The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

Movin' Out

2007-01-26T11:44:00.000-06:00

This is a milestone day in the history of this blog, which began on July 11, 2004, with a post titled "What's Going On." Effective today, this blog is moving to a new site. Please update your bookmarks to jabartlett.wordpress.com. It'll still be The Hits Just Keep On Comin', but it will live at a different address. (If you get this blog via an RSS reader, such as My Yahoo, the new feed link is jabartlett.wordpress.com/feed/.)

Why move? The tool I use to create this blog, Blogger, is often cantankerous, and Blogger's user help is nearly nonexistent. Neither has caused serious problems until recently. Also, I've been sick of my Blogger template for a long time, but the number of changes I can make to it is limited. There are a few things we can do differently and better over at WordPress. So, a few weeks late for the new year, I'm making a new start--and the move provides a lovely theme for today's Top 5, which is over at the new site right now.

Ain't Nothin' Like the Real Thing

2007-01-24T15:40:00.000-06:00

There's a remarkable number of notable birthdays today. There's no cake and no gift, however.

John Belushi would be 58 today, had he not died in 1982. Apart from the hits under the Blues Brothers name, his version of "Louie Louie" from the Animal House soundtrack was also released as a single late in 1978, but failed to chart. The version used in the movie contained the oft-rumored and famously obscene lyrics; for the soundtrack album, Belushi sang the actual, non-obscene lyrics.

Warren Zevon would be 60, had he not died in 2003. I'm not as well acquainted with Zevon as I probably should be. Like most casual listeners, I've got Excitable Boy somewhere--and it's one of the most consistenly enjoyable albums on my shelf. Key track: "Nighttime in the Switching Yard."

Tammi Terrell would be 62, had she not died in 1970. One of the great what-ifs in pop music regards what Terrell might have become at Motown had she not been felled by a brain tumor in her early 20s. Her duets with Marvin Gaye are glorious, especially "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You" and "Ain't Nothin' Like the Real Thing."

Aaron Neville and Neil Diamond, both happily not dead, are both 66. (There's a duet for ya.) Neville's probably the most famous note-bender in the biz; Diamond, meanwhile, probably belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at least as a songwriter. Key Neville track: "Everybody Plays the Fool" (but get the single version, a remix that vastly improves on the soporific album version). Key Diamond tracks: "Sweet Caroline," "Shilo."

Ray Stevens is 68--or also 66, according to some sources. He's best remembered for novelty songs such as "The Streak," which went to Number One in 1974, but he's also a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Key track: one he didn't write--a straight, countrified version of the jazz standard "Misty," which made the Top 20 in the summer of 1975.

Recommended Listening: For several years, I've maintained a series of Desert Island tapes. They're made up of songs that I consider essentials for various reasons--because of what they represent, who they represent, and so on. The tapes became CDs a couple of years ago, and now, a selection of the songs from the list is online for you to listen to. Our pal Dave P. turned me on to Finetune.com, a website that lets you build custom playlists from its library and then put 'em up for everyone to listen to. I could probably imagine an entirely different but still island-worthy list, but "The Desert Island" represents my only actual attempt to make one. It's mostly old-school Top 40, featuring a touch of bubblegum, a few one-hit wonders, plenty of Philly soul, and "Jimmy Loves Mary Anne."

Be sure to check out Dave's tasty Poolside Jazz playlist, also. Then make your own list at Finetune, and send me the link.

Top 5: Takin' Us up to News Time

2007-01-21T12:13:00.000-06:00

(The last couple of Fridays I've missed our usual Top 5 feature--so here's one on a Sunday in hopes of making up for it. No tracks to post with this one--I hope to make that up to you eventually, too.)

If you browse the Airheads Radio Survey Archive, you'll notice that most of the surveys preserved are from Top 40 stations. The take-home survey was largely a Top 40 phenomenon, of course, and most of the people collecting them are Top 40 fans. Click on two lists from the same date and, allowing for the kind of regional variation that doesn't exist anymore, you'll find most of the same records on each one. Which is one of the things that makes the chart dated January 19, 1969, from CKSW in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, interesting. It's sort of a Top 40 station, but of a very unusual--possibly unique--sort.

Exactly when CKSW was playing the 60 songs on its survey is hard to figure. The back of the survey invites listeners to "hear all your top hit tunes daily" from 5 to 5:30pm and again from 10:45 to 11pm, as well as Friday nights from 8 to 9pm. Even in an era when records were still fairly short, that's not much time. It programmed a country show, which would probably have included some of the country tunes on the survey, from 3 to 5pm every day. What they were doing the rest of the time isn't clear. But given their conservative music mix, and that their service area was all of southwest Saskatchewan, it's likely that CKSW featured plenty of news, talk, farm, and public service programming during its non-music hours.

