Last year I got myself a new (to me) GMC Envoy with enough room to hold my entire family. I LOVE this vehicle. Talk about loaded, this thing even has washers for the headlights, I shit you not.
My favorite feature, however, is easily the satellite radio. The fine folks at SiriusXM were kind enough to give me a free preview month and then offered my a six month deal at just five bucks per month. This is quite possibly the best $30 I have ever spent.
Those who know me well, or at least those who knew me in college or before are no doubt aware of my musical interestes. I often wondered when I was growing up how my dad could listen to all those oldies stations playing nothing but stuff from the 60s and 70s. I guess you kind of never really evolve after a certain age, because it's now better than 20 years since the Seattle sound exploded into the mainstream, but I am still very much stuck in the Grunge era.
Granted, there are no more chain wallets, no more flannels, no more Doc Martens, but I still cannot get enough of bands like Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden. I was never a huge Nirvana fan, but I feel like they have to be mentioned here as well. Bands like Candlebox and Blind Melon were, in my opinion, far better to listen to.
And while the early to mid 1990s were certainly defined by the bands I listed above, there were many others who came to prominence during that time who were wonderful in their own rights. That's why, when I tuned in my free XM radio this past summer, I was so overjoyed at finding channel 34 - Lithium - I channel dedicated to, in their words, "90s alternative and grunge." What could be better?
Unfortunately, I have noticed a very disturbing trend over the past month or so. It seems whomever is creating the playlists for this channel has a bit of a thing for three bands in particular, as their music comes up a disproportionate amount of time. The Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers all see heavy rotation on Lithium while bands like Nirvana get relatively little airplay, especially their earlier songs. I find that particularly odd since Lithium is, in fact, a song title from Nirvana's iconic Nevermind album, an album that, along with Pearl Jam's Ten, ushered in the Grunge era and announced Seattle's presence as the new Mecca of alternative rock.
Now, I never loved the Pumpkins, but I did like a good number of their songs and while Billy Corgan's voice annoys the hell out of me sometimes, I can appreciate the music. I wish they didn't play the Pumpkins quite so often, but I can deal with it and I rarely wander off to a different channel when they come on the air.
Seriously though, there is zero excuse for the other two bands to be seeing anywhere near this much airtime. I mean, is Flea of the board of directors for SiriusXM or something?
Jane's Addictions was a short-lived, but talented band that featured guitarist Dave Navarro and frontman Perry Ferrell. I don't love Ferrell's vocals, but the he and the band had a unique sound.
Bassist Flea was a brief member of Jane's Addiction, though not a member of the original lineup. JA's success came as headliners of the first Lalapalooza Tour in 1991, years before Flea became involved. Unfortunately for the music-loving world (or at least me, as I recognize I may be alone in this opinion), Flea had gotten "big" (in quotations because he's actually very short) with the Chili Peppers, who, as best I can tell, did all of the exact same things Jane's Addiction did only not nearly so well as Jane's Addiction did them. This includes, but is not limited to, songwriting.
I mean honestly, is there a Chili Peppers song in which Anthony Kiedis does not spend at least one verse simply making incoherent mouth sounds instead of singing actual words? It's as if he wrote the song and realized he only had enough to cover about two-and-a-half minutes and needed to stretch it out to four. Instead of writing another verse, he decided just to throw in some ba-dinga-dong-dangs for a minute and a half.
If you've seen the Big Lebowski, and I assume all of you have or else we are very likely not friends -- or at least shouldn't be, there is the scene where The Dude catches a cab home from Jackie Treehorn's pad and winds up getting tossed by the cabbie for overzealous complaining about the Eagles, that's pretty much me when it comes to the Chili Peppers. I mean, I hate the effing Chili Peppers, man.
They are easily the most overrated, and over-played, band of all-time.
Which is why it pains me so much that the greatest musical discovery of the past 10 years of my life is so often tainted by not only the presence of the Chili Peppers, but the ridiculous number of times they are played. I even took into consideration that I may be overreacting a bit. Surely, it only seems like they are played too often because I despise them so much that I notice it more than the number of times Filter hits the airwaves, for example. Not so. I actually predict with a fair amount of accuracy when the next Chili Peppers or Jane's Addiction song will be played. I pretty much just guess they are mandated to play one of those two bands, in particular, in every five song block at least once. I'm rarely wrong. And I hate it each time.
There is not a single Chili Peppers song I like enough to not change the station when it comes on.
So, my six month deal is up in just five short weeks and I'm sure they'll try raising the price on me. I'm totally in love with the product excepting that whole playing-my-least-favorite-band-far-too-often thing. I just hope they give the Chili Peppers their own station like they did with Pearl Jam and Jimmy Buffet and Bruce Springsteen.
I mean, the Grateful Dead have their own station and they only ever had one radio "hit." The Chili Peppers, regretfully, had many, though all of them sucked. If they get their own station, maybe I'll get to hear some occasional Lithium on Lithium. What a novel idea.
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