Author: DOuG pRATt

All Gassed Up With Nowhere to Go

Under the Covid lockdown it took a long time to use up half a tank of gas, just driving back and forth to the grocery store twice each week. I couldn’t believe the price to fill the tank — only $1.38/gallon!

Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider died recently. I don’t have any Kraftwerk records, but like most everybody I know “Autobahn”. The single version made it to #25 on the Billboard chart.

Five years after “Autobahn” was Gary Numan’s album “The Pleasure Principle”, with his own electronic auto-related song “Cars”. The single cracked the Billboard top 10, peaking at #9.

https://youtu.be/E4Lo-D8NQF0

Stamp Out Stupidity

Remember when those red Netflix DVD envelopes were everywhere? Digital streaming technology put an end to them, depriving the United States Postal Service of a source of revenue that was helping to make up for the rapid decline of first class postage in the Internet Age.

As John Oliver explains, in 2006 — the year I started this blog and was a 3-disc Netflix subscriber — a new law clobbered USPS finances and hobbled its ability to recover. Trump should be locked in a room with this video playing repeatedly, until he agrees to support the USPS. He doesn’t even have to admit he’s an idiot about everything, which he is, just the post office.

A point that John Oliver doesn’t make is that in many places, like where I live, Amazon deliveries are rarely made by regular mail anymore. Amazon has a large distribution center in a neighboring town with its own fleet of trucks. So in addition to the USPS not losing money on the Amazon deliveries it still makes, it isn’t making nearly as many as it was. Which gets back to one of Oliver’s points about service to rural areas, where many of Trump’s hardcore supporters live.

Doing Doo-Wop

Upon retiring three years ago I bought a new car, a 2017 Toyota Camry XLE. JBL should be ashamed for putting its name on the entertainment system, because the sound quality is mediocre, but at least it includes an XM receiver (Sirius and XM merged, but their satellite technologies are incompatible).

Even before the Covid-19 lockdown I wasn’t doing a lot of driving because, like I said, I’m retired. So most of my SiriusXM listening is at home, online. Something I realized from listening to Cousin Brucie on “60’s on 6” is that his personal preference isn’t for the 60’s songs I heard him play on WABC as a kid. He’s big into Doo-Wop.

I’m still feeling stunned by the passing of Ian Whitcomb. His Luxuriamusic co-host Jim Dawson is someone who knows his Doo-Wop history. Andrew Sandoval, everybody’s friend in 60’s Production Pop music, is a big Dion fan. So put it all together and I’m enjoying a newfound interest in listening to Doo-Wop. Here’s one that Drew Carey played recently on his SiriusXM “Friday Night Freak-Out” show.