CKSW's music is a mixture of light pop, country, and Canadiana that's missing most of the Top 40 hits that were hot everywhere else in January 1969, most notably Marvin Gaye's epic "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" and the Doors' "Touch Me." Clearly, this was because CKSW, like many small-market stations back in the day, was trying to be many things to many people--and as a result, it was very careful about the music it played. The Number-One song on the survey was "Scarborough Fair"--not the Simon and Garfunkel original, but the one by Sergio Mendes, which went Top 20 in the States. Number Two is "She Wears My Ring," an enormous country hit by Ray Price that didn't cross to pop at all. Some of the entries farther down are a bit more familiar--the Ohio Express ("Chewy Chewy") and Classics IV ("Stormy") are also in the Top 10. But there is weirdness still farther below. Here are five of the oddities:

9. "Folsom Prison Blues"/Lenny Dee. Let's get weird right away. Lenny Dee released several albums covering pop hits on the organ between the mid 50s and the 1970s--and by 1969, was actually at a bit of a career peak, after a couple of modestly successful albums, including Turn Around Look at Me, from which this is presumably taken. Dee's only Top 40 hit was "Plantation Boogie" in 1955, but I'll always remember him for a different reason. In radio days of yore, when stations carried network newscasts on the hour, DJs often played an instrumental to fill the last minute or two before the news began. On my hometown station, I often heard, "Takin' us up to news time, here's Lenny Dee."

18. "Kentucky Woman"/Deep Purple. One might ask what the hell this song is doing on CKSW, although it does have a certain boogie feel that makes it plausibly fit with the rest of the survey songs. Then again, one might also ask, since "boogie" is not a term one normally associates with Deep Purple, what the hell they were doing when they recorded it.

33. "Edge of Reality"/Elvis Presley. This is the flipside of "If I Can Dream," which, despite being a big hit in most places, isn't listed on the CKSW survey. Maybe the station's music director liked "Edge of Reality" better. (I worked briefly with a guy who was like that. If the whole world was playing the A side, he didn't care--we'd play the B if he thought it was better. Trouble is, he usually thought it was better.)

34. "House of the Rising Sun"/Animals. I'm not sure what this record is doing here, given that the Animals' legendary recording of this was a hit everywhere else in the world in 1964. Some things endure, I guess.

40. "Kum By Yah"/Tommy Leonetti. As near as I can tell, this is the only hit version of this campfire classic. Leonetti appeared on the 50s TV version of Your Hit Parade and did some TV acting. He also scored some TV shows and was apparently big in Australia. And, briefly, in southwestern Saskatchewan.

Throwbacks

2007-01-18T17:34:00.000-06:00

WFMU's Beware of the Blog has done it again, dredging up another nearly forgotten record that deserves a wider audience for its weirdness alone. "Once You Understand" by Think actually made it into the Top 40, peaking during this week in 1972. In the jaded new millennium, we listen to this sort of cheese and wait for a punchline that makes the whole thing funny. But there's no punchline, unless you count the manipulative gut-punch at the end, and it ain't funny. Thirty-five years ago, "Once You Understand" seemed oh-so-relevant. Today, it's just passive-aggressive. The message of "Once You Understand" is that if you parents are too hard on your kids, if you don't respect their lifestyle choices, if you don't let them be who they are, then they'll turn to dope and kill themselves and it'll be all your fault.

Beware of the Blog also notes that the suburban Detroit home of ?, lead singer of the fabled ? and the Mysterians, burned down recently. Click for more here.

Elsewhere around the blogs, we're adding Art Decade, "specializing in music of the 'long seventies' (1966-1984)," to the blogroll on the right. You'll like it. The latest post features one of Rod Stewart's earliest singles, and a fine one: "Handbags and Gladrags." Whenever I hear it, I imagine Rod asking his producer if they could use a full orchestra, only to be told it's too expensive. So Rod keeps asking for smaller combinations of instruments, but is repeatedly told it's still too expensive. So he finally asks, "How much for just the oboe?"

I've also been enjoying Throwback Thursdays at Instrumental Analysis. Today's features the Police.

Since I got into music blogs, Jefitoblog has always been a favorite, and it's been insanely great lately. Go there to read and listen for yourself. One post I particularly want to mention: Around the first of the year, I made passing mention of my dislike for smooth jazz, and I'm pleased to know that Jefito plans to make fun of it regularly. However, today he took a whack at Bob James. My general dislike for smooth jazz has heretofore contained an exemption for Bob James--although it'll be harder for me to maintain it after today.

