Radio Ga Ga

A battle more akin to those of the ancient world rages in our office for supreme control of the airwaves.

In one corner, literally, we have the station I’m fairly sure was the inspiration for Sad FM for the over thirties in Bridget Jones Diary. It plays the same twenty songs all day, every day. Occasionally a new song is introduced, say once every six months, but generally it is and has been the same twenty songs for most of this decade (*ooh edit and the last decade). Those songs were probably very enjoyable once. In fact I think they might even have been songs I enjoyed as guilty pleasures once- before being subjected to the musical equivalent of water boarding every day.

In the other corner, literally, we usually have quite a good radio station, though like all stations it does over play and then ruin songs you loved when they came out- but not on the level of Sad FM. Let’s call station two try hard FM.

Were I working alone I would have Radio 4 on but I accept that would have to be on very loudly in an office and might be distracting- plus music in theory should cheer people up and get the momentum going. So if we can’t have Radio 4 I favour a roaming music policy whereby we rotate between several stations every few weeks- accepting that all of those stations will play Snow Patrol’s chasing cars at least twice a day because all radio stations do- I think Kiss FM might even have a dance remix of it. However whenever I suggest the roaming policy, the musical equivalent of varying which newspaper you buy, everyone initially agrees and then we carry on as before listening to the same two with me rocking in my chair with a vacant but crazy look in my eyes.

I have over time developed the ability to drown out Sad FM and Try Hard FM when they are at their worst- in sad’s case playing a jingle about having the most music variety in London while playing the same song twice in a row (which has happened several times- hello Girl’s Aloud the promise) and in Try Hard’s the DJ just talking nonsense and laughing at himself for an entire fifteen minutes (with me shouting play a song every few minutes).

So yes in short I can sort of ignore them mostly. What I can’t ignore is both at the same time clashing with each other. Neither keeper of the radios can hear the other controllers stereo but those in the middle of them can hear both. Now at times this does lead to almost genius, 2manydjs- esque, mash ups between Dolly Parton and the chemical brothers say or Dirty Dancing and smells like teen spirit. Most of the time though you can just hear a wall of horrible noise with the occasional ‘the most music variety’ jingle or that awful ‘we buy any car’ advert that should be banned for crimes against ears.

So that’s the situation. Not a real problem of course, a first world problem. Still perhaps I will become a world conquering mix DJ- currently we are enjoying Take on Me twinned with bittersweet symphony- oh and there’s a bus alarm going off too- some people might pay to listen to all this.