With an umlaut over the "U," so it's pronounced ooo-lie.
I'm back from class and catching up with my wife and it's 2am. Where is there time to do all that is needful in this life? Not having a two-hour commute each Thursday would probably help. Then again, I wouldn't get the money I need for my classes which eat up further time. Hmmmmm. Something odd in this equation.
Though it may cause me some shame, here were my listening choices for my drive today:
NPR, as long as reception could be had on the Subaru (I took it today because [a] it gets slightly better mileage than the truck, and that counts these days, and [b] the truck has a loose electrical switch; apparently if it gives out I'll lose electrical entirely. Not a fun prospect. Currently all it does is make my headlights stick on high beams all the time. The truck is so old and the headlights so dirty that this does not normally cause a problem). We went to a car wash at the beginning of spring and forgot to retract the retractable antenna; it snapped off like a straw, trailing the retraction cord behind it. I'm sure they fix such things, but probably for $400, which I don't have.
Michael Card, Unveiled Hope. I'm bad about listening to Christian music; so much of what's on the radio sounds totally derivative of current pop music and, worse, all sounds exactly the same to me. I do like Card, though, even if it is a bit overdramatic at times.
The Eagles, Greatest Hits Volume One. There's nothing like listening to "Hotel California" right after "Holy, Holy, Holy Is the Lord." Even though the rumors that "Hotel" is about Satanism are false, it's still all I think about when I hear the music. Lends it a nice, creepy atmosphere. The Eagles are always hip, even when they're not. And if you were making a song that was full of secret hints about Satanism, wouldn't you deny it to keep the rumor alive? Of course you would.
ABBA, Greatest Hits Disc A. This is the one that's going to get me mocked. I can't explain the appeal of ABBA. Yes, they're horribly shallow and pop-y and dated and gay. The songs are like aural crack. They stick in my head. If I'm not careful, I find myself humming "Cassandra" or "Carrie" or "My One and Only" or "Dancing Queen" without thinking about it. I blame Garrett, my old roommate from Eastern Washington. He was so charmed with an ABBA Oro disc he found in a thrift store that he played it constantly for a few weeks. Hearing the tunes but not knowing the Spanish lyrics drove me right over the edge. I ordered the four-disc Greatest Hits album from a record distributor and paid 99 cents for it. I don't listen a lot, but sometimes you just gotta groove out to "Super Trooper," you know?
Maybe you don't. Probably for the best.
1 comment:
The vast majority of what is touted as popular (and thus gets played constantly on Christian radio - I have to take their word for it) does all sound the same, I agree. At the bookstore, we have to play the latest CDs on sale, and most of them are yawners to me; I feel a bit badly because customers regularly come up to me and say, "Oh, I'm looking for this song that's playing on KTIS [local Christian station], it has that line where it goes 'God...' or 'Jesus...', it talks about heaven..." and I have no idea. Sometimes they sing it for me; that happens more often than you might imagine. It makes no difference, of course; I can only stare blankly.
It's really disappointing, because all of the really interesting stuff, both the musically unusual and lyrically compelling music gets completely overlooked and their creators rarely put out more than one or two albums. Perhaps that's also true of the secular music world, but in a much smaller market I suspect it's easier to notice.
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