Il Monkey

Pink Monkeybird comments on the NARN's bumper music in a post from the other day:

I don't pretend to know how bumper music gets chosen on the Northern Alliance Radio Network. But I think I'm pretty close to accurate when I assume that the lovely and talented Mitch Berg is about as close to being dictator over this realm as Benito Mussolini was the dictator over Italy in 1937.

Far from the truth.

Bumper music has always been pretty much a gang thang. We all bring it in.

I provided a bunch of the "break beds" - the songs that play as we head up to a break. Patrick Campion - the Operations Manager at AM1280 - brought in a bunch more bumper music, mostly the "classic rock" stuff. As a general thing, I have as much control over bumpers as I do over the conversation on the show - very, very little.

Now, don't get me wrong (please forgive me for using that tired expression like a broken record), I'm not saying that Mitch's music taste sucks. At least, not all the time. I am saying that it sucks sometimes. And I'm not even saying that "sucks" is a pejorative value. I love sucky music. But just not all the time. Sometimes ya gotta throw in some cornball sucky music to level the playing field. And this is pretty much what Mitch "Il Duce" Berg does on the show. So I have no problem with him. The reason we listen to NARN is for the talk, not the bumpers.

Point of order, here; my taste in music is, in fact, the best in the world - and has rather little to do with the bumpers on the show. A real Mitch Berg Show would pinwheel between the Sex Pistols and Russian orthodox monastic music and Stax/Volt r'nb and piobareachd bagpipes, and most everything in between.

Speaking of "in between..."

Pink notes:

Once in awhile Mitch tosses me a bone. Today he played Queen's Under Pressure which was co-written by David Bowie. I'm not a Queen fan and I don't have much of a high regard for that song. Although when I hear it I generally don't run out of the room squawking like a pinkmonkeybird, as I have on occasion when Bohemian Rhapsody is aired. What makes me so haughty as to believe the Mitch gives pinkmonkeybird the least thought when he plays China Girl or Changes or Under Pressure, you ask? Because he said so, that's how.

If I were asked to choose David Bowie bumper music for the NARN (besides the above fine selections) I would choose the following;

Candidate (choose your political race), Station To Station (Europe), Always Crashing In The Same Car (taxes), Suffragette City (civil rights), Fame (Hollywood elites), The Man Who Sold The World (Kofi Annan), Moonage Daydream (pinkmonkeybird), Starman (UFOs), It's No Game (Teddy Kennedy), Up The Hill Backwards (the Democrat Party), Let's Dance (the smoking ban), Running Gun Blues (legalized carry laws), Hang Onto Yourself (the Senate), Scary Monsters (al Qaeda), Loving the Alien (Border control), I'm Afraid of Americans (anti-Americanism), "Heroes" (Berlin), Quicksand (Nazi baiting), All Saints (the pope), Battle For Britain (Tony Blair's re-election), Big Brother (moveon), Blackout (energy management), The Laughing Gnome (Nihilst In Golf Pants), Warzawa (British bloggers), Sunday (9/11/01), Cracked Actor (Tim Robbins), Dead Man Walking (Sean Penn), Aladdin Sane (Red Lake shootings), Space Oddity (NASA), Oh You Pretty Things (Abortion rights), The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell (gentrification), Amsterdam (Amsterdam), The Secret Life Of Arabia (Wahibism), Thursday's Child (Keegan's trivia), Seven (barking moonbat lefties), Young Americans (K-12 education), Sound Vision (movies), Tonight (Saturday evening events), V-2 Schneider (missile defense system), Outside (crime), Silly Boy Blue (John Kerry), Queen Bitch (Hillary), Something In The Air (the blogosphere).........

Anything can happen, PMB. It's America, where dreams come true.

Posted by Mitch at April 25, 2005 07:36 AM | TrackBack