70 thoughts to “The Most Loneliest Jack of My Life”

  2. I’ll see your “most loneliest” and raise you Neil Diamond’s “Songs she brang to me” in “Play Me”.

    Steel fingernails on my aural blackboard.

  3. The most loneliest day in my life
    when the grammar mistakes were just rife

    (oh, wasn’t that the rhyme you were thinking of?)

  4. When you’re listening to system of a down, ‘cut off my ears like Vincent van Gogh’ rhymes best with both mine and life

  5. To quote the wiki: “JACK was inspired by the success of CHUM Limited’s ‘Bob FM’ brand on CFWM radio in Winnipeg, Manitoba.”

    As someone from Winnipeg, let me be the first to say that I am so, so sorry. And that Bob FM is one of the worst stations we have in my city – which is why my parents always listen to it when I happen to be in the car.

  7. Um… speaking of cranky old man complaining about music, you do realize that it’s Blink 182, right? I personally can’t stand them, but c’mon.

  8. I was wondering what was up with the new “Jack FM” vans the silently took over the old radio station by my home here in Edina, MN. To this day I’ve never bothered to tune it in, but I guess it’s part of a new clear-channel styled, cookie cutter idea of radio domination. What a wonderful world we live in where I can leave Minneapolis for Seattle and still hear the same mundane crud.

    And I think it was Newt Gingrich that coined the phrase, “conformity is rebellion”, just for clarity’s sake.

  9. We have Jack FM here in San Diego. I think their marketing strategy is to be so incredibly bad that people talk about how bad it is and others end up listening to it to find out what all the fuss is about.

    About “Lonely Day”, It’s the worst song on the album and I can’t believe they are playing it on the radio but the rest of the album is actually very good… really.

  10. Wow, we’ve already listed Jack, Bob, Charlie, and in Edmonton, there’s Joe FM. I avoid it like the plague, so I don’t know what they play, but likely the same stuff.

    Also: Lonely Day stopped me from buying the latest SoaD album. I like them, but I just can’t bring myself to actually pay money for that song.

  11. At least 10 years ago, there was Alice@929 in Buffalo NY. I wonder if Alice was Jack’s mom…. or maybe his older sister. I bet she was HOT.

  12. In Corpus Christi Texas it’s Jake FM. Same concept, same bad music, same complete lack of DJ’s.

  14. It’s so banal the banality’s contagious — I love it! Thank the Maker this cultural phenom hasn’t attacked my city yet.

    Don’t be hatin’ now, “Brass Monkey” is my ringtone.

  15. We’ve got Mike FM in Boston. I assume it’s related, though I confess I haven’t ever listened so I can’t say for sure. The tag line in their ads is ‘we play everything!’

  16. here in sonoma county (north of san francisco)CA, we have Bob, alice and mix, which are all basically that same idea

  18. Dear Matt,

    I have never met you, but I secretly love you.

    Not really, but I un-secretly love your blog. Even if you don’t have a new post when I read it, I can read older stuff and still laugh. And I have actually(brace yourself) learned from your blog as well. Keep up the amazing work.

  20. The worst most subversive thing about “Jack FM” is that idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H people call “Jack’s” voice mail system and compete to say something “witty” that will get played in a Jack FM promo spot. They are competing for the favor of a software robot! Please sheep-people, look up already!

    Having said that, I have to admit to listening to Jack FM sometimes. There are times when I’m in my car and really really don’t want to listen to whatever is on kexp (for instance, during “shake the shack”) and a “shuffle” of inoffensive/decent/familiar songs from various sub-genres of American Pop Music works for me. Until they get to the promo spots and commercials, but since I only listen in the car, I can quickly jab the pre-set button of some other station.

    And, for the record, there is a similar robot station in south-eastern Michigan that goes by “Doug FM”.

  21. I’m going to have to come out in favor of Jack FM, primarily because the lack of DJs translates directly into the lack of a “morning zoo” programming in the morning. And since the morning drive-time until 10AM turns the FM dial into a lifeless apocalypse for music-listeners, aside from being more or less the only time of day I’m consistently trying to listen to music, well, Jack’s the One. And that’s making when KUOW (public radio) is running particularly banal instances of its generally good local content.

  22. Philadelphia has Ben FM, named after Ben Franklin. You know, cos he was such a big fan of Kenny Loggins and Nickelback.