Twist of Fate

2007-01-16T08:49:00.000-06:00

(Second of two parts. Part 1 is here.)

My little radio station in Macomb, Illinois, which I will call WXXX because that wasn't its real name, was run like a medieval kingdom--the out-of-town owner made his own rules and governed by whim. He was due back in town in December 1983. In advance of his visit, we were told not to back-announce Culture Club or Kool and the Gang while he was in town because of his feelings toward gays and black people. When he finally arrived from his Louisiana home base just before Christmas, his initial decree, upon learning that he hadn't run the other station in town off the air and out of business yet, was that he would fire the entire airstaff and try again. The general manager talked him out of it, at least in part by saying that he'd just hired a bright young guy from Iowa who'd uprooted his wife to move and had only been there two months, and it wouldn't be fair. But the owner insisted on firing somebody--and so the program director who had hired me was turfed shortly after the first of the year.

An odd coincidence occurred about the same time. The general manager of KDTH, the Dubuque station that had fired me less than three months before, had come to town in his capacity as head of acquisitions for KDTH's parent company. He was scouting WKAI, the other station in Macomb. As it turned out, the parent company wasn't interested in buying WKAI. However, the GM, whom we will call George because that is his real name, decided to buy it himself. On his next visit to town, and knowing The Mrs. and I were in Macomb, George kindly invited us to dinner. I didn't hide it from XXX. In fact, when they asked me directly if I had any intention of jumping ship, I said I didn't--which was true. I felt that George hadn't done enough to stop my unjust firing from KDTH. I couldn't see going to work for him, and I told them so.

Meanwhile, I was getting a new boss. The new PD (we'll call him Frank, because that is not his real name), was an old friend of the owner. And it became pretty clear pretty quickly that Frank was neither especially talented nor particularly bright. He had worked in Denver, however, and his first meeting with the airstaff, where he told us that he'd worked in Denver, was all about the things we were doing wrong, and how all that shit was going to stop now, because he'd worked in Denver, see, and we were going to start doing things the way they did them in Denver, where he had worked. We all sucked it up and vowed to try--until a day or two later when he did his first airshift, and broke every rule he'd harped on us to follow. (Thus I formulated for the first time another of Bartlett's Laws of Radio: Never work for anyone dumber than you are. You won't learn anything, and you'll have a hard time maintaining any respect for them.)

Soon it was March. I hadn't earned any vacation yet, but I asked if I could have a Friday off to go back to Dubuque for an event KDTH was sponsoring, so we could see some friends. Frank grudgingly let me--and then fired me on Monday morning. "It's not working out," he said. Which was true, although I'd rather have left on my terms instead of theirs.

(Permit me to digress for a moment, because this next is typical. After sacking me, XXX replaced me with nobody. The night guy went to afternoons, the overnight guy went to nights, and Frank hired a Nigerian student from the university to push buttons on some kind of satellite-delivered overnight show. One night a few months later, the satellite fell into the sea or something, and the program dropped off the air. So the kid Frank hired did the only thing Frank had taught him how to do--he played public-service announcements. The same three public service announcements. For 45 minutes straight. Until a client finally got Frank on the phone and told him, "I think there's something wrong with your radio station.")

I wasn't out of work long--although it was long enough for The Mrs. and I to collect some of the free government cheese that was being handed out around the country back then. (We still have the box it came in.) As it turned out, WKAI had a part-time opening, which I took even before George's purchase of the station became final. But as soon as it was, George took me on full-time, and I would stay for 2 1/2 years.

Later in 1984, well after I'd gone full-time at WKAI, I learned that XXX was putting it around town that I was an industrial spy. George had hired me to steal all of their secrets, see, but they'd figured it out and fired me, cleverly thwarting the Devious Plan. There was no plan, of course--as I told them in response to their direct questions, I had no intention of going to work for George again. And they didn't have any secrets worth stealing, anyhow. So in the end, the people at WXXX outsmarted themselves--which was easy, because they weren't all that bright to begin with.

Postscript: George didn't own WKAI for very long. He sold it after about 18 months, and I was concerned about the future direction of the place under the new owner, Don. So you can perhaps imagine how I felt the day I looked through Don's office window and saw Frank in there. Later that day, I ran into Don in the hallway. I said to him, "I notice you were talking to Frank today." "Yeah," said Don. "He got fired at XXX and dropped in for a visit. I decided to pick his brain a little . . . but there wasn't much there."

