The Wave

You do not know what suffering is until you have had to listen to "Oye Como Va" played on the flute. It makes your ears whither and die. I've had to endure it because my co-worker listens to the lite jazz station they pipe in on our phones called the Wave, as in the wave of mind-numbingly bad elevator music that crashes over me every day. Maybe once a day they play something good, like Midnight Train to Georgia (Don't worry Gladys, I've got this one.) but generally it's a parade of saxophonists on Prozac who are in cahoots with the keyboard players union, I'm sure. You may think that the synthesizer died with 1989 but it still has it's cold dead hands welded onto the Wave.

I wonder about these musicians. Did they, as young impressionable band geeks, have dreams of one day arranging other musicians' already dull music to be played on their alto sax? Did they think that James Blunt didn't do a good enough job of putting everyone to sleep with "You're Beautiful" that they had to take a stab at it? And what about the songs that are great that are redone? Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" is far superior to any arrangement that Random Saxophonist #16 produces. Who do they think they are anyway?

Incidentally, my fabulous roommate from college is a flutist (hi Rac!) and she would never dream of playing "Oye Como Va" as anything other than a joke. She did, however, have a flute student who genuinely loved to play "My Heart Will Go On". Those were some rough half hours for all of us in the house.

PS. Congratulations Paul Newman (natch)! You're the winner of the "Who's hotter" poll. Sympathy to Mom, Amanda and Concerned Voter #3 who were faithful to Robert Redford. 72% of my teeny but much loved readership can not be wrong. Clearly, the people have spoken.