Music

     It's final. I'm going to have to stop listening to my country western station in the car. This morning on my way to work, the first song I heard was about beer. The second song I heard was about beer. The third song I heard was about, you guessed it, beer. The fourth song I heard was about following your arrow, and how when you get stressed, light a joint. And to round it off, the final song, before I turned into the parking lot at school, was Keith Urban's "Cop Car." For those of you that haven't heard this song it's about a guy who falls in love with a girl in the back of a cop car. Really? Have we sunk so far that no one can write a decent song? Maybe a song about something other than beer and getting arrested, and glorifying both?
     I knew it going in. I admit it. I knew country western music was always about the sad life: the girl leaving the guy, the guy's dog dying and on and on. And don't get me wrong. There are still good songs out there. Patriotic songs, well written love stories, songs with beautiful instrumentals (I must say, as I get older I am being drawn to a well played acoustic guitar and even the new age banjo.) And these are why I started to listen to country western. I especially liked the fact that you can hear the music and I used to think it was a good thing that I could hear the words in the song. Now I'm not too sure that's a selling point for me.
     Maybe I am not the target market for this genre of music. I am a 58 year old white woman from California. Most of the songs tend to focus on the young men of the world. The ones with little responsibilities and the time to spend a whole day drinking beer on the end of a pier or on a hill top overlooking their hometown or the ones that frequent bars. According to the country music lyrics, this population of young men must be the target market.
     So this begs the question...why am I listening to it? The answer is simple. I cannot find, in my semi-rural area, a decent radio station that better caters to me. I used to listen to a modern rock station that I liked for quite a few years. And then someone came in and bought the station and the format changed. Not much, but enough for me to only like every third or fourth song. This was not worth my effort, so I switched.
     One might say, "Well, get yourself an ipod and create your own music station." I have an ipod. I have downloaded hundreds of songs that I like: country western and rap, modern rock, golden oldies like the Beatles, Elvis, the Beach Boys. I play these songs in my class room as the students are writing or working on projects. But that doesn't give me the radio personalities. I enjoy the jokes, the little contests, the camaraderie of the DJ's. It makes my morning light and the drive to work less tedious.
     What to do? What to do? I guess I'm either going to have to buck it up and succumb to my country western side or be satisfied with only one song out of four. Or, here's a thought...maybe I'll switch to a talk show. Hard to sing to but maybe I'll learn something. My brain will have to work. It's so early in the morning...heavy sigh...