When I moved to Portland in 1994, there was a radio station I’m tempted to call magical. It was at the upper end of the dial. The hosts were a definite presence but they weren’t obnoxious. Pardon this cliché, and it’s a really bad one at that, but I felt like I knew them. Interestingly, I think, many people who visited me in Portland in those years commented on the station’s unlikely yet very likable mix of music. The station, for me, demystified music a little. Typically, when I hear a song I like enough to go out and buy the CD, I often discover three or four songs on the CD that I like better than the one I heard originally, which always makes me wonder why stations don’t play more than one or two tracks. This radio station did.
But it doesn’t anymore. I tuned in and out over the past several years. I latched on to other stations from time to time; I started not getting out of bed until 10 minutes before I needed to leave for work. Things changed, of course, including the station. I tuned back in a few months ago and I am very, very saddened to report that the station once commented on by out-of-towners as ‘interesting’ could not be any more non-interesting if it tried.
The reason, I think, is simple: Jack Johnson. Even though there is a world of amazing music out there waiting to be heard, this station plays Jack Johnson as if he were the nipple upon which our survival depends. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is I loathe about the music of Jack Johnson, and here’s my attempt to articulate. It’s dumbed down. It is not imaginative, or lyrical, or whimsical. It’s dull and repetitive. The way he sings reminds me of the way semi-literate jocks talk (Jack Johnson is a surfer, I believe). The way he sings reminds me of whiney, about-to-be obese white guys in their 30s or 40s who cling to how cool they were, or believed they were, in high school or college, even though they’re clearly no longer on any counts. The way he sings reminds me of the white guy who must be his musical godfather, Dave Matthews.
Which brings me to New Orleans. I was dumbfounded by the report from New Orleans on Thursday morning. Personally, I consider New Orleans the crown jewel of our country's culture. I think the collison of time and geography is that city is stunning. Matt Lauer, of course, was not there to report on anything related to that, but to report on – and this should come as no surprise – the football game. Standing in Jackson Square, the Jack Johnson of network news (mentally, anyhow) was backed up by the cheerleaders, who did a rendition of that utterly retarded ‘who dat?’ stupidness and waved their gold pom-poms. There was a picture of some football player holding his young son up during or after the game – “so emotional,” Matt Lauer said as the screen filled with a pretty unremarkable image – and guess what: he’s going to do it again! This, I thought sadly, is what we see and hear when we see and hear the great city of New Orleans. Football. But it got worse. There is a concert taking place before the big game, and headlining this concert is Taylor Swift and Dave Matthews. Completely ignoring the Taylor Swift issue, that’s one of the most pathetic things I’ve heard in a good long while. What sort of sensibility would it take, I wondered, to even conceive of a Dave Matthews concert in New Orleans? Portland I can understand – we like ‘em white and smug here – but New Orleans? When people say ‘post-hurricane New Orleans’ is this the type of thing they’re talking about? Which got me wondering about Jack Johnson, and that led to the radio station, and that, ultimately, led to me hitting the power button on the remote and turning the television off for the morning.
