....well I know what I wanted to say but it didn't come out quite right.
I personally hate any kind of radio, CD, cassette etc music when I'm driving. For some reason I find it incredibly annoying, especially radio-talk with the damn commercials every 3.3 minutes for shampoos or intimate feminine essentials promoted by soap opera "stars" Thus my cars always get sold on with pristine sound systems. I can never learn what all those stupid tiny buttons do anyway.
Doesn't mean I don't like it at home, I have over 2,000 jazz and blues CD's and tapes and vinyl (good jazz is at its finest on vinyl), but I can't stand it in the car. I prefer a zen-like quietude in the car punctuated only by swearing at other drivers.
Growlette however drives hers with Pinoy singers belting out Tagalog love ballads, although thankfully she abhors hip-hop (aptly known as "monkey music" where I live). Says it keeps her from concentrating (huh?) Call her on her cellphone and you get a barrage of this along with her shrieking "I can't hear you!".
Anyone else share this antipathy of mine, or am I alone.....?
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Sort of G. Don't get me wrong - I like listening to the radio (cd player is bust) and more recently I'm listening to talk programs. (BBC GMR springs to mind with Alan Beswick) but when the cd player was working, I couldn't listen to jazz at all. I'm a big fan of jazz and blues and play a bit on the piano but in the car it annoyed me. I don't know why because I could listen to blues and other music just not jazz. The only possible exception was a bit of Frank. Can't beat Frankie on the way to Uni!
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Adam
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I like Classic FM or R4 on a long familiar run, but I turn it off in unfamiliar places, or negotiating heavy traffic and junctions.
Worst of all for concentration are the children's tapes.
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"I turn it off in unfamiliar places, or negotiating heavy traffic and junctions."
This is what I tend to do. Went to Uni in rush hour the other day: No music
Came back at 16:00 with less traffic: Radio
I listen to a local station called Century FM, mainly playing stuff from the 80s as well as the occasional song from the 90s or from the the current chart.
I personally prefer bringing my own CDs is I can chose the songs I like most. Nothing worse than listing to ads or a string of songs you dont like. Traffic reports on this station are not too long (less than 50 seconds). But then again, I dont live in the south ;-)
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Growler, you know you're one of a kind!
Personally a malfunctioning stereo is guaranteed to put me into a foul mood faster than any idiotic driver. No music, no concentration. On occasion, I have even put a portable radio on the passenger seat. It has to be music though - "talking" stations drive me dotty.
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Growler, you know you\'re one of a kind! Personally a malfunctioning stereo is guaranteed to put me into a foul mood faster than any idiotic driver. No music, no concentration.
Ditto. I once had to drive down to Gosport and back in a hire car. The stereo wasn\'t coded, and it was one of those that everytime you got the code wrong it doubled the amount of time before you could enter the code again (1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes, 16 minutes, you get the drift). If you switched off the ignition, then the waiting time limit for re-entry of the code would start over. As it was a two hour drive there, I amused myself by continually entering a random code to totally screw up the stereo.
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" personally hate any kind of radio, CD, cassette etc music when I'm driving"
Not just when driving. All the blessed time. Keep the wretched wailing and clanking racket away from my delicate ears please. Never really got to grips with music as a youngster; what's it for, what use is it? Can't even go shopping or for a pee without some piped cooing sound dribbling out of some hidden speakers somewhere. Rant finished now ...
Car radio locked on to Radio 4. Cassettes of Arthur Lowe reading "Diary of a Nobody" or Robin Bailey reading "tales from a long room" among my favourites. 6 CD changer in back of car hasn't been touched for years. First thing I do in Mrs H's car is hit the radio power off.
and yes, Growler, you are one of a kind.
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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Growler, you are known in the vernacular as a G-O-G, but as you are unique thats been renamed slightly to a Grumpy old Growler. ;)
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Sorry Growler, but I think us Radio 4 listeners are in the majority in the Back Room.
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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Sort of on this point, one of the reasons for having the radio/CD/cassette on is to get traffic reports, but that in itself is a can of worms, as they are often incomplete and out of date, and usually delivered by someone whose sole qualification for the job seems to be that they have a speech impediment and/or a particularly unattractive voice. What can be more infuriating than to be told that there is a holdup on a dual carriageway at junction 32 (who knows/remembers junction numbers?)without any reference to which carriageway is involved?
Grrrr...........
