I don't know if it's because everyone here seems to have ADD, but if you listen to the local radio it's a perpetual case of deja vu all over again.
The stations, no matter what format, seem to have a minimal playlist that they repeat ad nauseam in an infinite loop.
I first noticed it at an agency I worked part-time at when we first moved here. They had a local pop station tuned in in the background and it became obvious they played some songs a lot. In fact, I noticed the songs seemed to come on at exactly the same time every hour. I checked out the station's website and sure enough, their playlist was only 20 songs long and they played them exactly in the same order every hour, interspersed with local ads for tractors and gun shows.
Now that I work from home, I usually opt to have the local classical station on while I work. It's actually not local, but beamed out of the bastion of sophistication, Fresno. It has the added benefit of being an NPR station, so I also get the public radio shows I love and I dodge the local advertising which is a constant reminder of just exactly where I live. Nobody wants that. But if your only exposure to classical music was KVPR, you could be forgiven for thinking there are only 20 or 30 pieces of classical music in the entire world because they suffer from the same syndrome. Making matters worse, the people up in Fresno seem to be quite a gloomy bunch because their playlist is heavy with dirges and requiems. In addition, the morning host is, I've come to discover, Finnish. So you're going to learn to love Sibelius whether you want to or not.
Wednesday morning at 10 they announced that as part of their holiday programming they would be presenting a recording of the Holiday Concert of the Tulare Symphony. What was surprising was that Tulare has a symphony. Tulare is a town just north of here and it has a population of only about 60,000. Less than a minute into the concert I realized that by "Symphony", what they really meant was "Middle School". In the spirit of the season I'll be kind and just say... I didn't turn it off. I could've. Lord knows I thought about it many times.
Yesterday morning at 10 they announced that as part of their holiday programming they would be presenting... a recording of the Holiday Concert of the Tulare Symphony.
Good God, not again.
So, on a whim, I switched to a local pop station that has been playing nothing but Christmas music for the past month. Even though we're having a bare bones Christmas, I was in the holiday spirit and thought it would be nice.
The first song that came on was "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", which is my favorite.
And it's a good thing too, because over the next two hours I heard it 5 times.
Each time it was followed by José Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad", Burl Ives singing "Jolly, Holly Christmas", John Lennon's "So This Is Christmas", Mariah Carey's "All I want For Christmas", "Silver Bells" and then "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...")
That was it.
In Bakersfield, there are only 6 Christmas songs.
After the cycle started again for the fifth time, I threw in the towel and turned back over to classical, the Tulare nightmare long over. The first song to come up was Chopin's "Funeral March".
You know, something festive.
