Nice speakers. Huh? What?

Got myself one of them XM radios a while back.

Mostly I got the XM radio so I could listen to 80s songs. You know, big-hair bands. Bands from back in the day when music was fun.

There was Downtown Julie Brown and Martha Quinn and Nina Blackwood.

And the videos were well-done and entertaining. We really did want our MTV. And Dire Straits lampooned the industry with "Money for Nothing."

I hate to be clich but those were the good old days. See, I love music. I don't know a whole lot about it. Can't read it or play an instrument but I have tremendous respect for folks who are able to do those things. To me, music is like art - I'm not an expert but I know what I like, which has caused me to adopt this philosophy - I'm not buying anything recorded after 1989,

Just speaking for me, I think that somewhere around the early 1990s music evolved - or devolved - into this mutant, cheap, nonsensical, cookie-cutter kind of annoying noise. I know today's sounds appeal to a lot of folks. More power to 'em, I reckon. I just don't really care for it. Racket, my daddy used to call it, as in "you kids stop making all that racket and go to sleep."

And now there is this disturbing trend of putting giant speakers in a vehicle and turning the bass up so loud it vibrates everything within a 100-yard radius, rolling the windows down and trying to force the whole world to listen.

I hate that.

Just because you like your kind of music doesn't mean we all want to listen to it. Crank it up if you like it, but at least have the common courtesy of rolling the windows up so other drivers don't have to be annoyed.

I hate it when I'm sitting at a traffic light on a bright sunny afternoon listening to my "Best of Wham" CD when some moron pulls up beside me with one of those noisemakers playing so loud the sidewalks crack from the vibrations.

That can't possibly be entertaining. Or healthy for that matter. How many people do you think are walking around right now hearing-impaired from driving around inside giant-speakered vehicles.

FIRST BIG-SPEAKERED GUY: "Say man, check out my new speakers. They fill the whole trunk."

SECOND BIG-SPEAKERED GUY: "Huh? What did you say?"

FIRST BIG-SPEAKERED GUY (SHOUTING): "I said these new speakers blow away anything else on the road."

SECOND BIG-SPEAKERED GUY: "Did you say something about stinkers on a toad?"

FIRST BIG-SPEAKERED GUY (STILL SHOUTING): "No, not a toad. I said the road - THE ROAD! What's wrong with your hearing? Are you OK? How do you feel?"

SECOND BIG-SPEAKERED GUY: "What? Something's wrong with the steering wheel?"

FIRST BIG-SPEAKERED GUY: "No man. Maybe we better turn the sound down."

SECOND BIG-SPEAKERED GUY: "OK by me dude. Crank it up!"

So pretty soon we're going to have a whole nearly-deaf generation cruising around playing damagingly loud bad music over freakishly huge speakers.

I predict this will be a passing fad. I predict it will be replaced by an entire generation of young people who will re-focus their attention, will concentrate instead on making huge sums of money. They will figure out that the best way to do this is by becoming audiologists and treating all the hearing impaired big speaker people.

And some day, discarded freakishly huge speakers will pour into landfills in record numbers.

And finally I will be able to listen to my "Best of Wham" CD on normal speakers at a normal decibel level without any annoying distractions.

Yeah baby. "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." Now that was music.