Enough with the Music! I want words!

One of the great things about moving to Pennsylvania was rediscovering a great radio station, WXPN. It's listener supported public radio, only it's all about music. An amazing wide variety of music. Really good music. Music that has you pulling over to the side of the road to write down the name of the artist so you can buy the CD (E.g., Joe Strummer and the Mescaladores; Joe's last musical offering, brilliant).

But one of the bad things about moving to Pennsylvania was leaving behind WNYC, their AM station. Talk talk talk talk talk. Brian Lehrer, Leonard Lopate, This American Life, Editions, Morning and Weekend, All Things Considered. I had it on constantly at home and in the car.

Adieu Talk, hello Tunes.

Last night driving home from Philadelphia, I went into this wee frenzy. I had had it with music. I wanted to hear words. I needed data.

My Ex used to complain about what he correctly identified as my Data Hunger. In the mornings I had to read the paper. Had to. And on Sundays. Deprived of the paper, I would open up anything (cookbook, appliance owners manual, junk mail about Poconos time shares) and begin to read. "Feed me data!" screams my cerebral cortex.

So I went up and down the FM dial. Every time the tuner stopped, it was music, and I hit 'scan' again. No luck. Then I turned to AM. Advertisement advertisement advertisement. And more music. Radio stations from Buffalo and Arlington that played music were finding their way to my antenna. It was unnerving. Like a Twilight Zone episode. Every human being in the world has been vaporized, but the computers that now bring us radio cycled endlessly through their playlists forever, without ever again switching over to the human voices that bring us news, weather, sports, and traffic.

Don't get me wrong. I like music. I do. Really. But lately I'm feeling about music like I feel about Chinese food: I've had that. I don't hear anything new that really grabs me, but the old stuff that I love (REM, 10,000 Maniacs, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Emmylou Harris) is just getting tooooo familiar.

Words never fail. I need words.

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