Radio! Who needs a radio? Ready Harry?...

So I am finally inspired to update my blog, and as is so common my inspiration is sneering derision for that which I don’t like (ie, don’t fully understand). However, I am writing this aboard a train (which is far from common) having done a days temping (which is downright rare). I feel like a proper commuter. With my computer.

Anyway, Begin Rant.

Radio One is fucking shit. This I’ve known for a long time and have accordingly avoided said station, but every now and again it’s good to reiterate your views and until yesterday I hadn’t had a good, long dose of Radio 1 for years. But yesterday I was subjected to it. I didn’t listen out of choice - lets make that absolutely clear. And in about 5 hours I heard 4 songs I liked, half of which I could take or leave.

But it’s not so much the utter lack of music to my taste that I hate so much about Radio 1, although it does annoy me to my very soul (I guess it follows that if you have a burning passion for something you have a burning loathing for its antithesis, in this case mainstream music versus underground music). Rather it’s the intellectual level at which the station aims, the homogeny of that which they deem ‘cool’ and the utter drivel spouted by the insipid, sycophantic presenters and their idiot listeners.

Every song is slobbered over with loose adjectives proclaiming the brilliance of the artist, or failing that a morsel of relevant gossip is thrown to the vacuous masses who look up from their workstations, feed, and store for later regurgitation. The artists in question invariably draw authenticity from style rather than musical brilliance, or worse they are just autotuned products, the noises they make merely replacing silence and increasing brand awareness.

I heard the whole of Jo Whiley’s show, a presenter who is deemed to have an ounce of musical credibility. Any lingering respect I had for her evaporated, though, when I heard the following segment:

Quiet, unthreatening music in a minor key fades in. Jo adopts a sullen tone and tells radioland the story of, I dunno, Jane, who has emailed in with a song request. It’s not just a song request though, it’s accompanied by a bile-enducing sob story about Jane's battle for cancer. Jane survived, which is great. She endured all the horrible stuff that many cancer sufferers have to endure, but she survived. Poor Jane / lucky Jane. Now, when she was in hospital with mere months to live (so she’d been told) she gave a lot of thought to the song that would play at her funeral, and this song is what she’d requested of Jo.

Jo obligingly played the song.

What was the song? What did Jane come up with in the depths of her illness, with death in site but time on side and none of the usual cancer remedies having any apparent effect?

Any guesses?

I’ll tell you.

The Drugs Don’t Work by The Verve.

That’s all she could come up with! Ha! Oh, sweet irony, the drugs jolly well DO work don’t they, Jane? And surely that’s a tale told with an ironic smirk to close frends, not one emailed to a radio DJ for broadcast to the nation as loose justification for a non-playlist song request! And imagine if she had died and The Drugs Don't Work WAS played at her funeral - it would have been like a posthumous cry for attention! Talk about rubbing it in!

Well, I laughed.

But it transpired that many listeners didn’t. In fact they felt compelled to text Jo Whiley in tears and laud Jane as an inspiring, amazing woman. Inspiring? For surviving cancer and requesting an obvious song from a crap radio station? If you cry at that, dear listener, you must fall to pieces at the news. If you’re inspired by that you must be overwhelmed with amazement at the plight of people like Ghandi. Ghandi. You know, the Indian fella? Overthrew the British Empire through self sacrifice and non-violent protest? No? Well I guess if it’s not repeated over muted house beats every hour during Newsbeat, followed by the moronic public's 'views' on the topic, then how could you be expected to know?