  23. It’s Dave FM in Atlanta. It’s still better than the “Screeching American Idol” station or the station that plays that one Pink Floyd song over and over…

  24. speaking of Nickelback… the Canadian flavors of these radio stations actually suck more than the US versions. We have “cancon” rules (Canadian Content) for our radio, which means 35% of the music played must qualify as “Canadian content”. Now… there are lots of great Canadian bands out there, but these Jack/Bob/Jean-Guy clones seem to always draw from the Nickeback. Makes you kinda want to find an icepick and ram it in your ear.

  25. Well thanks for making me feel like a I have completely wasted the last two entries on my own blog talking about adverts.

    Having experienced American radio having a radio station without DJ’s is surely a step forward.

    Keep up the amusingly good work anyway.

  26. Yup, here in Austin it’s Bob FM – and they have the exact same guy read the station ads. Weirded me out a bit when I was up in Seattle a couple months ago and I heard him – I thought, “Hey, I know that guy – and he’s cheating on Bob!”

  27. I also live in the Seattle area; I used to listen to Jack FM since it manages to avoid the genres I just can’t take while driving, but agreed that it’s actually fairly trite as programming goes. I am pathetically grateful for my iRiver AFT100 FM transmitter (uses a standard RCA jack, so works with any self-powered audio device). The sad part is that on the rare occasions when I am relegated to listening to FM radio, I find myself reaching for the Track Forward button a whole lot. I am so spoiled.

  28. Whenever I hear that stupid song with the stupid lyric….”most loneliest”… My brain changes the words to…”post toastiest”. Try it..

    “The Post Toastiest day of my lii-iiii-ife”

    Then I hit the button to change the channel. But, at least I got a good chuckle out of it first.

  29. We have “MAX FM” here in Michigan. In one of their pre-recorded voice overs they actually say, “It’s like the world’s biggest iPod on Shuffle…MAX FM..We play it all”.

  30. and in Detroit, it’s “Doug FM”…as a radio host myself, these stations traumatize me. But hey, I *like* Brass Monkey.

  31. Okay, so yeah we have Mike FM here in Boston and yeah, that’s what it is. But can I tell you what song lyric really bothers me?

    I guess it’s Better Than Ezra? and they’re all like “Your love is Extra Ordinary” but, it’s not extraordinary it’s EXTRA ORDINARY eep.

    Then, and this is where I go all wrong because I LOVE Justin Timberlake, but there’s this one song and he actally sings these words “You’re out of this world, but you’re not green”

  32. It’s also Jack FM in California. Same exact ads, sounds like. Weirdness….

  33. Yep, we got “Jacked” this spring in Southern Illinois. I had thought we were gonna avoid the “Corprate- mindless click and play” set-up down here in the boonies. It wasn’t our “best” rock station, but it sure was #2. It used to have real people playing music in a lil booth, who actually knew local info and gave a rip.
    (le sigh) No more.

    (puts on his best pimpin’ hat)
    If yer at home, or at work, and near yer computer let yer ears try out http://www.Eggradio.com. I’m pretty sure you have never heard anything like it over the airwaves. Everyone gets to help pick the music by rating what gets played.
    Give it 20 minuets, it will give ya some great music.
    /end pimpin’

  35. I was disturbed when I saw the title of your post, but discovering that you used two superlatives to mock a musical group made it more palatable. Musicians have been screwing up English worse than preschoolers for ages. Didn’t Phantom Planet do a song of the same name a few years back? I guess artists are either completely unoriginal or completely lame… or both.

    PS It’s George Lucas with an A and “by” SoaD (you accidently put “my” and I’m sure you don’t want to claim them after that crap!).

  36. Yep, we have Jack FM here in the Twin Cities, too. Some people are comforted to hear only songs they’ve heard a million times before, I guess.

    Some of the other corporate stations here are engaging in a bit of anti-Jack by advertising that they take requests.

  37. im not sure if im the only one, but i thought this was going to be a story of a maudlin,drunk baldwin boy.

    am i the only one dissapointed?

  38. I actually kinda like Jack FM. Where I live, just north of San Diego, I can get the S.D. *and* L.A. Jack stations. Wowee! They play at least as much pretty-good music as other pop or classic-rock stations down here (which is about three songs out of 10, but still). And the lack of DJs is a huge plus, since most of ’em just blather on and on to hear the sound of their own voice. There are a couple of independent stations down here that I prefer, but Jack is often a decent option. (I originally wrote “alternative,” but I thought that’d send the wrong message.)

