I Don't Wanna Be A Pinhead No More

Finally! I get to use a Ramones title for one of my rants. I wasn't a big fan of the inventors of "Punk Rock" for a long time, then I kind of got the joke and realized what a creative and talented band the boys from Queens were. I've also mentioned that I worked in radio here on Long Island, New York for six years and I've got some very strong opinions about the state of this media, partially due to this experience.

When I was in High School, the band Electric Light Orchestra put out a record with a killer version of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven". It was played to death by the radio stations of the day. They pounded it into the ground with a sledgehammer. It was heard at least once an hour if you switched to different radio stations in the course of your listening time. I began to get sick of the song, and quickly learned to hate The Electric Light Orchestra, the band that preceded them, The Move and everything associated with Jeff Lynne. It's much the same with many other performers. I was in college when "Born To Run" was released. I had heard Spruce Stringbean songs from his "Welcome To Asbury Park" album, and was not knocked out by any of them. The guys in the dorm room next to me, played and screamed along with with Bruce on this irritating recording. I learned to despise the song,"Rosalita" because of the high decibel neighbors. Not long after I transferred to another college, did radio begin pounding the Bruce tunes. I soon despised, detested, abhored, and cringed at the thought of listening to this music. I blame radio for this. I do not like the music of the man titled, "The Boss". What is he the boss of??? While working at WLIR, I was dating a girl who was a fan of the Bruce, so when I heard advance notice of tickets for a show going on sale, I let her know about it.

While producing the morning show at the afore mentioned radio station, a listener who had a t-shirt business sent some "Dare To Be Different" shirts to the guy who's show I produced. One featured a picture of the Bruce with the red circle with the line trhough the center over him. Ben laughed and said, "I can't wear this, I like Bruce"
" I'll take it!" I quickly interjected, and proudly wore it until it disintegrated off my skinny body. In the middle of that summer, I broke my toe and was hobbling around on crutches when one evening my girlfriend stopped by and asked if I felt like taking a ride. Naturally I said yes. I happened to be wearing the anti-Bruce T-shirt at the time. It was only after we crossed the Throggs Neck Bridge that I began to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. We were heading towards the Meadowlands. We parked in a distant field and had to cross over several major roadways on rickety wooden bridges, the last of which at the end crews were stationed to confiscate any alcoholic beverages. It was on this bridge that I thought my life would end, because the owners of the disallowed beverages were swilling them down like condemned men on their way to the gallows, seeing my anti-bruce Tee Shirt didn't go over well, and I was pondering how fast I could move on crutches. As it turned out, The Bruce put on a very good show, if I didn't hate all the songs I would have given it a positive review. That aside, I blame radio's lack of human choice in the selection of what gets played for contributing to this feeling.

In the New York Tri-state area, rock and roll radio stations are on the endagered species list, so there aren't a lot of choices to press the buttons for when I song I dislike comes on. As of late I've been listening to WRXP, a relative newcomer to the New York radio scene. There are many aspects of this station that I like very much, and as it goes, many I don't.

The morning show host is a guy named Matt Pinfield. I had never heard of him prior to stumbling across WRXP, but he used to be on a New Jersey radio station as well as MTV and VH1. He also was some sort of high muckey muck at one or more record companies.I was awed at his musical knowledge, I used to pride myself on being a pretty well informed rock trivia hound, but he left me in the dust. In May of this year...2009 he announced that he was going to be off the air for a time to enter rehab. A gutsy move, but his announcement of this fact left me feeling much the way I feel about Spruce Stringbean. I'll try and quote him as closely as my memory will allow, but he said somehting along the lines of...
"...you'll not come across a more honest D.J. on the radio than myself..." Not too shy with the backslapping there Matt... "...and it takes some real balls to do what I'm doing..." Bullshit! That came across as self-serving and pompous. If anybody said it about him, I'd agree, but for him to announce it about himself, is nothing short of arrogant. That left me feeling that he's not as awesome as I initially thought. And I do agree that entering rehab is a positive thing and announcing it rather than just disappearing for a time, is a BIG help to any listener who may be encountering the same dilemma. It was the blowing of his own horn that left me turned off. Another feature on his show, is that he's got an iPod with twenty thousand some odd songs on it, and each weekday a listener gets to pick a number and choose a song. He always prefaces the choice by saying, " Oh, this is a really great song..." Well..."DUH!" if it wasn't a song he liked, he wouldn't have put it on his iPod. Of course I don't think every song I've heard is a great one, but that's what makes the world go around.

Another sore spot about this new radio station, is that they tout themselves as where " Classic rock, new music and alternative meet". I have no problem with that, but they play Tom Petty as if he were as infuential as the Beatles, Stones or Led Zeppelin. I hear a T.P song at least once every two hours, which is more than I heard him in the seventies and eighties combined. I like Mr. Petty, but I don't think he deserves that much airplay. It's moves like this that spark conspiracy theories. I can hear it now..." The music director is Tom Petty's wife's second cousin, and he does it so he'll get the royalty payments..."

