an Arizona musical note
Today while I was driving back to work from lunch, Beyoncé's "Sweet Dreams" was on both U92.7 and 97.7 KRCK at the same time, a type of simultaneity that I'm known for despising.
Now, don't get me wrong; I love Beyoncé, and "Sweet Dreams" is one of my favorite jam. It just gets played so damn much that sometimes I need a break from the song, lest it suffer the fate of "Unwritten," "Make Her Say" or even "Just Dance" — good songs that have become nearly Dead to Me because they're so overplayed.
And today's beautiful nightmare on the radio reminded me of my recent trip to Arizona, during which I also had to dodge "Sweet Dreams" left and right.
See, the tape deck in my car has been busted since the summer and I don't know where my radio transmitter thingy is, so I only ever listen to the radio in the car anymore.
Whilst driving around our fine valley, that's never much of a hardship. But in between the last gasps of KDES' signal (which goes out way farther than I thought it would) and the first taste of the Phoenix market's stations, it's a wild, wild radio West out there.
Some of my favorite finds were a station from Havasu that came in intermittently as I was approaching the state line, Kazual 104.5... aka KZUL/Lake Havasu City. Something about the word "casual" just makes it seem like such an unlikely candidate for a radio station's branding. Also mildly odd was a Christian pop station that branded itself Alive FM. (I think it was KWFH/Parker.) Anyway, they used the same little jingle melody that Kiss FM in Phoenix and KRCK in Palm Springs use, so it makes for an aural double take no matter which direction you're traveling.
But once I had passed those roadside attractions by, I was once again listening to Beyoncé along with a bunch of consider summer jams that shouldn't be in such heavy rotation anymore, like "Down," "Whatcha Say," etc.
Perhaps more interesting than how the same songs were overplayed in both markets, though, was the absence of some of my newer Palm Springs jams from the Phoenix airwaves. For instance, I don't think I heard "Somebody to Love" once while I was scanning MOViN, Mix, Kiss and Jamz in Phoenix. Ditto for "Hot Mess" and "All The Right Moves."
I wonder if this means the Palm Springs market is somehow marginally more hip than Phoenix... Nah. I must be (sweet) dreamin' — or perhaps having a beautiful nightmare.
12/4 » Oh, I almost forgot one of the craziest musical notes from my Arizona trip. "Fireflies" is quite a popular song on both sides of the state line, so I heard it quite a few times on my trip. But the strange thing was that I don't think I ever heard the first verse of the song at any point throughout the weekend. "Fireflies" always seemed to be on right as I switched to a station, so I always picked it up partway through. It was odd.