troy and i used to turn on the radio and listen as we went to sleep. this was back in the day when wbez still played jazz at night. those were good times. when wbez changed their format (much to our chagrin), we (ok, it was all my idea) switched over to what was at the time wnua. yes, folks, smooth jazz has actually been played in our house. i’m not sorry about it, either. it’s tolerable in small doses (like right before you doze off). but when that station switched formats, we gave up on the whole “radio before sleep” concept. until a week or so ago, when i remembered that there’s a new smooth jazz station. i won’t say there was much rejoicing, but it was nice to have an option again. actually, i know there’s a lot of people who rejoiced when this station appeared, but that’s a separate discussion.
i say all of that to say that i was listening as i was trying to get to sleep last night and heard the following 3 songs:
sade: “babyfather” – this is from her new album (and you have no idea how nice it is to be able to say her new album) and i had no idea it was being played as a single.
dave brubeck quartet: “take five” – i don’t have to say anything about this song, do i?
simply red (!): “sunrise” – i admit to being *thisclose* to getting out of bed to blog/tweet about this last night when this song 1st came on, b/c any station that plays sade, dave brubeck, and what i thought was hall & oates back-to-back-to-back is ok with me, but then i realized it wasn’t hall & oates. i couldn’t quite figure out who it was until the dj said it was simply red (!). and simply red gets the (!) treatment b/c, well, it’s simply red (!) and i’d kinda forgotten they existed.
i think this is where i’m supposed to rant about the current sucktasticness of radio and how it’s all owned by conglomerates and all the stations play all the same artists and it’s nothing you want to hear and hooray internet b/c how else would we have music we’d want to listen to and all that, but in this instance, radio was actually pretty cool. i’m sure there was some sucktasticness later in that set, but i was asleep by then and missed it, so oh well. 
I’m happy Simply Red is still around, but that video is, uh, not what I was expecting. I think it’s likely that this new jazz station will eventually go the way of all the other stations (driven by music execs), might take a year, but it always seems to happen.