On the Radio: Inexplicable Cover Songs, 311 “Love Song”

Because I go on and off the radio–sometimes breaking for years at a time before returning to the radio–and because casual music listening itself has been transformed by the internet, I often miss out on music for years before noticing it. Recently, however, I had to change from the local jazz station to  a pop station because I couldn’t handle a full hour of Samba music. (No offense meant to Samba, but after 45 minutes or so it gets a bit repetitive.)

I started out with the volume rather low, just as some kind of vehicular white noise. But my children, eager for some change or excitement to the day, begged for “more, more” music. So, I turned it up and the following horror assaulted me:

On the (Internet) Radio: City and Colour

Recently I upgraded from my older phone to a newer one. I say “newer” because I never get the newest phone–Sprint will give out a ‘

newish’ phone for a lot less than the actual latest release. (Yes, I’m the jerk who walks out with a Galazy 2 feeling smug because I paid 50 dollars less than I would have for the galaxy 3.) I did what I always do with a new phone: I tried out many of its features to see if I will actually use it.

This post really isn’t about phones

Now, since phones are little supercomputers with more power than the machine that made the moon landings possible, there is no way I will use everything on them. But this phone as far more memory than my last beloved piece of crap, which means that I can actually run internet applications without my little and possibly carcinogenic friend committing ritual suicide.

So, after going through my semi-annual ritual of deleting contacts I don’t want to transfer and downloading all of the apps I need and getting my wife to help me figure out how to set up my email on the phone (because, my work has to make it difficult), I was ready to start.  I always put music apps on my phone (Pandora, Stitcher et al), yet prior to this phone I found them frustrating. Streaming music uses a lot of battery life and, at least in some early versions, Pandora sounded terrible on the phone.