Victory Soap v. 2.0

Orlando has this radio station that is mostly moronic talk all week (the kind of "talk" that is nothing but three or four semi-cretins talking over each other and laughing at their own moronic "jokes," which weren't funny when Truman was president, and occasionally taking callers -- all of whom seem to be the sort of people who call talk radio shows because there's just not much else a 600-pound hermaphrodite on disability can do for fun), but on weekends they have music, and on Sunday they have a show called "Sunday Night Vinyl." (They probably spell it "Nite" but I'm not in radio so I will use correct spelling.)

Anyway, most of the stuff they play is from the Eighties, the time of vinyl's last gasp (there is a feeble movement of sorts to bring vinyl back, but nothing will come of it, as most people prefer the ease of storage and playing of CDs, or downloading music off the internet onto their iPods). I remember at the time that music had suddenly become creative and interesting again, but in retrospect there was an awful lot of cruddy garbage, and a lot of new bad habits were formed (and I'm not talking about the drugs).

One of the things that bothered me back then and is really annoying now is the bogus "English" accent many singers affected. This was a sort of exaggerated twisting of vowels as well as an extra snotty way of projecting the voice that was extremely irritating, and undercut whatever virtues the song in question may otherwise have had. You could really tell the British singers from their American counterparts that way -- the British singers didn't have much of an accent when they sang. But hordes of eyelined, spike-haired boys were sure this would draw in the chicks, so we got to hear things like what I just heard from some obscure band whose name I now forget -- the phrase "I close my eyes" pronounced as "Oy cla-owse moy oyz." God, shut up, who cares.

And they're still doing it -- the bad Fake British Accent is here to stay. Green Day is one of the major offenders (one of the many reasons I can't stand them, besides the fact that they suck.) On the whole, it's just another reason I am considering selling my record collection on Ebay.

Update: if it's Vienna Calling, hang up. And -- you know, there's a reason these things were B-sides. (Tell the kids what that means.)