Very well put.

I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues

2007-01-15T08:45:00.000-06:00

As you know, I'm a big fan of JasonHare.com--especially his latest Chart Attack, featuring January 1984. Those songs reminded me of the sort of gig every radio person has along the way--one that was fairly miserable at the time, but has made for some good stories ever since. I've told some of them before, I think, but here goes anyhow.

The Mrs. and I had moved to Macomb, Illinois, in November 1983. I needed a job and a little station down there had one. The PD and the general manager impressed me when I met them, I'd passed through that town on vacation once when I was a kid, and that was enough. In those days when I was still just starting out in radio, I knew I'd probably have to work in places like that. So I was OK with it. And it wasn't a bad little town, really, thanks to the presence of Western Illinois University, which brought in a little culture, at least.

After working at the station for a couple of months, it was clear that the place had some serious problems. For example: One of the sales people came to me that first week and asked how I was adjusting to "the heavy production load" of commercials. At my previous gig in Dubuque, I'd gotten used to doing as many as 30 spots, dubs, and tags every day, but I think in that first week in Macomb I'd done seven or eight altogether. (I was spending most of my time sitting on my ass waiting to go on the air.) Another sales rep found herself caught between a feuding husband and wife who owned a clothing store. The husband wanted the store to project a western image; the wife wanted a more hip and contemporary image. The sales rep's compromise was to ask me to produce a spot in a John Wayne voice over Michael Jackson music. Due to an obscure Illinois law regarding hourly employees (which I think the station misunderstood), I was required to leave the building for at least 30 minutes on my lunch break--having a sandwich at my desk while I was writing a spot or prepping my show was not allowed.

I remember coming home to our one-bedroom basement apartment on what might have been the fourth day and telling The Mrs. that I'd made a horrible mistake. However, the worst problem didn't manifest itself until year's end. While the station was running a $1000 cash-call contest ("answer your phone with the phrase that pays, and we'll give you $1000"), it was issuing partial paychecks to salaried employees because it didn't have enough operating cash on hand. During the holiday season. This was partly due to the owner's excessive "trading out"--exchanging advertising time for goods and services. Everything from a luxury car for himself to office supplies for us--we joked that he'd trade the light bill if he could, and I don't doubt that he tried.

However: Despite all the weirdness going on behind the scenes, the station sounded reasonably good. As I've said, the general manager impressed me--he'd been a major-market sales manager and had apparently been promised a piece of the company if he'd move to the middle of nowhere and make a success of the little station there. (If the owner had just left him the hell alone, he might have done it.) The news director and sports director were solid pros. The morning guy had a natural gift of gab. The midday guy later ended up in Orlando, I think. The PD, who did afternoons, was the classic radio drifter--pleasant personality, decent voice, and good enough on details to make a competent manager--but not exceptional enough at anything to ensure that he'd last a long time anywhere, as we shall see. The night guy was too talented for nights, but he seemed content with where he was--and he was the guy who knew where the bodies were buried. That seems to be a night-guy tendency, in my experience. They'd answer the questions you didn't want to ask the boss, and this guy did so with an almost-reckless honesty.

I did an oddball 5-8pm shift for awhile before moving up to 2-6pm. (I have a tape of what I think was my second day on the air. I won't post it here because it sounds just hideous to me now--my voice is high and nasal, and although I clearly had some skills, I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was at the time.) The music mix was bizarre--pop/country during the day to capture the adult audience, but moving in a top 40/album rock direction at night in hopes of snagging the kids--an all-things-to-all-people format that many small-market stations used to try back in the day. We were playing, at various times of the day, all of the songs Jason mentions except for Numbers 2, 5, and 6, but we were also playing country hits by the likes of Merle Haggard, Crystal Gayle, and the Judds.

So: January 1984. The Mrs. is watching General Hospital professionally, as she put it--still unemployed after three months. I am already beginning to surreptitiously look for another job, somewhere, for reasons that will soon become clear. Neither of us is particularly happy. Fortunately for us, things were about to change.

Coming tomorrow: It's easy to outsmart yourself when you're not too bright to begin with.

Here and There and More Than Once

2007-01-10T16:44:00.000-06:00

I blogged here a couple of years ago about worthwhile concert recordings. For me to listen more than once, a live recording has to provide A) significant amounts of new music, such as Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen or Jackson Browne's Running on Empty; B) significant reinterpretations of familiar music, such as the Allman Brothers' At Fillmore East; and/or C) spectacle on a scale so grand that it comes through in the grooves alone, such as Springsteen's Live 1975-1985. A live album in which an artist simply reprises the hits is, in my experience, rarely essential.

