize how many of you have these dj histories in your pocket and how critical you can be of other dj’s. And, unlike alot of hosts, I have no intentions of slobbering on the mic and talking about myself or any of the stupid shit I am into… I’m exited about the music I have chosen so far for Sunday’s podcast, IF I LIVE TO FINISH IT.. I can’t talk about this at any great length right now, because The Alaska State Emergency Coordination Center just called to tell me that we are now under a Tsunami Warning due to the 8.4 quake that hit off of the coast of Japan/Russia. I guess its possible that the Tsunami is imminent. Reports are indicating that it is, though Rupert Murdock’s Fox news is saying that only Democrats are targets.. And CNN managed to talk about it in the ticker while Susanne Sommers was on the line talking about her house burning down. SO, I am going to put all the photographs upstairs in the loft, pack the car and head to the garbage dump which is a sorry 50 feet above sea level. I don’t get the opportunity to be as fatalistic as I’d like, so thanks NAP for appreciating drama.
Justin, i’m starting to get the feeling you are a bit of a masochist. I mean, come on, change the station dude or even better turn it off all together. You didnt change the station when it was obvious the guy had a personal thing about the Titanic Theme and you didnt change the station even after the fool mentions Rome for the second time? The first sentence from the dj (“If you’re like me”) would’ve sent me down the dial. So what is it, either you like the pain, or you like listening to idiots so you can have something to gripe about. Or maybe both?
And EM, dont let these NAP anti-dj rants chill your freedom of speech, both Ramon and Justin were DJs and i’m sure they talked their fair share of nonsense on air, and now they are not DJs and do their fair share of expression right here on NAP. So please say anything you want in those podcasts. You can even do a whole podcast griping about some pussy DJ in alaska if you’d like.
Like, oh my god, I so, like, hate pussy Alaskan DJ’s. Like.
Hi Matt,
Um, yeah… 4 out of the 7 of us here at NAP (actually, now we’re 8 because thanks to our new podcater) DJed at KTRU, and, at least while I was there, DJs were under strict orders to precisely ‘SHUT the FUCK UP.’ I don’t know if things have changed. The only things generally spoken on air were station identification at the top of the hour (FCC law), PSAs (the public service announcements req’d by the FCC), promotions and giveaways for upcoming shows, the station phone number for requests, maybe your name (that was pushing it), and then a reasonably full identification of everything in the set list at least once an hour- definitely not after individual songs.
Sometimes DJs made requests on air of other DJs who happened to be shopping at Sound Exchange to pick up something, because they knew that the radio would be on at Sound Ex. This was severely frowned upon. FCC doesn’t like the public airwaves to be used as a personal communication device.
Because so many people cycle through college radio stations, there is less of a need for ‘personality’ DJs that are trying to build an audience and demostrate their worthiness during fundraising drives. NPR must suck and be a difficult place to work under these circumstances.
In a better world, NPR would be funded the way the BBC is, and Justin would DJ there.
There are actually several factors that come into play when deciding whether or not to switch stations. In the case of the repeated Titanic offerings, KQUE usually played good music, so in this case the song was an unusual choice for the DJ. It was also the clock radio, so changing the station would require really waking up, lest I accidentally end up listening to a Morning Zoo station. If you’re not fully awake when scanning past a Zoo, their mind control tactics (which I’ve learned come in the form of speech patterns) set in. You start listening and are powerless to stop. Then next thing you know you’re sitting there on the edge of your bed with a full beard, staring off into space. I’ve seen it happen to other people and I don’t want to be that kind of victim.
Now in the case of this show, it follows immediately after NPR, so unless I just change the station (or turn it off) as soon as NPR ends, I end up hearing at least a little bit of it. In Houston, that’s what I would do. I couldn’t stand the local NPR DJs who all sound like Winchester from M*A*S*H* to me. Here, I get lured in with a song and I decide to take my chances. Because I live on the edge. Besides, my other options are just as bad.
Also, I do love to gripe.
I should have said ‘NPR and its affiliated stations.’
In a way it’s sad that in this clear channel age we’re griping about any live dj doing his thing. Although I must admit, that guy sounds stupid.
