Colin McEnroe Show: Music You Don't Need To Hear (But Will Torture Yourself With Anyway)

Your NPR show has been much

Your NPR show has been much more interesting for the most part, than I expected. I do get tired of your "panel" type shows with a bunch of folks whose opinion I would never seek out by folks who couldn't care less about me. In fact these shows sound much like eaves dropping on a bunch of cronies having afternoon tea. That type of show comes across like your old evening show on TIC which couldn't hold an audience. Your special specific guests are excellent but your "regulars" have become rather boorish. Please keep your same old, same old panel of experts to a minimum & keep on truckin down those new highways which you are so capable of with Wolfi-fi & Dan(etc)ski as your ever capable navigators.

E-mail from Frank

1980’s music that doesn’t suck:

(These were actually somewhat popular)
The Police/Sting
The Cars
Depeche Mode
The Cure
The Ramones
Violent Femmes
The Pixies
REM
U2
The Replacements
Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
Lou Reed
DEVO
The English Beat
The Jam
The Specials
New Order
The Smiths/Morrissey
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Simple Minds
Metallica
Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne
Judas Priest
Faith No More
X/Billy Idol
Sonic Youth
Bad Brains
Bad Religion
Dead Kennedys
Black Flag
Soundgarden

And so on....
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Tezcatlipoca/the_80s_were_the_best_decade_...

Then, there’s a million other less popular bands in the various genres (punk, hardcore, metal, college rock, ska, reggae, etc) and some of them went on to later fame in the 90’s and 2000’s.

Many of these bands, the popular and the not-so-popular, were influential on the bands that are successful today (such as the Pixies who many credit as their biggest influence (i.e. Green Day))

Thanks! Love the show, just don’t trash the 80’s anymore!! :-)

E-mail from Scott

I like your radio station and show.

Your co hosts are dead wrong about Hotel California and it's meaning. Listen to a Don Felder interview, an original band member. He wrote all the music for the song. Why do people speak of things of which they have little knowledge? Too bad the show was geared more toward corporate radio and the people who listen to it. There are artists in the industry, they are the true musicians. Then there are the entertainers who play mundane music to which the vast majority of the population listens. Love to hate is correct, it's what's played all day repetitively by corporate radio. People of lower intellect would not understand why superior musicians are able to achieve what they do. I agree Hotel California has been overplayed. But Felder's composition and extraordinary guitar playing make it worth listening to if one picks apart and listens to every note of the song.
Music, artists and the industry are a complex subject. The bottom line is most don't know what talent of a higher level is, nor have the capacity to absorb the knowledge to recognize it. They have no comprehension of what skills are required to make an instrument make the intricate sounds it does. The superior talents in the industry rarely, if ever receive the recognition or airplay they deserve.

E-mail from Bev (re: "Honey I Miss You")

I can’t ever hear that song without remembering the send up the Smothers Brothers did with it.
Great show.

E-mail from Patti

I’m sitting here listening to your show, and I have to tell you, sometimes it seems like you simply don’t have an idea of what you should on the air. That’s what I’m thinking today. You and your guests sitting around and ragging on which songs they like or dislike is purely a matter of personal taste.
There isn’t a “right or “wrong”, and your guests aren’t any more “expert” in this than I am.

Twenty year old songs that were once hits don’t get my goat nearly as much as irrelevant, petty talk shows. It’s astounding the WNPR gave up a classical music format for this kind of “entertainment”.

E-mail from Frank

Don’t forget that the 1980’s were the hey day for Alternative music. I agree the Pop music was awful but the underground scene was thriving and producing the best music of the decade.

E-mail from Sara

Sorry guys I messed up that last lyric by Alanisse Morisette, the final part is "It's not fair to deny me of the cross I bear that you gave to me" I hope that clears that up and makes perfect sense

E-mail from Joanne

[Worst Song Ever:] My vote – “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf

E-mail from Sara

Even worse than the whiny chick category for me is the 'angry woman scorned who is now empowered' genre. I became aware of this theme when in college every time Gloria Gaynor's "I will Survive" was played at Huskies a hoard of drunk and screeching girls would run to the dance floor so that they could yell the lyrics and make awful faces and point horribly fake nails at any man within ten feet of them. I am not against empowered women-in fact I like 'em and relate to truly tough singers like Joan Jett and Patti Smyth, but these undulating survivor girls who have made Alanisse Morisette their champion are hardly empowered when the only sisterhood they can establish is through thier hatred of frat boys. As soon as the song is over they will be turning on each other to attract the attention of those same frat boys. And, please, how can you guys complain about lyric with out including Ms Morrisette's
And I'm here, to remind you of the mess you made when you went away, It's not fair to deny me of cross I make that I bear for you????????

E-mail from Karl

Please don't let this hour finish without something by Dianne Warren. Can we nominate her whole catalog? "My Boat Will Go Down", from Titanic?
Check. That wretched song (with lyrics) for "Star Trek: Enterprise"?
Check. The only song I can think of off the top of my head which anyone did anything for was "Tell it To The Moon" by Martha Davis (never on
radio) and "The Night Stood Still", comeback single by Dion.

Give her the lifetime achievement award and name the next trophy for her.

E-mail from Thayer

Please, please, mention the doors. Anything by the doors is horrible. Indians, circus organ music, lame beard, ugh.....

E-mail from Mike

American Graphitti was set in 1962.

E-mail from Matt

Sorry Colin - your theme song drives me up the wall.

E-mail from Duby

Almost anything by elton john

E-mail from Jim

Many songs annoy me. However, the one that annoys me the most is one that I am forced to listen to EVERY SINGLE WEEKDAY at least six times a day! That would be the theme song and bumper music to "On Point" with Tom Ashbrook.
It is simply an 8-note riff that is repeated 10 times in a row WITHOUT ANY VARIATION WHATSOEVER! Why would somebody pick such an obnoxious, redundant tune to represent their show?

E-mail from Christine

Torn by natalie imbruglia