The listeners aren't as saavy as I am, they think the jocks get to choose all their music selections, which isn't the case. I still listen because there's not much else for a die-hard rocker to tune in. Maybe I'll be able to get satellite radio in the near future. Matt Pinfield is back from rehab, and doesn't miss an opportunity to promote that he's healthy and sober. That's a good thing, but the bad thing is...he doesn't miss an opportunity to promote that he's healthy and sober. Self promotion is one of his one of his fortes. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm no longer such an admirer of his, I don't wanna be a Pinfieldhead no more!

Matt's sidekick is a woman named Leslie Fram. She does the news reports and if the names are anything more complex than 'Smith' or 'Jones' she's destined to screw it up. Recently a woman who had octuplets was a big item to report. Her name is Nadia Suleman, her last name being a fairly common one in Asian cultures. For weeks Leslie pronounced it as "Shulman"...not quite the same thing. It's as if she heard no other, better informed reporters say the name. In local news, a young female student at John Jay college was found dead, her name was Ymette St. Guilliene. Leslie totally butchered this name as well. One day she was reporting a story about men ogling women, and she pronouced it, "ooogling". This confirmed my suspicions, Leslie is stupid.

Another strike against Matt is, a news story was big on Long Island for a while, about a couple goign through a divorce. The husband had donated a kidney to his wife and he was demanding it back. There's plenty of room for humor in the story, but every account that I read, indicated that the husband was a control freak, and overly jealous and suspisious of his wife. Matt made the statement, " You know that she's got some blame in this as well, I think she's equally at fault...". This came across as very misogynistic to my ears. Matt is trying too hard to be controversial, and he can't pull it off. Howard Stern is a master of this type of radio, and Matt Pinfield is NO Howard Stern! He qualifies his staements, to remain 'Politcally Correct', yet if you want to be outrageous, you cannot do that, you have to pick a side and stay with it. This reinforces his lameness. 'Pinfield Justice' is third rate radio, best left to morning zoos.

Along with the fact that he's clean and sober, now the morning show has a title. It's " The Rock Show" I wonder how many sleepless nights were spent coming up with THAT original gem? Like the rest of the shows on the station aren't rock shows. Duhhhhh. As far as I'm concerned, this only makes the show sound even more forced and bogus. It's a meaningless title, like "Morning Zoo". I associate dumb names like with with those hokey, wacky morning D.J's who pull all kinds of moronic pranks that appeal to sophomoric humor.I don't know, I was really impressed with this tripe when I first started listening, but familiarity breeds contempt, and it's growing on me like mold on moist bread. The morning shoe on WRXP could be a real kick-ass presentation but instead it's devolving into the typical radio crap-ola. That makes me sad.

It;s early December 2009 and I'm adding this as another example of how the Pinhead is making me despise listening to him in the mornings. It seems that the golf legend "Tiger" Wooods has been playing his balls on a lot of different courses. Severalof which he isn't married to...if you get my drift. This came to light when he smashed up his car just outside his property and crashed into a fire hydrant and then a neighbors' tree. It was after 2:00 in the morning and there were rumors to the effect that his wife and he were going at it over an infidelity issue. Tiger declined to speak with police who tried to question him about what went on. This was dumb move #1. It truly made it look as if he was hiding something. Had the incident only taken place on his property, he'd have been well within his rights to refuse to talk to thelaw...but it didn't. Next the news media began bandyingabout the name of a New York socialite, Rachel Uchitel as his mistress. I've never heard of her beofre, seen no articles descibing them as being spotted together in public or anyting else for that matter. She hired the high priced lawyer Gloria Alred. When this was reported on WRXP, by the inept newsperson Leslie Fram, Matt Pinhead immediately responded by saying...and this is a direct quote..." She's obviously lying!"
Why? It is common for people in the public eye to hire a lawyer if the neighbors' dog farts in their yard, so if she's being accused of something that she hasn't done, hiring a lawyer to get it stopped isn't much of a stretch. Pigfield gave no basis to explain why he thought she was lying, which only makes him look even more misogynistic. After that statement, a waitress came out with cell phone messages that she saved, that have Tigers' voice telling her that his wife found his phone records and she should delete her voicemail message so not to give away who has reached that number. Several other girlies have tried to sell their stories to tabloids, so Tiger isn't the gentleman he has been painted to be, but I still see no reason to call Ms. Uchitel a liar.

Two concerts are being held by the radio station and they are both billed as, Matt Pinfield's Holiday Extravaganzas. To me this casts him as a shoboat, craving attention. Why isn't it the WRXP Holiday Extravaganza? The seems more unified to me. Oh well, I never considered myself to be a very diplomatic person, but I'm Dag Hammerskjold compared to Piinfield! I actually bought tickets to the second show and now it's been announced that he'll be accompanying a special guest group doing their offbeat Christmas song. I've heard him do this on the air last year and I think that will be the ideal time to go to the bar or the bathroom!