Thursday, June 15, 2006

Man Cannot Live On 70s Rock Alone

Seriously. It's in the bible. Look it up.

I don't know how to define my relationship with Regina. Love/hate? Hate/hate? Love/hate/hate/hate/love/hate? CONFLICTED at best.
Last Saturday, during Spo-Dee O'Dee Vibes, while I was playing that awesome and gnarly live cover of Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" by the Magic Numbers, some dude called in and told me that I was playing "weird music". Um, okay. He wanted to know if I was going to play any 70s rock.
This would be where I might totally make fun of 70s rock, but I'm not going to. I like a lot of 70s rock. I like a lot of current rock that SOUNDS like 70s rock (possibly even more than I like ACTUAL 70s rock). And, throughout my 4.5-year broadcasting career I have played a lot of 70s and 70s-sounding rock. So there. I'm not a hater.
But what is going through a dude's mind when he calls a radio station to complain that there's not enough 70s rock on the Regina airwaves? Last I checked, the major difference between Regina's two or three commercial rock stations is that one of them plays "Freebird" three times a day, and the others only play it twice.

Lucky for Caller #9, the Rolling Stones are coming to town. Maybe. I don't care, really. I don't think I could justify shelling out the kind of bux it would take to put my butt in their vicinity, and let's be realistic, I won't be covering it. But for dudes everywhere, it will be a very special day.

What sorta bothers me about it is the timing. The Stones show is supposed to be taking place over the Thanksgiving weekend, and I'm 85% sure that's right before the civic election. Hizzoner has already stepped up his photo-ops (photo-ops = campaign platform in this town), and nobody else has even entered the mayoral contest yet. So we can expect a flurry of Stones-y photo-ops from Fiacco in the months to come. Perhaps even an "I (Stones Tongue) Regina" t-shirt. Basically, it'll end up being an implicit endorsement of Fiacco by Mick Jagger.

So instead of an actual debate over the merits of city services and the future of Regina as a city vs. Regina as a strip mall, expect little more than fist-pumping Fiacco to the tune of "Start Me Up" or possibly "Angie".

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