Peg Life Vol. 2

I didn't expect to be writing a second edition of Peg Life so soon (less than 24 hours) after the first but I had some stuff to say, so here we are. I also didn't expect to be moved by your gravestone. And if you get that you're probably Joe. What is it that's so important that I feel I should fill people's mailboxes with even more garbage? I'm getting to that. I don't tell you how to do your job so just back off, alright. I recommend that everybody buy or download the Smog album Red Apple Falls (and no, this still isn't the raison d'etre of this issue) or alternatively just the song I Was a Stranger. As long as I'm recommending songs and you're all dutifully following my suggestions, you should also get John Wayne Gacy, Jr. by Sufjan Stevens from the ingeniously titled album Sufjan Stevens Invites You to Come On Feel the Illinoise. Being on the subject of music actually works out quite well as the stuff I had to say is on that very topic. So I'm at work today and the radio is tuned into "Today's BEST music, Q94 FM." I copy some Fiery Furnaces to one of the computers from my mp3 player and put that on while I'm setting up another computer as a display unit. I finish and go about working on some other tasks. After a while my music stops playing and I don't bother putting anything else on. Meanwhile Q94 is still playing in the background. Later in the evening I hear "Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit helpless and I'm lying like a child in your arms. Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit angry..." and I realize it's Total Eclipse of the Heart, but it's not the original version. So I turn around, right there and then I listen a little bit closer and I hear the techno beat so I think, "Oh, it's a techno remix. Or perhaps a techno cover would be more accurate cause it's not the original vocals either." I make a mental note about how the song sucks and go back to work. Then a little while later I'm tidying up one of the aisles and another song comes on the radio. It sounds like a teenage girl and I think "Lindsay Lohan? No. Avril Lavigne? No. Hilary Duff? Hmm." "Let the rain fall down and wake my dreams. Let it wash away my sanity." *shudder* "Yep... Wait a minute. What's with the vocoder? ANOTHER fucking techno remix?" And that prompted me to set my keyboard on my lap and start typing. I am really fucking sick of lame-ass techno remixes and covers getting airtime on the radio. It's especially bad when the remixed song was lame-ass to begin with. If I'm not mistaken, it started with that version of Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind that achieved ubiquity a few years ago. Then there was Bryan Adams' Heaven. Now Total Eclipse of the Heart and I've also heard a techno version of Don Henley's Boys of Summer. The Come Clean remix sickens me less because of butchery of a song than the fact that it gives radio programmers an excuse to play more Hilary Duff. So the next time you hear someone say "Hey, have you heard the techno remix of (insert song here)? It's awesome," punch them.

Tony Hawkins glistening like muttonchops on grocery bags