What the hell happened?

My morning commute usually begins at 7am and this presents a problem. The only radio station I'll listen to is Radio 2 as it's the only one that isn't desperate to sound like your cooler mate (except Radios 3 and 4 but they're so middle-class you may as well soundtrack your drive to work with people dogging) and this means I have to find some music to occupy the half hour before Terry Wogan comes on with his neat brand of whimsy and bordeline filth. I refuse to listen to the last 30 minutes of Sarah Kennedy as she usually blabbers away like that Auntie everyone has who reads the Daily Express and spends family occasions having a compound nervous breakdown whilst getting spannered on Malibu.

Therefore I've got to find a CD to put on to fill that time (and the occasions Wogan plays something dreadful like Wet Wet Wet) and that's quite a decision to be faced with that early in the day. This morning is wasn't so hard as I was feeling a bit nihilistic so it was an obvious choice to put on Iggy and The Stooges' 'Raw Power' and play it at the volume of a shuttle launch- however it's more common to find me at 7am to be barely alive, let alone awake, and with my actual mood still to be decided.

So whatever tunes I put on are going to have a pretty big say in how I feel for the next few hours and, for someone who can easily spend a good indecisive hour deciding what to have from a Chinese chippy, that's far too much responsibility resting on my shoulders at any time of day, never mind when it's still dark.

I can't really face playing any dance music at that point in the morning as I'll spend till lunchtime hearing phantom beeps and whistles while my heartrate will be equivalent to that of a nervous gerbil's. Anything acoustic would be far too maudlin and I'd slash my wrists somewhere near Charnock Richard services and most soul CDs in my car veer from ecstatsy to the depths of despair and back again in about four songs which is far more of an emotional range that I could even manage in a fortnight.

Only last week I optimistically auditioned Neil Young's new album for the job but it's got two 18 minute tracks on it and when I'm still trying to get my compus to be mentis at such an early hour they're likely to make me believe that my Saxo's become a time machine. I could listen to some of his earlier work but, for all his genius, he does possess a voice that could depress Ken Dodd and that's not going to help things if I'm sat in traffic jam or constantly getting cut up by Audis.

Things got even worse when I tried out 'Love' by The Beatles, which is essentially a mash-up of loads of the Fab Four's songs in a bit of a 2 Many DJ's stylee. This, frankly, is and was unnecessary and twisted my melon to such an extent that, even as I stared at the CD case, I began to be convinced that it couldn't possibly exist and that my actual experience of reality was merely a figment of someone else's imagination. Someone else who doesn't like me very much. I had this thought at 7.17am which is really a bit soon in the day to be questioning your own existence.

I gave Prince a go but, without getting graphic, after getting rid of the morning glory a man wakes up with he hardly wants to be confronted with another one at 80mph on the M6. And pretty much everything else in my record collection proved to be unsuitable in some way or another so I decided I'd listen to talk radio instead. So I put Five Live on, heard Nicky Campbell and, after a stream of fair-to-moderate profanity, went straight back to hunting through the CDs again.

And I think I've figured the problem out. I'm pretty sure no music is recorded at 7am by people who've only just got out of bed and only have drinking as much Guinness as possible at lunchtime to look forward to. Therefore, there's nothing especially designed for the early morning commute and surely that's a massive market being missed- especially as the music industry's having a pretty tough time at the moment with the combination of illegal downloads and all new bands being rubbish.

All you'd need is something a little downbeat, not too loud, but with a sense of brightness in there just to get you going. It'd be mid-tempo, with lyrics you don't have to think about too much and all played on real instruments. Everything would be 3 or 4 minutes long and everything would be... nice. It'd be comfortable, safe.....

Hang on....

I think I just figured out why REM are popular.