tea time no. 88: Radio

Drinking: coffee

Listening to: Regina Spektor – On The Radio

Regardless of how many cds and mp3s I collect, there’s no replacing the radio. Even Pandora {while very helpful} isn’t the same. During National Public Radio’s pledge season, I start to believe their messages of why I can’t live without radio. But I like more than just NPR. Michael Chabon cracked the code on the allure of radio in his book Manhood for Amateurs, p.272:

“No medium is a sensuously evocative of the past as radio. No other medium deploys that shocking full-immersion power of random remembrance….The song has to take you by surprise, catch you when your guard is down, when you aren’t expecting it–ideally, when you aren’t even listening to the radio at all. A bright little piece of your life passes you by in a car with the windows rolled down, wells up in the pain-relief aisle of a Rite-Aid. That kind of a chance encounter can’t happen as readily on an iPod you’ve programmed yourself.” -Michael Chabon

So true. There’s an entire era of music {Oh Sherrie by Steve Perry, Refugee by Tom Petty, Babe by Styx, Rio by Duran Duran} that puts me back in Paddock Pool, a place that is now filled with cement, feeling sunburned and waiting for my swim meet to begin. While the iPod is not the same, I have made a new discovery in iTunes Genius Mixes that help me feel surprised by the next song. In your iTunes application on the left-hand column you can select a Genius Mix. ITunes automatically prepares several mixes of your music based on categories. It’s a much more stylized mix than just a random shuffle setting. It always seems to find songs on albums that I have overlooked and matches them up nicely with others. It’s the closest thing I can find to a really good radio station when you are out of service area, or when the pledge drive drones on and on.