Waterloo: The Dead Zone

Some people really enjoy listening to CDs or MP3s while driving in their vehicles. It makes sense because you know you will like every song since you created the play list. Personally I get really bored of a rotation of CDs and am too lazy to hunt around to maintain a constantly evolving MP3 collection. The alternative? Radio, of course. Yes, there is a lot of talk that can be annoying. Yes, there is a lot of advertising that can be annoying. Yes, there is a limited variety of music on each station (note I’m talking about traditional free radio here not satellite or podcasts). Despite all these problems I can’t help myself. I enjoy the limited variety but most of all I like the talk, no not the annoying talk the good talk. For the most part I listen to the Edge 102 out of Toronto since they tend to avoid playing rap and (most) pop. I like to catch the morning show since their antics are usually pretty funny for example when they got Alan Cross to say “Douche Bag” on air recently. My favourite program is “Ongoing History of New Music”? by the same Alan Cross who it seems is an elephant of music history trivia.

Here in Waterloo, for some unknown reason, there is a huge amount of interference with the weaker Toronto radio signals. I drive around the city and on some days everything comes in crystal clear and its great. Other days I drive around and at all times there is a hint of static and certain points in the city cause either the entire channel to cut out or to become inaudible. As you can probably imagine this is very frustrating, especially when I am listening to my favourite program and its to a very interesting point in the story. Today the section of the show that had me very interested was regarding the early days of Nirvana when they had a drummer who wasn’t Dave Grohl or that other guy. I’ve always really liked Nirvana partially because of the music which is great and partially because of Kurt Cobain who was a true musician.

I’ve always lived at arms length from Toronto: Muskoka, Waterloo, Ottawa and St. Catharines. In all of those places except Ottawa I listened to the Edge and wished that they would crank up the signal so it would come in clearer. In the case of Waterloo I don’t really actually believe increasing the signal would overcome the interference. I’m just out of luck until I move on to another location or buy myself a satellite radio receiver (although I think I’m too cheap for that).