Hammer Mill Days

So, there's a station that's playing our last album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick , in rotation. That's the good news. The bad news? It's in the galaxy of Andromeda, a very long ride from here, I'm told. Can't raise it on my crystal set. (Damn ... we need some new gear.) Well, I am exaggerating a little. Apparently the radio waves from the Andromeda station are reaching planet Earth. Trouble is, no one can translate them into something intelligible. The only people hearing it are rocket scientists, and they're not exactly our audience. Now, shapeless blobs of protoplasm on the planet Mongrovitowa 427K - THAT'S who listens to us (if you can call pseudopod sensory processing of nano-vibrations "listening"). But that counts as airplay in my book. And if we make some eggheads scratch their ... well ... eggheads, then that's all to the good. It's like when the Beatles added that hypersonic message to the family dog at the end of S...

I imagine if you didn't watch the president's state of the union address and listened to NPR (aka Empire) news the next day, you might think they were talking about a speech made by a reactionary republican legislator or pundit. That's all they had on their guest list for the two days following the address. You have to wonder why they feel these people need all this air time. Instead of wallowing in the predictable knee-jerk partisan reactions to the speech, why don't they drill into some of the issues? Sure, they do a little "fact check" report, kind of like Politifact (and just about as superficial). But report on, say, oil and gas drilling and its implications for climate change and ultimately human survival? Not when one of their big sponsors is "think about it dot org". Then there's "Morning Joe" (or "Morning Blow") on purportedly liberal/progressive MSNBC. Their foreign policy braintrust of, well, Joe Scarborough, Rich...