Canadian content law can eat a dick

I have a real beef to pick with the CRTC and their unending promotion of Canadians above all others. First let me say I'm a proud Canadian. I'm truly grateful to be from this country, a citizen of one of the greatest nations on the planet. I LOVE Canada. I hate Canadian content law.

I do physical work for a living. It's a good way to go through life. You work with your hands, stave off obesity by rejecting a sedentary work environment and best of all, you don't have to iron collared shirts and slacks every morning before heading down to the office to pretend you care about fiscal growth projections and quarterly reviews. Nope. You wake up, throw on a pair of jeans, a tshirt and something warm and head to timmies (then to work.)

Unlike so many couped up inside an office all day, I get to listen to music at work. In the morning, afternoon and occasionally into the evening. All day long, song after song after song. We rotate around but overall we're pretty dedicated to a classic rock station. It plays a lot of hits, some newer stuff for the young guys and nothing that resembles rap for the old guys. (how anyone could ever confuse RHCP for rap is beyond me but I digress...) What really pisses me off is the filler that gets added into the rotation so the radio can hit it's quota. Brian Wilson? Cuts like a knife? Anything ever recorded by Nickelback? I'm sorry but there's nothing classic or rocking about the Barenaked Ladies. Brian Adams? Pop, not rock. (although if cuts like a knife is really just a vintage emo song, maybe in some obscure way it could weasel it's way onto a classic rock station...) And don't even get me started on Chad "I wish I was Eddie Vedder but I suck and instead rip him off as best I can in my shitty band called Nickelback" Kroeger. You know, I wish I had a nickel back for every song of theirs I've been subjected to listening to day in and day out. At least then I could cope with hearing another shitty Nickelback song that sounds just like all their other forgettable, over produced garbage.

This is a classic rock station we listen to as I mentioned above. April Wine, BTO, The Guess Who and Neil Young are fine examples of Canadians you should expect to hear on a station of this format. Why force shitty pop rock from the nineties to now on us? More Zeppelin, more Floyd, more Jimi, the Doors, the Who, ACDC, David Bowie, Queen, Lynard Skynard, I could go on and on. There are a ton of talents out there who fit into this genre, it's just unfortunate for us that 35% of all great classic rock didn't come from Canada. Can I please hear the watchmen again tomorrow? Followed by chilliwack, honeymoon suite and maybe a little loverboy or perhaps some spirit of the west? Great.

I suppose it could be worse. We could listen to a so called "modern rock" station and I could be bombarded with the likes of Sam Roberts, Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, Simple Plan, and the Armchair Cynics... (who the fuck are the Armchair Cynics? If they weren't from Victoria, there's no way I'd know who they are and I'd be better off for it.)

I guess there could be a silver lining to this cloud. Perhaps in the not so distant future, satellite radio will be so widespread that I'll never be subjected to the whims of the CRTC again. It'll be good music, with no commercials or try hards attempting to be funny between songs and ads... One can dream, one can certainly dream...