When Elton John released Here and There in 1976, it was considered a contractual-obligation quickie--five tracks each from 1974 shows in London and New York, all familiar Elton tunes. Nevertheless, it made the Top 10, because a recording of Elton reading from the phone book would have been a hit at that moment of his career. However, it would be nearly 20 years before it became more than just another live cash-in. And it's worth hearing today not merely because it's Elton, as was the case in 1976, but because in retrospect, it's really, really good Elton.

When Here and There was rereleased in 1995, producer Gus Dudgeon took advantage of the CD format to include additional tracks from both of the original shows, nearly doubling the album's length. Most important, Dudgeon corrected a baffling omission from the original. The New York show is the one at which John Lennon famously appeared with Elton, but the tracks chosen for the original vinyl release didn't include any of those Lennon performed on. (Oddly, there's no mention of Lennon on the original Here and There liner notes, although his appearance was arguably the most important thing about the New York show.) At the very least, it would have made sense to include the incendiary version of "I Saw Her Standing There" that had appeared on the flip-side of the "Philadelphia Freedom" 45 a year earlier. Fortunately, the expanded Here and There includes that track, and the others Lennon performed during what turned out to be his last-ever live appearance--"Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."

The revised Here and There provides, among other things, one rare song ("Bad Side of the Moon"), a version of an obscure album cut ("You're So Static," featuring the Muscle Shoals Horns), and two versions each of "Take Me to the Pilot" and "Your Song." One of the best tracks is "Love Song," which originally appeared on Tumbleweed Connection. For the live version, Elton invites Lesley Duncan, who wrote the song, to duet with him, and Davey Johnstone adds an understated guitar line not present on the Tumbleweed version. The result is a haunting performance that betters the original by a mile. (It wasn't officially released as a single, although MCA pressed it for radio-station use, and it got some limited airplay in the summer of 1976.) And of course, the album includes "I Saw Her Standing There," on which Lennon, Elton, and the band kick ass until their toes fall off, until their version actually stomps the Beatles' original.

What strikes me about Elton's albums from Honky Chateau through Here and There (1972-76) is the absolute--and audible--self-assurance of them. Elton sings like he knows he's got great material and that he sounds great doing it. This is especially true on the London disc of Here and There, where Elton and his band sound as good as they ever did in the studio (although Dudgeon admitted to cleaning up certain mistakes in the original with technology that didn't exist in 1976). The London disc's sense of focus, as well as its lack of on-stage banter and the relatively restrained performance, likely has a lot to do with the more intimate setting of the Royal Albert Hall and the presence of Britain's Princess Margaret at what was a royal benefit show. The New York show is more traditionally raucous. On both discs, however, Here and There captures Elton at his creative and commercial peak. It's a live album worth hearing more than once.

(Buy the expanded version of Here and There here. Or there.)

Recommended Reading: The latest installment of Adventures Through the Mines of Mellow Gold features two grade-A 70s hits that prove that Mellow Gold isn't always lame, and in the case of the second of the two featured records, not even especially mellow.

In My Head Until I Die

2007-01-08T17:35:00.000-06:00

Quick links to music blog goodness:

Ickmusic is not just your headquarters for all things Springsteen, but also for all things Prince. Pete has posted an after-hours club show from 1988 that features, among other things, a lengthy version of the Temptations' "Just My Imagination." The Temps' record is an all-time favorite of mine, a performance filled with longing for an unattainable woman. In Prince's version, he's not only attained the woman, he's slow-dancing with her in the living room on the way to the sack.

I Am Fuel, You Are Friends sings the praises of Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, newly released in a double-CD version I wish Santa Claus had brought for me. If you're only going to own one album by Williams, Car Wheels is the one to have--but once you have it, you'll probably want some more.

Hurry over to JB's Warehouse Music Annex for some vintage Bob Seger, featuring 1966-67 singles with the Last Heard (which struck me as kind of interesting to hear, but not essential) and 1969 tracks from the Bob Seger System, including "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man," which you know, "2 + 2 = ?," which you may not, and "Noah," which you should.

And finally, over at WFMU's Beware of the Blog: the Chicken Fat Record. Although the mp3 posted at that link is of a 1980s remake, the 1960s original, recorded by Robert Preston at the behest of John F. Kennedy for his physical fitness initiative, has been playing in my head for almost 40 years. In elementary school, I had a gym teacher who made us work out to it--and maybe you did, too. I'd long since given up hope of ever hearing the original again--except when fragments of it popped into my head unbidden--but Beware of the Blog kindly provides a link to Preston's original. After hearing it one more time today, it's a safe bet now that it will continue to live in my head until I die.