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And I do hate the way RDS tunes you in to other stations so that you can hear reports such as:
"And later on Radio 4, we will be --- ::[click]:: --- causing massive tailbacks in the entire area. Now, 5 minutes of me wittering on about public transport...."
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Copy that. Some woman speaking, strike that, yelling, in unintelligible machine-gun English over the clattering of helicopter blades while telling me traffic at the junction of Shaw and EDSA is at a standstill (I know that dear, I've been at a standstill in that very place the last 15 mins but thanks for reminding me,) and telling me this has been a service of Colgate Palmolive, cut to jingle about how you'll have a smile that's permanent if you brush your teeth with wet cement, etc.
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Oh Growler - UK reports now kowtow to the PC demands of HMG.
Gone is the simple traffic report - we now have "traffic and travel" reports that (as you are familiar with) spend a few seconds telling you the M25 and M6 are a bit slow (wow!) and then half an hour going through each and every public transport link to tell you that they are all running fine and how lovely they are really.
I believe the latter about as much as I believe an East German weather forecast.
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One of my local stations encourages you to call in with traffic news. I rang them late last week after witnessing a sherpa van and a Leon Cupra performing a little bit of automotive ballet on the M27 at Rownhams.
"Thanks for that...... oh, yes, just getting it through from the control room now. We'll put it out on air asap"
15 minutes later my french lessons were interrupted by "news" of this accident, by which time it was causing 4-mile tailbacks. I then sat through news of buses in the New Forest, ferries to Cherbourg and trains in Weymouth before I could get back to the thrilling news that "Je regrette mais je ne peux pas venir maintenant parce que je suis trop occupé"
Sure, I could have cancelled the RDS alert but you never know, you may hear something topical.....
Well, I live in hope.
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Hardly ever have the radio on in the car these days. Think it's tuned to the Home Service....
Downside of this is constantly thinking things like 'is the alternator rattling', 'is the engine sounding endy' etc.
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The helicopter car stereo is permanently tuned to Jazz FM. I too have a large collection of Jazz and Blues vinyl and CD. Current jazz favourite on CD is a young lady called Stacey Kent but on long journeys I am working my way through the complete series of 'Round the Horne' which never fails to keep me amused . Bona...
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My in-car entertaihnment usually alternates between prolonged doses of Radio4, and equally prolonged doses of the compilation tapes or CDs which I make every year or so. The latter are usually an eclectic mix of something like chunks of Handel's Messiah mixed up with Status Quo, Kris Kristoffersen, gregorian chant, the Beach Boys, Emmylou Harris, Bert Jansch, chunks of Beethoven's 7th and the Travelling Wilburys.
My friends usually try to ban these compliations, and make lots of remarks about white coats ... which probably explains why I can't find radio stations which play a sufficiently eclectic mix of music. (These days, everything is segmented and themed).
Not too much of problem, actually, because if I have company in a car I prefer talking with live people to listening to any sound system.
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Radio4 or 5 only.
Don't you find the type of music affects how you drive?
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Absolutely.
High volume dance for high-speed trips on motorways
Loud classical for stuck in traffic jams that are just about moving
Easy listening when my mum's in the car
Opera for going nowhere traffic jams
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Well it will be the new Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy on the radio (4) on the way home tonight for me.
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ballads, although thankfully she abhors hip-hop (aptly known as "monkey music" where I live).
Why do you call it that? and why is it "apt"?
Mine is on Radio 4.
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>>>>> >> ballads, although thankfully she abhors hip-hop (aptly known as "monkey music"where I live).
Why do you call it that? and why is it "apt"?
a) observe the simians at the lower end of the food chain who "perform" it and ask yourself is this what 2000 years of civilisation has brought us to;
b) consider that banging one's head on a brick wall may be less painful than having it inflicted upon one (I won't dignify it by the term "listening");
c) --motoring-- deliver it to my car by radio and I am sorely tempted to reach for the 9mm in my glovebox and teach the radio a lesson.
Thank heavens for the "off" button.
b)
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"brush your teeth with wet cement" For Heavens sake Big G they are surely not still running that advert in MNL??. It must date back to the mid fifties..
Happy Listening (to R4 of course) Phil I
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Sorry Growler, I need music, sound or whatever in the car.
If I don't, I get obsessed with listening out for the smallest creak, squeak and rattle in the car and then try and find where it is coming from!
Also, if the music is not on, it just encourages SWMBO and the kids to want to talk!!!!