I don’t recall ktru dj’s being verbose at all.
I heart Houston’s Nuri Nuri the Big Bossman of the Blues. If you want to make him feel good call him up during his Sunday Blues Brunch show, request a song and then say something that assumes he is black. He loves it when people assume he is black.
I used to think of the KUHF dj’s as Frasier and Niles Krane. It makes them funnier.
Has KPFT given up on its rule that every song they play must contain the word Texas in it?
I hated the KTSU dj’s. Their voices always sounded so affected like they were on the Cosby Show.
KPFT has indeed given up the Texas format. That happened when there was that big Pacifica shakedown a few years back. Since then, they toe the Pacifica line, which means that much of their programming is the sort of inclusive community oriented programming that you occasionally see mocked in sketch comedy. Not a whole lot of music there anymore.
I used to work with Nuri at the last place I worked in Houston. He’s a database admin when he’s not the Big Bad Bossman of the Blues.
In general, I haven’t noticed KTRU DJs being too verbose. Occasionally they’d be a little sloppy, or they’d get silly or whatever, but a bunch of them are just kids doing it for fun so I am prepared to cut them some slack. The DJs from the community were usually pretty good. And like I said, if the DJ has something interesting to say about the band or the song then cool, I don’t have a problem with that. The NPR people generally irritate me. They all have this tone that says, “I came from money and went to a tweedy Midwestern liberal arts college, and I am really very clever”. Though I confess they do some nice journalism work from time to time. Maybe they have a “Pompous” setting on their microphone compressors or something.
Anyway, what Justin pointed out about KPFT is unfortunate. On the one hand, though I personally find the commie jive they spout to be pretty tiresome, they were originally chartered to be a progressive public network, and they serve an otherwise underrepresented community. On the other hand, I cut my teeth on KPFT’s punk shows as a kid, and I regret that their music programming (with some noteable exceptions like RadioActive) has declined over the years. If there were more decent radio stations in Houston, I wouldn’t be as upset about it, but there aren’t.
Matt- you live in the nyc area, no? right now a DJ on WNYC (the new york npr affiliate) has been telling a horse story for the past 15 minutes…! what has become of radio programming in this country?! will have to switch to http://www.eastvillageradio.com/
i love to hear human voices on the radio. i think i would kill the dj justin is talking about (and
it’s the fucking mumblers that i want to hang from their little toes…). but i love talking heads generally. i happen to think that is why little steven’s underground garage is so popular. because commercial radio doesn’t have personalities that offer real honest to god opinions. much less negative opinions.
i am a ktru dj. i say stuff. usually apologies for playing things at the wrong speed or for accidentally playing 2 things at the same time. ‘see? isn’t a skip on vinyl so much nicer than a cd skip?’…and since i do alot of 60s garage, i do a LITTLE bit of history lesson here and there. or i’ll explain the theme of the show if there is one. i say my name all the time. i say danny and scott’s names too. i thank my listening audience. i never remember to say the phone number. i don’t try to be a ‘personality’ but i do happen to have one so it slips out despite the fact that during orientation we were warned against doing this. i guess it’s different when your models of the genre are chuck roast era djs.
kpft has good music programming. but it’s between 10pm and 6am and often from 3 to 5 in the afternoon weekdays. rock and roll review, moonlight towers, deadtyme radio to list a few…
I drive to work at the same time you do and I, too, used to slam my head against the steering wheel in frustration and bewilderment after hearing some of Famous Local DJ’s extended non sequiturs. The tipping point was when he droned on and on about some doves he saw in his backyard that morning, then played some nutty love song from the seventies that included an EXTENDED chorus made up of nothing but the singer’s attempt to sound like a dove – “cooo cooo roo coooooo, cooo cooo roo cooooo”. Now I switch to co-op radio at 9:00 AM on the dot. I do sorta miss hearing his announcement of National Iced Tea day, followed by a song about iced tea (not by Ice-T, unfortunately). He’s one of those things that Keeps Austin Weird and makes me want to move back to Houston sometimes.
