Sir - Like another sage commentator on Irish popular culture, Declan Lynch, who compared the classic hits radio format to baked beans (fine in moderation, malnourishing when consumed to excess), John Waters has exposed the formula's true nature, marketing led and imbued with spurious nostalgia for a past soundtracked by jeans commercial Americana and the espousal of a "rocktastic" present poisoned by bland adult orientated pop of the Annie `n' Phil `n' Tina school.
I wonder, though, if any other unwilling listeners have noted that this notionally historical format is revisionist in the extreme? I am one of the under 35s whose purchasing power so excites the lifestyle classification obsessed radio gauleiters, and I can clearly remember tripping through the Elysian fields of my adolescence to, inter alia, Public Image Limited, Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Blades, Associates, Japan, Undertones, Teardrop Explodes, the Smiths, Bunnymen etc. All these performers made "hits" in a "classic" period, yet I am still waiting to experience my frisson of "euphoric recall" upon hearing them on Irish music radio.
These hit making doyens of the post New Wave do not, apparently, pass muster in the eyes of Irish radio's cultural commodifiers for inclusion in their canon - and don't even get me started on the exclusion from playlists of dance, jungle, hiphop, or the newer wave of excellent guitar based hands from these islands (see Brian Boyd's many justifiable diatribes on this same topic).
I remain yours, tuned into BBC Radio One (seemingly the only pop music led radio station with progressive programming policy in these islands). Yours etc.,
Cathal Brugha Street,
Dublin 1.