How often do you listen to honest-to-goodness radio anymore? Usually I go to it only if I’m not in the mood for podcasts, audiobooks, or my own music collection. I’ll spin through my station presets to see if I get lucky, though most often I get bad songs and ads.
But not the other day. I was feeling especially jovial after work and wanted to stay in that high, and this lineup (between three different stations) was what started when I turned on the car and ended when I arrived at home:
- “Jet Airliner” by Steve Miller Band
- “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
- “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!
- “Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes
- “China Grove” by The Doobie Brothers
- “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield
My speakers were cranked. I don’t think I’ve ever hit such a solid streak on the radio before. Not one of these songs are in my own collection, yet they perfectly matched the moment. I could generate a list of six completely different songs that would be just as great and fitting, but that’s the nice thing about radio: call in requests all you want, but you can’t engineer musical serendipity, especially across stations. You just have to get lucky.
Long live synchronicity!
Comments
methink you just wanted to use the word ” synchronicity” today. Nice timing!!
The only times I intentionally set out to use a fancy word is in poetry, one of the last refuges of fancy people. Otherwise it all just comes to me.
I have a feeling we must belong to the same generation! I do listen to the radio in the car, usually NPR.
I’m one of those Millennials you hear a lot about, the generation that apparently has been killing off all good things. But as with my love of typewriters, I still appreciate older technologies that do a simple job well. Plus with our entertainment and culture being ever individualized and over-curated, I think it’s important, at least once in a while, to submit oneself to surprise.