The Bands if They Were Bands

You've almost certainly seen the comic. A man and a woman are seated at a restaurant table on what is in all likelihood a date—a first date at that. Making small talk, the woman asks, "What's your favorite band?" The man replies, "Twenty meters." It's an English-language double entendre that's hard to resist having a little fun with. So let's have some fun. Here is a list of amateur radio bands described in terms of musical bands. The list is incomplete and definitely is not definitive. Feel free to fill in the ones that I missed, or come up with other ideas for the ones I included. This is also the least serious thing I've ever written, so if I said anything untoward about your favorite band—or your favorite band—it was all in fun. In truth, all of the bands have something to offer.


6 meters - U2

Six meters disappoints way more often than it doesn't, but we keep coming back to it, just hoping against hope that we'll be there when the magic happens again.


10 meters - Jefferson Starship

Not Jefferson Airplane. And please, in the name of all that is holy, not Starship. Jefferson Ding Dang Starship. Ten meters is a party where everyone's invited to have a good time. And while it can be tempting to act aloof and standoffish, show me someone who says they've never once rocked out to "Jane" or "Find Your Way Back", and I'll show you someone who's not being truthful.


15 meters - Nickelback

Edgier, more brash, and nominally more hardcore than ten meters, ultimately fifteen is just trying too hard.


17 meters - The Who

In 1982, at the age of fourteen, I talked my folks into coughing up the money to get The Who's Farewell Tour on pay-per-view. After all, I reasoned, it would be the last chance ever to see The Who perform live. Seventeen meters is always on the verge of shutting down—for the day, for the season, for the solar cycle—but it just keeps hanging around.


20 meters - The Eagles

Twenty meters isn't your favorite band, the comic referenced in the opening paragraph notwithstanding, but you pretty much know what you're gonna get and you know it won't be objectionable. It isn't anyone else's favorite band either, but everyone else pretty much knows what they're gonna get. And because everyone knows that everyone else is going through the same calculus, we all wind up there more or less by default.


30 meters - Minus the Bear

More off the beaten path and less well publicized than the other bands, thirty meters can make you feel like a member of an exclusive club, but without a trace of smugness or self-satisfaction. I mean, this isn't Interpol.


40 meters - Led Zeppelin

Forty meters is firmly grounded in its roots—there's even a pretty active AM community—but also likes to get a little experimental now and again. And at night, forty meters sets off on a world tour.


60 meters - Phish

Everyone speaks in hushed tones about the esoteric awesomeness that is sixty meters. You, on the other hand, haven't figured it out. The last thing you want to do is look like a square and admit that you haven't figured it out. It's okay. No one has figured it out. QSY.


80 meters - Kid Rock

Two words. Kid Rock. No, five words. Kid Rock featuring Monster Truck.


160 meters - Kenny G

You keep an apartment in Midtown Manhattan, just two subway stops from the office where you put in eighteen-hour days, but on weekends you take the train to your McMansion in Connecticut. The lot is big enough for a full-wave loop antenna, and it's not like you can go out on the yacht every weekend, amirite?






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