  39. I wonder if I’m alone at the intersection of the two circles in a Venn diagram. Baldwin, I really expected to see you get scorched by System of a Down partisans for your criticism of their lyrics. I’ve seen System fans lash out with recklessly typed ad hominem attacks at far less provocation. Instead, nothing.

    So: I suspect that you’ve got the System of a Down circle over there and the Defective Yeti circle over here, and they just don’t overlap all that much.

    Here’s the view from within the overlap: On the one hand, I am inclined to stand up for good grammar. On the other hand, I have a secret fetish for System of a Down and reckon that there’s a purpose for the “most loneliest.” Certainly, they didn’t have to stick a “most loneliest” in there. Or, frankly, a “should be banned.” But they did, and they’re just cunning enough that it may be for good reason. I hope so, but even if not, what the hell, it’s not such a great song anyway.

    So, in summary, the demographics of “defective yeti” don’t skew toward angry shaved-headed teenage Armenians with keyboards.

  40. I’m gonna take a stand and say:

    I LIKE OUR DJless VARIETY RADIO STATION.

    whew, I said it. I’m from St. Louis and ‘The Arch’ is our only escape from songs such as the laffy taffy song or such musical wonder of “let me see your grill; my what?, your grill, ya ya your grill”.
    Also, and I’m assuming this is true for your station as well, they promise to never play a song twice in one day, which I think is pretty neat

  41. I am sooooo glad that other people find that song as idiotic as I do. As a one-eyed fan of other bands, I can sympathise with Adam Peck’s wanting to find a rationalisation for it but I can’t for the life of me think what it could be. If the other tracks on the album are good, as someone said, that rules out the hypothesis that they are fed up with their record label and doing a sabotage job. Post-toastiest salutations to you all.

  43. I control the radio at my office, and I had to make the switch to “Frank FM” (here in Cape Cod, MA), after I got to the point where I could tell what time it was by hearing what was on the other decent radio stations down here. If Frank is a 500-song iPod in shuffle mode, the other choices down here are 128MB Korean iRiver knock-offs with no shuffle capabilities – the same song, at the same time, every day.

    Hmm. Frank, Bob, Mike, Jake, Jack… What do you think their last name is? I say Banal. Frank Banal, meet your cousin, Jack Banal.

  44. In Albuquerque it is Ed. I had heard Jack in Dallas but I had no idea it was Charlie, Mike, Jake, and all.
    Banal indeed

  45. Actually, I wish we had a station like that here. I positively loathe DJ’s, and would welcome a music station that actually plays music, even if it is modern muzak.
    I have yet to meet a person (nor do I want to) who is amused/entertained by DJ antics and ramblings between songs. I have a special place of hate in my heart for DJs (and this is 99% of them) that talk over the intro of a song. Good riddance.

  46. Nothing says “I’m the most stupidest,” like a double superlative, at least in my book.

  47. Jack FM is compromise radio… the missus and I tend not to agree on what should be played, since the public radio station is the highest frequency station I bother to pre-set. And she likes the hits of the 80s and 90s, and the hits of today, and the disco. So Jack, with its unobjectionable mediocrity, fills a hole. It’s radio spackle.

    Our public radio station here in Chicago just announced that it’s getting rid of all its jazz programming (gradually) and I’m suffering a little bit. Thank God for college radio.

  48. Eug, thanks for the link. I had the same question. I wonder though, who determined that while Jack is a good name for a radio station in Seattle, Bob was more appropriate for Spokane. Is there a demographer out there that determined which male first name would be the best fit for a city?
    Perhaps related, is there something to learned from the fact that while most cities have regular-joe / action-hero-ready names like Jack, Bob, and Steve or the strangely acronym-ed SAM, in Greensboro, NC Simon gets the nod.
    Most descriptive name? Rochester, NY’s Fickle 93.3.

  49. I totally see why playing the most popular, least noxious music of the last three decades is a good strategy. The thing that bugs me is the Orwellian bit that this post so skillfully skewered. E.g. the tagline: “Playing what we want!”. Oh yeah, cause the *man* wouldn’t let you play The Police. Conformity is Rebellion indeed… Just beautiful Mr. Yeti.

  50. I can’t help but notice that you changed “Blink 187” to “Blink 182” without mentioning the fact that I called you on it. I’d like recognition, if nothing else.

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