With apologies to Mr. Costello.

We were coming back from the beach vacation when the little girl started getting fussy. Music soothes the savage baby beast, so I turned on the radio. It was the first time I had listened to the radio in quite some time; since I got the MP3 player three years ago, and an adapter to play it through the car stereo, I hadn’t listened to commercial radio since.

I quickly remembered why.

“Stop there stop there!” my son yelled when I came upon “American Woman” by the Guess Who. We’re teaching him well. But after that it was nonsense - one station after another, garbage. “Freebird” or country, rap or “soft rock” and then commercials - really, why would anyone subject themselves to this any longer?

We talk, and Artie mentioned in the Clear Channel thread, of the threat to “old media.” In the age of satellite radio but more importantly the MP3 player - when you can take your entire music collection along with you, plug it into the adapter and hit “shuffle,” in effect listening to a radio station with no commercials that plays only your own music - why would anyone listen to commercial radio any longer?

Well, sure - Limbaugh and talk radio. NPR. But as for the music stations - the “morning zoo” nonsense in every city in America, the endless white bread focus-group tested repetition, it’s just completely pointless.

The likes of Clear Channel knows it and is trying to adapt. There’s a joint venture now between CC and Apple and some digital radio manufacturers, whereby people can plug their iPod into the radio and, when they hear a song they like, “tag” it so they might later purchase it from iTunes.

But that requires enduring the pointlessness of modern commercial radio to find new tunes you might like.

Meanwhile, satellite radio continues to struggle. One of your best options, actually, is Internet radio - Pandora, in particular, rocks, though it’s always on the cusp of being shut down. But now it’s going mobile, the idea being that you can in effect program your own station, your own tastes. I listen to Pandora often, and literally the last 10 or 12 songs/albums I’ve bought, I first heard the band on Pandora.

So in this atmosphere, it’s curious to see the likes of Clear Channel limit itself, for obvious ideological purposes, by refusing to play the new Springsteen, the top album in the nation. That it is the top album without Clear Channel, though, is a harbinger. There was a time when artists like Springsteen needed media conglomorates like Clear Channel. Now, Clear Channel needs Springsteen. They’re just foolish enough to think they can get by without him.