I Still Listen to the Radio Because I Cannot Control the Music It Plays
posted January 27, 2009
My roommate, Eric, heard “Closing Time” by Semisonic on the radio during its heyday. After the song finished, the station went to commercial and Eric changed the frequency. The same wandering piano was interrupted by the same melodramatic guitar riff: “Closing Time” by Semisonic. Eric changed the station again. “I know who I want to take me home…”
I was listening to the local trashy alt-pop station in the darkroom. Frustrated by too much Linkin Park and that awful song “Headstrong,” I turned on my enlarger and sent a telepathic message to the DJ: play Beck’s 1994 jewel amid shit, “Loser.” When Green Day finally finished their whining, a slide guitar swerved in and Beck Hansen sang, “I'm a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?”
Eric drove from Claremont home to Pasadena to reconnect with a few high school friends. In order to underscore his homecoming, the car’s radio played Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town,” which is number 499 in The Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Two weekends later, Eric had another appointment back in P-town, and again, the DJ thought Thin Lizzy would be a good idea. Eric tells me that, since then, he’s certain he’s heard “the boys are back in town, the boys are back in town, the boys are back in town” every time he’s made that trip.