Top 5: Teaching the World to Sing

2007-01-05T11:28:00.000-06:00

We're keeping it simple today, because I really should be doing work I get paid for instead of blogging for nothin'--here are five notable tunes on WAPE in Jacksonville, Florida, from the survey dated January 5, 1972. And yes, I know I just did a podcast with tunes from December 1971. (You don't like it? Get your own blog.) But it's semi-topical for us to talk about late '71/early '72 again, sort of, given that we discussed CKLW here last week. One of the jocks pictured on the WAPE survey, Teddy "Bear" Richards, was at CKLW when The Mrs. and I were listening to it in the early 80s. As for the Jay Thomas pictured on the survey, I can't tell from the picture if he's the same Jay Thomas who later jumped from radio into an acting career. Probably is. The actor Jay Thomas is probably best known for playing Eddie LeBec, Carla's hockey-goalie husband on Cheers and talk-show host Jerry Gold on Murphy Brown.

So anyway:

1. "Respect Yourself"/Staple Singers. I featured this on that podcast--one of the Staples' most pointed self-improvement messages made even more deadly serious by their funkiest backing track ever.

4. "Drowning in the Sea of Love"/Joe Simon. This old-school soul record is actually an early Gamble-and-Huff production, but not nearly as slick as the productions that would make them legends at their Philadelphia International label later in the 1970s.

7. "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"/New Seekers. Getting right to the point, WAPE lists this on the survey as "Coke Song." Although the song was famously featured in a Coca-Cola commercial, the New Seekers' version of it wasn't. The version from the commercial was credited to the Hillside Singers. Both ran the charts at the same time, however, and both peaked on the Hot 100 during the week of January 15, 1972--the Seekers at Number 7 and the Hillside Singers at Number 13.

17. "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show"/Honey Cone. WAPE played lots of R&B records that ended up bigger in Jacksonville than across the country, although "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show" wasn't really one of 'em. Unlike Honey Cone's two earlier hits in 1971, "Want Ads" and "Stick Up," "One Monkey" missed the national Top 10, however it does feature another of the killer hooks for which Honey Cone was justifiably famous.

21. "Black Dog"/Led Zeppelin. The WAPE survey shows this as an LP cut, although it was out as a single by this time, from Zeppelin's famous untitled fourth album, which had been released the previous November. Radio stations were clamoring for a single release of "Stairway to Heaven," which Zeppelin was resisting, likely because they would have been expected to edit it down from nearly eight minutes. "Rock and Roll" would come out on 45 also, but there would never be an official single release of "Stairway." The full-length version was pressed on 45s for radio-station use, though.

("One Monkey" is a WMA file. Buy it, and all the Honey Cone you'll ever need, here.)

Recommended Listening: As part of its 365 Days Project featuring one audio oddity every day, WFMU's Beware of the Blog has posted a set of fan-club welcome records from David Cassidy, the Partridge Family, and Leif Garrett, featuring all the crappy fidelity you'd expect from records pressed on cardboard and sent through the mail. The Partridges record is especially precious. Listen as David Cassidy chokes down the bile while performing yet another loathsome fan-club duty! Dig Shirley Jones teasing possible plot developments for the new season! Contemplate how Danny Bonaduce could never have imagined what his life would become!

Some Half-Baked Thoughts About Jazz

2007-01-02T15:23:00.000-06:00

A story appeared over the weekend about the closing of the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, the second-oldest jazz venue in the country behind the Village Vanguard in New York, and a place where everybody who was anybody in jazz over the last 59 years took the stage. While there's reason to lament the demise of such a place, it occurs to me that the club's demise isn't due so much to the death of jazz as it is to the way the scene has changed.

Jazz hasn't been America's most popular musical form since before the Jazz Showcase opened, so pining for the return of those days is futile. Yes, there are lots of jazz fans who wish mainstream jazz was bigger than it is, that it wasn't as marginalized as it is. I'm one of 'em. But I'm also somebody who understands the world we live in. And it occurs to me that in an artistic marketplace as fragmented as the music world is, everything's marginalized. I wrote last week how difficult it is to keep abreast of everything worth hearing--you can't, fewer people are even trying, and so what's the point? There's a lot more payback in immersing yourself fully in something you love than there is in worrying about why more people aren't immersing themselves in the same thing.

