'Oh, not this again! Can't it go off?'
'Why? I thought you liked classical music.'
'Yeah, listen, this isn't classical music.'
'What do you mean "it isn't classical music"? This is Classic FM. Classic FM. Meaning classical music. They play classical music!'
'Not the kind of music I want to hear, I'm afraid. I mean, look: how long have you been listening to this station?'
'Erm... well, ages. Well, a good few years.'
'Yeah, and have you noticed any sort of patterns? I mean, in the stuff they play.'
'...not particularly. Well, they do their "Hall of Fame" every year, when they count down the most popular pieces as voted by the listeners. I suppose that's a pattern - a recurring thing, you know.'
'Yeah, okay. What do you think about that? I mean, this counting down of favourite pieces business?'
'It's okay. It's good, I mean you get to hear what it is people like. They're voted for by the listeners, so it's sort of a nice way to include people in the thing.'
'Don't you think it's pretty cheesy, though? I mean, when I listen to the radio, it's the music I'm interested in. I like to know the background to the music, like the context surrounding the composer at the time of writing it, and then I want the music. I'm not interested in any kind of countdown thing. I mean, I want the music to speak for itself: I don't need this kind of frenzied race-to-the-number-one-spot sort of thing. In that kind of situation, the only real goal is finding out what is "Number #1" - you know, that's the point we're all aiming at - and, for my interests, the stuff making up the juice of the countdown (in this case, music) might as well be anything, for all the purpose it serves. It just seems to me like filler, which is only there to fill up the countdown and give some kind of build-up to the big event: the thing at number one. You know what I mean?'
'I hear what you're saying, but I still think it's a nice idea. I haven't got anything against it.'
'Yeah, right.

'Another thing which does my head in - which is pretty similar to that "Hall of Fame" stuff - is the way the presenters all talk. I mean, it's a little while since I've heard the thing (thankfully!), and I honestly haven't had the heart to do so for the purposes of research for this discussion, but I seem to remember that the presenters seem to have two kind of modes: one is this really self-righteous sort of way of introducing things; and the other is this sort of almost frenzied, Tony Blackburn style, almost to the point of them using a false American accent to bring - I don't know - tension, excitement; all this kind of shite. You know, they kind of manufacture excitement, it seems in an effort to disguise the mundaneness of what they're playing.

'Because, you know I asked if you'd noticed any patterns in what they play? Every time you've had the station on, and I've happened to walk in or be sitting there, I can almost guarantee to myself that they're going to play something that I've heard them play before. Not just the same piece, but the very same recording. I mean, this pattern I was thinking of, was that I reckon, once you've listened to it for, say, a month, you've heard their entire output. There's no sort of innovation, or yearning for anything new. Or anything that is new must fit into some arcane criteria they have for their playlists.

'I mean, one feeling I get when the station's on, is that I'm not going to be challenged. I'm just going to be spoon fed the same stuff they've played over and over again through their whole existence. So if they do happen to play something that's a little out of the ordinary - such as, say, one of Bartok's more accessible pieces - I won't be in a position to listen to it properly, but may be almost forced into rejecting it as "strange", or something like that. Whereas, on the station I listen to, there's no such feeling. I always feel like I'm going to hear something new and fresh, alongside something old and well-established - or perhaps even very old, and just becoming established, like the very early music that is played - and I expect to be challenged, and am thus in the frame of mind to listen attentively, and allow myself time to make up my own mind about it. But with this Classic FM stuff, I can't do that at all. Even though I'm used to listening to this other station, and being challenged by it, this Classic FM nonsense sort of forces me into a different frame of mind. Pretty similar to how religion does.'
'Well.'
'Yeah, and I don't know if you've noticed, but something that really pisses me off is the way they screw around with the music and add either compression, or normalise it - I don't know what they do - but the way you hear on pop music stations, the way it is when there's a (supposed) quiet section of a song, and then it goes into a loud section, the volume seems to be turned down so the timbre of the following loud section may be different from the quiet one, but the volume is about the same. So, basically, the quiet section is too loud, so there isn't the intended change when the loud section appears. It's just something that pisses me off. They may not do it, but it seems to me that they probably do. And another thing that pisses me off about pop music stations is when the DJs talk over the beginnings and ends of songs. Flaming hell! that does my head in. I get the feeling that the DJs (for that's all they are, really, riding the decks - not that all DJs are shite, mind you! I'm not saying that. I grant that innovation is possible with a pair of turntables, and I remember very vaguely hearing one guy playing a sample that was just one frequency, and he was creating melodies with it - I think that's interesting) but these Classic FM DJs, I imagine that if they're not doing this talking over beginnings and ends and fading in and out, they're only a very small step away from doing it.

'Chuck 'em into room 101!'