Parrothead Ramblings

Here's the best news I've heard in a long time!

I started to buy myself a Sirius Satellite Radio system a couple months back, but then I checked out their lineup:

No Radio Margaritaville.

What good was a radio that didn't play Jimmy, The Boat Drunks, and Bob Karwin? So, it was back to fumbling around for CDs and punching radio buttons in a fruitless effort to find music that doesn't suck.

Well, as you surely know by now, Bubba has gotten serious about Sirius. Officially, he's set to kick off with his June 15th concert in Bristow, VA, but it's rumored that The Man will hit the big "eye in the sky" as early as this weekend.

This whole thing kind of takes me back to the old days. I grew up in southeastern New Mexico just a "three-two" beer run from the Texas border. Our local radio stations shut down at midnight, and hell, who could afford a decent 8-track collection? So after midnight, we'd head out to the river where there was no interference and crank up KOMA out of Oklahoma City. FM radio? Forget about it. That was for the "muzak" they pumped into your dentist's office. Remember that shit? It was like Lawrence Welk on Prozac. Not KOMA, man. It was a pure fifty gazillion watts of AM back in those days, and you could pick it up real good once you got away from all the power lines and shit. I still remember their jingle, a chorus of women's voices:

K - O - M - AYYYYY.........OhhhhOhhhklahoma CItyyyyyyyy!

I remember thinking that any town that had a 24-hour radio station had to be cool. It was faraway, exotic, mysterious......OK, so sue me. I was 16, my concept of "the big city" was Odessa, and I had enough Lone Star in me to float a Swift Boat. But KOMA (just say "coma") was cool in the extreme. It was 1:00AM, dark and cool out in the boondocks, we were breaking curfew, being rebellious and cool, hangin' with the older guys and their cool cars, passin' around a doob and just shootin' the shit. Cool. Cool. Cool. And KOMA was our background music.

I don't know what became of KOMA. I'm guessing they made the move to talk radio long ago, but I don't really know or want to know. Don't hammer my memories by telling me they're playing the insidious fingernails-on-chalkboard droning of Limbaugh and Hannity. I want to remember them the way they were.

Wanna head out to the toolies with a 12-pack and Sirius radio? I'm your guy. Let's go out and be 16 one more time before I break 50.
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