-brannon
DJ’S??? I never quite figured out what they’re good for. Just play songs and get a computer voice to identify the songs. I can’t stand all that morning talk either. It’s utter bullshit. Radio is for music. If I want to know about a group I will read about them. Just hire technicians to change out the music!!! NO MORE DISC JOCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!
I actually like DJs – good ones.
I think DJs who want to share their interests and have a sense of history are a greta service and incredibly entertaining. Commercial DJs suck becasue they are not DJs they are announcers and nothing more.
Curiously Clear Channel and Comcast are happy to give us announcers on the airwaves (then compalin about ratings) but when people pay for it on satellite radio the same companies recognize the value of true DJs. How is that? My conspiracy theory is that they want everyone to pay their subscription fees.
I will never pay money for sattelite radio until those companies stop fuckign up the airwaves.
hey anonymous faggit: there is a “technician” that just plays songs without the interruption of that pesky human element: it’s called the KTRU robo-dj which fills in when rice student djs are tired and don’t want to walk that 300 yards to do a shift that plenty of people who aren’t attending a prestigious university would actually pay money to do. just try and make a request while robo djs are hard at work. the phone will ring and ring and ring…
eh. EH! fuck you, too. i ain’t in no diplomatic fuckin’ mood. coward.
-mrs. rosa maria guerrero gomez de espinoza
ms. rosa said…
hey anonymous faggit: there is a “technician” that just plays songs without the interruption of that pesky human element: it’s called the KTRU robo-dj which fills in when rice student djs are tired and don’t want to walk that 300 yards to do a shift that plenty of people who aren’t attending a prestigious university would actually pay money to do. just try and make a request while robo djs are hard at work. the phone will ring and ring and ring…
eh. EH! fuck you, too. i ain’t in no diplomatic fuckin’ mood. coward.
-mrs. rosa maria guerrero gomez de espinoza
Ah, case and point. No more dj’s. Radio is for music only. I have never heard anything I found interesting coming out of a dj’s mouth. They talk bullshit and seem more interested in furthering their own career rather than that of the artist they talk over all the time.
Rosa, have you tried taking anger management classes?? Such foul language. I love you anyway. See ya.
ha! ha! ha! that was most of the bottle of wine talkin’. talkin shit that is. moments before i was reading the commentary aloud to ramon and we were laughing our asses off.
“I have never heard anything I found interesting coming out of a dj’s mouth….” i guess it depends on what you’re listening to. i don’t know what you’re listening to (i say that w/o sarcasm sweartogod) but i’m talking about places like wfmu.org or garagepunk.com. i squirm in my seat waiting for the djs to start talking. ktru djs are all over the map. but there is this one dj whose voice sends me hurtling over the edge. he doesn’t do anything but announce the songs but that weirdo borderline lispy dufus voice is heroic in its recognizableness. i wished he did make commentary so i could hear it for longer doses at a time. does anyone know who i’m talking about? haven’t heard him in a while so he must be a student.
anonymous you’re ok. sorry for the bombast. mostly.
That’s cool. I’m glad you two had a good laugh. I’m not being sarcastic either. I’ll try to listen around and be more open minded. To tell you the truth, I have not listened to radio in about ten years except for the occasional crap that filters in from just being in public places that play radio. I tell you, I haven’t missed much at all. I depend on friends and internet articles to expose me to new music. I live off of downloads and my IPOD. My home stereo is set up to play music transmitted by my IPOD. No need for dj’s for me. If I want to know more about an artist, I either look up their web page or I search wikipedia. If I still can’t find any imformation on them, then their PR sucks and I don’t try anymore.
Anyone who hates DJ’s should try Pandora. Picture listening to a radio station where the DJ has pretty much the same taste as you, but has a much more extensive knowledge than you and an incredibly massive music library. And then picture that there is no DJ and no commercials. And then picture that any time you like a song you never heard before, you can actually see who it is and find out much more about them. And then picture that any time you hate a song you can tell the DJ to stop playing crap like that.
When you get bored of your own music collection this is what you should be listening to. I’ve been exposed to tons of new and old music that I never heard before and is totally great. This is the first thing that has changed the way I listen to music since the invention of the mp3.
Clay, you are a GOD!!! I will look into it!!!!!!!!!! Thanks.