Still Pretty Good Coincidence

The two “Come Sail Away”s almost lined up  

Jeremy has entered the world of high-stakes competitive regattas...or something.  

Not quite.  I have entered the world of listening to the radio. 

Close enough.  What's for lunch?  

Not long ago, there was a fairly surreal moment that occurred while I was listening to the radio.  I have a clock radio in my room that I listen to when I'm getting ready for my day.  On weekends, the local classic rock station broadcasts a nationally syndicated program instead of having somebody actually in the studio paying attention to what's going out over the airwaves.  In some cases, this produces some amusing results.  

I don't know an awful lot about how modern radio stations work, but it stands to reason that commercials are grouped into little blocks which normally can be played in between songs, most likely by way of a computer so as to leave the silent space between music, DJ prattle, and commercial to a minimum.  I also believe that the commercial blocks in syndicated programs are timed well in advance so that individual stations broadcasting the program can schedule their commercials and leave everything up to technology while still allowing for local advertising in national shows.  

It should also be known that not long ago, the classic rock band Styx was scheduled to perform a concert at a local venue.  One of their most famous songs is the power ballad "Come Sail Away."  It pales in comparison to "Mr. Roboto," of course, but that's beside the point here.  

So, I'm listening to the syndicated radio show, and the program was featuring all songs about water.  Songs about oceans, and rivers, and lakes, and oxford commas, and boats.  One of the songs they decided to play for this program was Styx's "Come Sail Away."  All well and good.  

The local station, however, screwed up.  

A commercial break started playing during the same time that the syndicated show was playing, and since nobody was in the studio paying attention to what was happening, the entire series of commercials played out right along with the song that was already playing.  

In a truly wonderful moment of radio broadcasting, one of the commercials was an advertisement for the local Styx show, which featured, among other things, short clips from various Styx songs so that listeners could be informed as to some of the potential library of songs that would be played at the concert.  As you might imagine, "Come Sail Away" was one of the songs featured in clip form.  

It would have been absolutely amazing for the mistakenly-played commercial clip of the song to line up perfectly with the full song being broadcast, but that didn't quite happen.  However, the two versions of the song were only off from each other by about 5 seconds.  Still pretty remarkable.  

I didn't end up going to the concert because I'd been informed that Styx no longer plays "Mr. Roboto" in their concerts, so there didn't seem to be any point left.