Tuesday, January 03, 2006

My favorite AM radio station

Sometimes when I'm sick of hearing on NPR about Iraq, Israel or other war-torn areas and am just not in the mood to listen to pop, rock, country, etc. (yes, that truly happens to me), I switch over to the AM radio stations and cruise through the static to find a station that's at least somewhat audible. I can usually find a French language station that comes out of Canada; Ontario, I think. Late night AM can be really interesting. AM stations come in better on my car radio at night. There's usually an advice program with live call-ins going on, lots of drama. Religious fanatics. Political fanatics. They [think] they rule the AM airways. Lots of sports talk.

A couple of years ago, while cruising through AM, I found a station out of Detroit that is not in English. I'm pretty sure it is an Arabic or Hindi (Urdu?) language. I know there's a large population of Arabic people and large communities of people from India and/or Pakistan in the Detroit area.

On my radio, it's 690 AM. I love the music this station plays. The drawback is that I hear music only about 10% of the time when I click on that station. The rest of the time, it's usually a man's voice speaking. The language is very melodious, and the tone of the voices is usually calm. It can be quite relaxing.

Everyone once in a while, there are what I assume to be commercials. Often, then it is a woman's voice, and the talk is peppered with English words and phrases. It's like, surprise! a word I know!

Like this bit I heard recently:

Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada [this would be the melodious foreign language] ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Botox ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Liposuction ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Laser surgery ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ...

and then this:

Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... 10 bags for a dollar ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... 2 for 8 ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Coors and Coors Light ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Johnny Walker Black 37.49 ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ...

For whatever reason, I find this very entertaining.

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