I'm fortunate to live in a town with what passes for a thriving jazz scene in 2007--fan interest enough to support a decent summer jazz series and separate local jazz festival every summer, a couple of full-time jazz clubs (albeit attached to swanky hotels) and other places that schedule a healthy number of jazz dates each year. Of course, the majority of the most popular jazz musicians locally aren't making a living at it on a full-time basis. Nevertheless, the fact that we have enough of them to call what we have here a "jazz scene" makes us a lot better off than other towns around the country. Chicago still has a scene too, despite the demise of the Jazz Showcase. Does it have fewer venues? Yes. Is it less vibrant than it used to be? That depends what you're comparing it to. You may not be able to go to the Jazz Showcase anymore, but the next time you're in Chicago, you'll be able to find jazz if you want to.

(If you want to get righteously upset about something in jazz, get upset about the way muzak-y "smooth jazz" is taking up the oxygen previously reserved for mainstream jazz. But that's another post entirely.)

One More Thing: 2006 was the year we started podcasting at this blog. In case you missed any of the podcasts (or if you'd like to hear them again, and thanks a heap if that's true), here are the links:

Forgotten 45s (just music, no talk, February)
The Drive at Five (highway tunes, April)
73 and 77 (hits from the month of May)
October 1975
December 1971
Christmas 2006

I'll Be There

2006-12-31T11:22:00.000-06:00

On the last couple of New Year's Eves, we've checked out the yearend charts from some of America's greatest Top 40 radio stations. Last year it was WABC from New York; the year before it was WLS from Chicago. This year, we'll check the charts for CKLW, Windsor/Detroit. During the 60s and 70s, almost every major American city witnessed a major duke-out between competing AM radio giants. In Detroit, they were CKLW and WKNR. These wars inevitably led to great radio, but they were largely over by the late 1970s, as FM usage grew and markets fragmented. That was the case in Detroit by the time my in-laws moved there in 1980. CKLW hung in, however, and it was the station we listened to when we were out there. Its glory days were past by then, and it would switch to a nostalgia format in 1984. But in its day, it was home to some of the most famous jocks in Top 40 history, and to Rosalie Trombley, too. She started as a switchboard operator in the early 60s but became one of the most acclaimed program directors of the era, credited with making a star of local boy Bob Seger, who wrote "Rosalie" about her.

Although there are plenty of tributes to classic radio stations around the Internets, there aren't all that many sets of yearend charts out there. There's certainly nothing as complete as what exists for WABC and WLS. The Classic CKLW Page has a few yearend charts from the 1960s and 1970s--and here we go, with Number One, whatever was the bottom position, and interesting bits from in between, for as many years as are available:

1968
#1: "Hey Jude"/Beatles
#100: "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde"/Georgie Fame
Comment: In addition to the usual Detroit suspects--Bob Seger, Ted Nugent (in his Amboy Dukes days), and the Motown stars--this chart also indicates that the Detroit Emeralds and the Parliaments (later known as Parliament and/or Funkadelic) were big locally. The Emeralds' "Show Time" clocked in at Number 40; the Parliaments, whose "Testify" had been Number Two on the 1967 yearend chart, scored again with "Good Old Music" at Number 87.

CKLW apparently did not publish a Top 100 for 1969. Instead, their yearend chart featured the Top 100 of the 1960s. Three months later, the station published its Top 300 of All Time. (Both are available at the link above.) Number One song on both: "Hey Jude." I wonder, however, why the songs from the 1960s on the all-time chart were in a different order than they were on the 60s chart. Shouldn't they have been the same, but with some 50s hits mixed in? If I had more time and was substantially smarter, I'd think more about it. As it is, let's move on.

1970
#1: "I'll Be There"/Jackson Five
#100: "Jingle Jangle"/Archies
Best segue: "Indiana Wants Me" by R. Dean Taylor at Number 45 into "Gimme Dat Ding" by the Pipkins at Number 44. Top 40/bubblegum geek nirvana.

1971
#1: "Joy to the World"/Three Dog Night
#100: "High Time We Went"/Joe Cocker
Most interesting entry: "Love Is Life" by Earth Wind and Fire at Number 45--their first hit single from their debut album, scoring big in Detroit three years before their first national Top 40 hit, "Mighty Mighty."

1972
#1: "Lean on Me"/Bill Withers
#100: "Keeper of the Castle"/Four Tops
Comment: This chart contains the biggest pile yet of R&B records big in Detroit and not so big elsewhere--such as Joe Simon's "Misty Blue" at Number 19, "Mr. Penguin" by Lunar Funk at Number 25, and records by Donny Hathaway, Denise LaSalle, Holland and Dozier, Valerie Simpson, King Floyd, and the Dramatics that didn't make the national Top 40 at all. Oddly enough, the Detroit Emeralds' biggest-ever national hit, "Baby Let Me Take You," placed only at Number 98, twenty-some slots behind another Emeralds record.

