Ask the painting contractor chickie.

Classic rock, Dr Laura or NPR.

I wonder why, when a crew of guys are working on a house, they invariably listen to one of those classic rock stations? There was one in the Bay Area - KOME - The KOME spot on your radio! Oh, har har. The Morning Zoo chat, Two-fer Tuesdays, All American rock'n'roll. Maybe there's familiarity and comfort, like McDonalds these stations have pretty much identical formats and playlists all over the country. The DJ's - no wait, are they "radio personalities" now - are sent to classes so they all sound the same.

For a while, before AM talk radio got overrun with fat dittohead yapping and too many commercials, I and the crew would listen to local AM talk shows, those used to be great, back in the day. The dyke crew and I would turn up the Dr Laura show and yell at her, but she wouldn't listen to us, that scrawny bitch. For about three years here in MI, when I just had one fulltime helper - Luke, a sweet, 20-something neo-hippy who smelled evocatively of patchouli and pot but was an excellent worker and everyone loved him - he and I would have seperate walkmans. He'd be listening to the Dead, String Cheese Incident, Phish - crunchy granola let's all get along hippy music old and new. I've listened to NPR while I work for years. Luke & I would yell at each other through the voices in our heads. "Innagaddadavida, BAY-beee....Hey LUKE, where did you hide the damn sanding pads?....and today on the Diane Rhem show...under the drop cloth on the kitchen counter!...daDUMdaDUMdaDUMdadadadaDUM....Ok thanks!...an author explores the meaning of life..."

I've worked alongside a crew of ladies who did very nice faux painting, and they always turned up the cable TV home decorating shows, which I hate and made me nuts. When we had a couple of apartment contracts, unlucky fate would have it at times when we'd be working alongside the cleaning lady who not only wouldn't STFU with the proseletyzing but listened to some awful Christian radio. Why are Christian radio shows crammed with MLM and get-rich-quick scheme commercials? They really are; what that says about their target demographic makes me wonder.

Well, I almost forgot about the Polish Painters. I used to do quite a bit of work for an architect firm, many of their jobs were huge huge like 8000sf houses and lofts and stuff. So, they'd have us, and the Polish Painters; we'd each have a portion of the job. They had a boombox and listened to Polish punk and garage grunge tapes, now that was pretty interesting!
Speaking of which, my brother sent me an Arab rap CD. It's good, too. Yes. Arab rap music. I know, it just doesn't seem....right. But there you are, it exists and I like it.

I was going to write a whiny little entry about how many hours I am working (apart from my mini-vacation, I've been working every freaking day, often 10+ hours) and after doing dog and other necessary stuff is severely cutting into my cuddling up to the internet time. But I got sidetracked thinking about radios, I guess.

inagaddadavida, BAY-beee, daDUMdaDUMdaDUM, heigh ho, it's off to work we go, tralalalala.

posted by Carina @ 4:01 AM