Blogcoven

Every few months I get an e-mail for being a member of the KROQ Street Team (essentially a mailing list that sometimes gets you a chance at concert tickets before they go on sale to the general public) asking me to fill out a music survey. I love these things. I have no illusions about my efficacy in format choices, but it’s extremely satisfying to officially register my opinion.

It’s also interesting and entertaining to find out just how familiar I am with mainstream new rock. Back in the day, the survey would ask you about songs and identify them by artist and title. Now, with advances in technology, you click on a link that plays a clip in Windows Media Player, so you can give your opinion whether you can identify the song or not. For me, this adds entertainment value as it becomes a game of “Name that tune.” An extremely easy one, of course, ’cause they want you to be able to identify the songs.

I did okay.

Of 35 songs surveyed, I nailed the artist and title of 22. For 2 I actually knew the artist and title but wasn’t sure enough to bet the farm if it came to it. For 5 songs I could identify the artist but not the title. And 6 songs were familiar but I didn’t know the artist or the title (though for two of those I really should have at least gotten the artist). Here’s the full list of songs surveyed:

1. Green Day – Wake Me Up When September Ends
2. Seether – Remedy
3. Bravery – Honest Mistake
4. Bloc Party – Banquet
5. My Chemical Romance – I’m Not Okay (I promise)
6. Beck – E-Pro
7. Green Day – Holiday
8. Muse – Stockholm Syndrome
9. The Killers – Smile Like you Mean it
10. Papa Roach – Scars
11. The All-American Rejects – Move Along
12. Interpol – Narc
13. Weezer – Beverly Hills
14. Audioslave – Doesn’t Remind Me
15. System of a Down – Question!
16. Coldplay – Fix You
17. My Chemical Romance – Helena
18. The Shins – New Slang
19. Staind – Right Here
20. Jack Johnson – Bad Fish
21. Coldplay – Speed of Sound
22. System of a Down – BYOB
23. 311 – Don’t Tread on Me
24. Killers – All These Things That I’ve Done
25. Fall Out Boy – Sugar We’re Going Down
26. Switchfoot – Stars
27. Foo Fighters – Best of You
28. Hot Hot Heat – Middle of Nowhere
29. White Stripes – Doorbell
30. Weezer – On Drugs
31. NIN – The Hand That Feeds
32. Audioslave – Be Yourself
33. Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc.
34. Avenged Sevenfold – Bat Country
35. The Postal Service – Such Great Heights

For each song, the respondent had to pick one of: Don’t know it, Dislike a lot, Dislike Some, So-So, Like Some, and Like a Lot. Each song also has a tickbox for “And I’m tired of it.” That’s my favo(u)rite part. ‘Cause I really get sick of songs that get played constantly, and this is what I’m the most excited about communicating to KROQ. It’s fun to do these things. It’s cathartic to start off easy, with a song I know and don’t really like and am tired of hearing. Click, click, next. Within two chords I knew the next song, grinned, said I liked it a lot, and rocked out to the rest of the clip. And so on.

Towards the middle, however, the system started to break. There is no option for “This might be the best song I’ve heard on the radio, ever” (System of a Down, Question!), nor is there any emotional buffer for the immediate switch to a song that needs a button for “When it comes on I change the channel or turn off the radio” (Coldplay, Fix You). By the end I was happy and rocking again, with NIN, Audioslave, Gorillaz, and Avenged Sevenfold one after another.

Whatever KROQ may glean from my answers, I actually learn a bit from taking these surveys. The magic of the Internets allow me to pounce on whatever song I really like and find out quickly who it’s by and what it’s called as long as I can retain a lyric or two. This helps since deejays rarely announce the song I’m interested in knowing more about. So thanks to Google and satellite radio (format has overlap with KROQ, and I get the artist and title emblazoned on the display for my information should I desire it) I’m more familiar in a more specific and useful way than I thought I was with the current music.

I also found that I didn’t hate it. There are periods of radio time when I just don’t like anything on the radio, or when the overplayed stuff can’t stand up to the exposure and it colo(u)rs the entire radio experience. (Linkin Park is particularly bad for this. Listening to the survey, I realized the current format has very little LP…which might be why I don’t despise them right now when I do hear them.) I don’t know if this is because I’ve been brainwashed as I work from home and have the alternative station on satellite radio 8+ hours/day, or if I just like the current stuff (which is how I can stand to have said radio on so much).

So that’s what I told them, in the little box at the end where it asked for any other comments on KROQ music. That it mostly wasn’t sucking, and I was pretty pleased.