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Also, if the music is not on, it just encourages SWMBO and the kids to want to talk!!!!
What, you mean music works for you?
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No guarantees given, but if I ignore them the first couple of times, they usually give up!
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I stopped at traffic lights in New Mills one afternoon, we only have one set! A little girl was holding her mummy's hand ready to cross. Mummy was yacking on the mobile. I was listening to Classic FM playing a 1910s/20s Caruso aria, superb but reproduction typical for the era. I must have had it on a little loud because I noticed the little girl was looking at me as though she smelled dog poo. I looked at her defiantly, and watched the music gradually drift into her mum's consciousness. Then she too looked at me as though she had smelled dog poo.
I wonder what reaction I would have got if it had been Nellie Melba singing 'Home Sweet Home'. (circa 1904. I think that is superb too.)
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Growler, send me your address and I will send you a CD for your car. aBBa's greatest hits should do it, and I want Growlette to tape you singing at full belt #"Gimme Gimme Gimme a man after midnight"# as you traverse downtown Manilla.........
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I would guess Willie and Waylon might be preferred.....
'Mothers don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys'?
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Sometimes when I hear a really naf commercial or a song I hate I turn the radio off for a few minutes - so in that respect G you're not alone!
H
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I had one of the first cars with a keycode radio, so new at the time that there was nothing about it in the manual. I thought the "Keycode" sticker on the window was just some fancy description of the ignition system. After a short while the clutch had to be replaced under warranty, and the battery had to be disconnected. When the car (Fiesta) came back the radio wouldn't work, so I just kept pressing buttons at random till I killed the set stone dead. After so many attempts it was designed to need re-coding.
The dealer returned the radio to Ford, who apparantly had to send it to Belguim, and despite constant nagging I never saw the thing again. I had the car for another eighteen months, and got so used to no radio that when I got in a SWMBO's car the radio used to drive me nuts and we used to argue about having it on. It actually took me a few years before I could get used to a radio on in the car again, and even now I only listen about 50% of the time.
As for cassettes, none of my cars have ever had the cassete player used even once. Might change my mind if I get a cd player tho'.
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RF...aaagh..ok..ok..I'll confess, I can handle the bamboo shoots under the fingernails and the cigarette burns, but anything but that....yes, Herself, though barely a twinkle in her father's eye, DOES have Abba's Greatest Hits in the car. But worse is to come, far far worse than you could ever have possibly imagined..........that darling of the dumpy housewife.....Rod Stewart...is in there as well. Did I mention the BeeGees, no?, them too. I refuse to ride with her if any of these are playing.
Is there some sort of '70's revival in car music I'm missing out on? What's next? The Bay City Rollers? Alvin b******ust? Lord preserve us, shurely not the Osmonds or Sludge or whatever they called themselves? The girl was about one point nothing old when these were popular. I give up.
On second thoughts I think I prefer the Pinoy love songs, and I admit to a sneaking liking for that Lebanese singer Fairouz. Must be from years of riding in Dubai taxis.
But you know, maybe I should get out more and try this music-in-the-car thing, perhaps there's something in after all, soothing the savage breast etc. I'll try some MJQ. Then some of that lovely breathy sax of Gerry Mulligan, perhaps even stretch it to some Coleman Hawkins or Erroll Garner. She said maybe if I did I'd be a nicer person to drive. Hmph!
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I don't know if my typo triggered that but I meant "b******ust", really I did.
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Nope, it's the censor, not me. "S-t-a-r-d-u-s-t"
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None of my cars have a stereo. I keep thinking I might buy an mp3 player but the odd trip in friend's cars when they do have music on makes me realise how annoying I would find it now. I would also miss out on hearing new noises like the odd bearing rattle, duff wheel bearing etc! I used to have a tape player but I never got round to replacing it when I changed cars. I took the cheesy stereo out of the new car then never bothered to fill the gap with anything. That was over 2 years ago! The only time I miss it is when stuck in a traffic jam. I love music at home though.
teabelly
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Ordinarily a radio 4 listener, my car stereo is currently churning out "French with Michel Thomas" CD4 (of 8) for my daily commute.
Last night I had to rush home so I could sit myself down in the lounge, curtains closed, and revel in the delights of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy on radio 4 at 18:30. Pure magic, it would have been far less pleasurable in the car.
Although it does feature a Ford Prefect (motoring link).
How hoopy I was!
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