THE RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER SUCKS -- And Other Songs about Things Gone by the Wayside

The dinosaurs. The dodo bird. The Polaroid camera. The Twinkie.  Pluto.

In this day and age, perhaps you crave a bit of stability. It's not going to happen. It's a changing world and, in some cases, it changes much faster than you can process. For instance, I sometimes fail to see the necessity to camp out for the latest smartphone because a new one is just around the corner. By the time I get around to upgrading from Vista, I've completely missed Windows 7. And recently I was told "nobody emails anymore."

What???

I look at the speed that things change and I find myself saying the last words a marked man says to the guy come to kill him: "Wait... please wait..."

But there's one thing that is forever and that is music. Since folks first figured out how to record
music, people like Jimmie Rodgers and Lead Belly and The Carter Family have recorded songs that will remain forever and not go away. But while these songs remain, some of the content has faded long ago. And these songs serve as amber encasing these fossilized remains of institutions long past.

Take for example: The Newspaper. Man, nobody loves loved a good newspaper more than me. I grew up in Dallas and watched two daily papers battle it out for business. I even delivered the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald. But since the so-called death of print journalism, I've watched my current paper (The Raleigh News & Observer) get smaller and smaller, while farming content from
around the country, rather than focus on home-grown talent. For instance, what do I care what some asshat from LA thinks about a studio movie? I want to hear a local reviewer. But no, the geniuses at The News & Observer can't justify that paycheck. There's a bottom line and several things get cut at a paper run by the McClatchy Co. Local reporting, content, and above all: CUSTOMER SERVICE.

That's right. In my opinion the true death of print journalism is being heralded by poor customer service. We may be able to tolerate the steadily shrinking newspaper in exchange for increased online coverage (which they don't have). But sneaking in rate hikes to long time customers which dwarf rates quoted to new subscribers is counterproductive. It's like the restaurateur who raises the prices for a plate of shrimp and grits then, one by one, removes one shrimp from the plate per year. No, that's shitty. Then, observe the latest tactics they employ. When you try and cancel the paper due to the sneaky practice of hiking rates (andchanging your ability to adjust your subscription online), they charge you anyway and refuse to take the charge off your card.

With customer service standards like this, it's no wonder print is "dead."

But newspapers aren't the only ones. There are many songs from yester-year that we've known and loved that recall some relic of a bygone era. And what better way is there to celebrate extinction than with a beat you can dance to?

TOP TEN SONGS ABOUT THINGS THAT ARE DEAD

 

10. "Hanging on the Telephone" by Blondie

Future generations will still dig Blondie, I'm sure of it. And when they hear lines such as "I'm on the phone booth it's the one across the hall/If you don't answer then I'll ring it off the wall," I picture entire generations with mouths agape and sounding a collective "Huh?" Still, at gas stations you can find the poles where phone booths once stood. My mother's tired old nag "Anywhere in America there is a payphone and you can call if you're going to be home late" is just as obsolete. Also, remember the old shit-country song "Here's a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares?" Well, it stopped costing a quarter years ago, and now a lyric would need to be added about finding a phone in the first place.

 

9. "Please Mister Postman" by The Marvelettes

Sure, we still get mail delivered. It's no longer by Pony Express or even Western Union, but USPS has been outmatched by UPS and FedEx in recent years. And one has to wonder what the next step from those big three will be. Personally, as a man who roots for the apocalypse, I can't wait for the return of the Pony Express. But I digress...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. "c30 c60 c90 Go" by Bow Wow Wow

 

Sigh. An entire generation has no idea what that alphanumeric title recalls. Yes, the cassette suffered a fate worse than the 8 track. The 8 Track signifies the ultimate in 70s bliss, but at least you could skip ahead to a track. Remember rewinding and fast-forwarding? Remember taping over things? Remember the long ribbons of tape spooling out from your cassette, then having to wind it all back up with a pencil but it never, ever sounding the same again? DRAG. No, I hated cassettes. There is no nostalgia there.

 

 

 

 

7. "Kill Your Television" by Ned's Atomic Dustbin

 

This is happening before our very eyes. As Time Warner Cable and Comcast eat each other out, we're left to ponder higher or lower prices. But the kids have already moved on. The next generations have forgone the expensive cable conundrum with Hulu, Netflix, On Demand, etc. So many people have figured a way to circumvent traditional television that it threatens to change the landscape of programming forever. And judging by the crap that network television shovels out there now, this is not a bad thing.

 

 

 

6. "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) by Dead or Alive

 

Vinyl is seeing a resurgence. Merch tables all across the land peddle vinyl which honestly makes a much better souvenir than CDs. With vinyl, many bands give you a download code to play the music so that the album is better preserved, which is GENIUS. If only newspapers could find a way to be similarly inventive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. "Quaaludes Again" by Shel Silverstein

 

Oh, I just couldn't resist. How many top ten music lists give you Shel Silverstein? Or Quaaludes? While barbies will never go out of style, Quaaludes symbolize 70s/80s drug culture and have been replaced by Xanax, Perkies, or Oxy. But no word better hearkens to mind drugged-out disco than Quaaludes.

 

4. "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon

 

Granted, the Polaroid suffered a fate more absolute than Kodachrome, but this song says it all. And since I really have no desire to add more to the argument, I'd like to take the opportunity to repeat that the customer service team at The News & Observer really pisses me off. I hope janking my thirty bucks makes you feel good.





 

 

3. "Cover of the Rolling Stone"  by Dr. Hook

 

Sure, the magazine is still around, but I haven't bought one since they put Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover. Most of the shit they talk about is music for kids, and I've got no time for that. I'm busy making top ten lists.







 

 

2. "Paperback Writer" by The Beatles

 

This one breaks my heart. As a fiction writer with a forthcoming novel, I have a soft spot in my heart for the written word. My house looks like the inside of a Half-Price Books. My favorite television moment of all time is when Burgess Meredith breaks his glasses at the end of the Twilight Zone (kids, google it), which is the reason I will never purchase a Kindle because when the apocalypse happens, there will be nowhere to recharge your reading material. Think about that.

 

1. "Yesterday's Papers" by The Rolling Stones
 

And now we come full circle. Yes, I love you like Yesterday's Papers. What to do now, that we can get our media online? When we can wrap our fish in the Indy Week, which thanks to an informative writing staff with people such as Victoria Bouloubasis, David Fellerath and Lisa Sorg, we finally have challenging content in the Triangle. We can start chimney fires with pretreated logs. At the end of my subscription, the only thing that still mattered was the crossword puzzle. But I'm not going to be treated like a bitch for a crossword puzzle, News & Observer. Do you hear me? I'm like Mouth at the bottom of the well in The Goonies, holding tight to his coins and declaring that I'm taking back my two quarters. I'm taking them all back.

FYI: This entire post was written while on hold with the customer service department of The Raleigh News and Observer.

 

Are there any songs you can think of that describe bygone institutions? Please put them in the comments section below.

 

Eryk Pruitt is a screenwriter, author and filmmaker living in Durham, NC with his wife Lana and cat Busey. His work has appeared in ZYMBOL, PULP MODERN, THUGLIT and THE AVALON LITERARY REVIEW, to name a few. His debut novel DIRTBAGS will be released in March of 2014. A full list of his credits can be found at erykpruitt.com and anyone with hate mail should know he is armed and has no god.