1973
#1: "Bad Bad Leroy Brown"/Jim Croce
#100: "Rockin' Roll Baby"/Stylistics
Top album: Dark Side of the Moon/Pink Floyd
(1973 was the first year CKLW published a top-albums list along with its singles survey.)
Comment: When "Playground in My Mind" by Clint Holmes at Number 16 was followed by "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" by Dawn at Number 15 during the countdown, it represented a good time for the kids listening in their bedrooms at home to go out to the fridge for a snack. Or, hell, even outside for a smoke. Better obesity or lung cancer than dreck overdose.

Digression: Although the Stylistics were best known for Thom Bell's gorgeous love ballads--which was because Bell knew what he had with lead singer Russell Thompkins Jr.--"Rockin' Roll Baby" might be the greatest of all their records, precisely because it's so different. Thompkins' feathery falsetto meant he couldn't be a soul shouter like Philly comtemporaries Teddy Pendergrass (of the Blue Notes) or Eddie Levert (of the O'Jays), but Bell concocted the perfect uptempo environment for Thompkins, one of the greatest backing tracks in Philly soul history. And from a radio standpoint, it also has one of the greatest talkover introductions of all time.

1974
#1: "Bennie and the Jets"/Elton John
(In keeping with its identity as "the Big 8," CKLW went to a Top 80 this year.)
#80: "Can't Get Enough"/Bad Company
Top album: Bad Company/Bad Company
Comment: 1974 was the first full year in which Canadian radio stations were required to program a specific amount of Canadian-created content. To make room, CKLW dropped a lot of soul records. The 1974 list thus shows far less local variation--yet despite the new rules, it has precious little Canadian content.

1975
#1: "Love Will Keep Us Together"/Captain and Tennille
#80: "School Boy Crush"/AWB
Top album: Beautiful Loser/Bob Seger
Weirdest entry: "Try to Remember-The Way We Were" by Gladys Knight and the Pips at Number 17. Not a bad record, but not exactly "Midnight Train to Georgia," either.

1976
#1: "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine"/Lou Rawls
#80: "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word"/Elton John
Top album: Live Bullet/Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
Most interesting entry: "Roxy Roller" by Sweeney Todd at Number 53. Canadian content and then some: In November, Homercat at Good Rockin' Tonight told the convoluted tale of how several competing versions of "Roxy Roller" ended up in the marketplace at approximately the same time. It's worthwhile reading for chart trivia geeks, even if the track itself is no longer available at Homercat's place.

Truncated CKLW charts (showing only 40 of the Top 80 or 100) for 1967 and 1978 are here.

As I've written before, listening to the countdown on New Year's Eve was a big part of my life during the 1970s. At least twice, before I was old enough to drive, I spent New Year's Eve hanging out with my pal Curt, listening to the countdown and writing down all the song titles. Curt and I will be hanging out together again tonight. With our wives. And with his three-month-old grandson.

Wow.

("Rockin' Roll Baby" is a WMA file; buy the Stylistics here.)

Put Your Records On

2006-12-28T17:11:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned when writing about my favorite albums of 2006, I've listened to more currently popular music this past year than in any recent year. However: I don't presume to have heard everything worth hearing, or anything remotely close to a meaningful percentage of everything worth hearing, because it's just not possible, given the ongoing fragmentation of pop music into genres, sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres.

Not that I haven't tried. I subscribed to Paste in hopes of getting hip to worthwhile new stuff, but the sheer volume of music the magazine covers on a monthly basis made it hard to separate what I might like from what I wouldn't--and the sampler CDs weren't helping all that much, either. Plus, I found I'm lacking the referents in a lot of cases--when one new band was matter-of-factly described as having a distinct Built-to-Spill-influence, but I had no damn idea who Built to Spill was, I realized that before I could get fully hip to what's happening now, I'd have to get hip to what was happening five years ago. At that point, I pretty much gave up.

Having said all that, however, there were a few contemporary artists I managed to get exposed to this year. Some of these artists were mentioned by music bloggers I like; others I managed to catch on TV. Maybe I've heard only a song or two, and I haven't necessarily been moved to buy an entire album, but what I've heard, I like. Here's the list, in no particular order, at first:

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. A friend tipped me earlier this year to the album Naturally by saying, "I can't believe this album came out in the past year or so--it sounds like something straight out of 1972." Which it does, despite being recorded in 2005. Sharon, who was a corrections officer at New York City's Rikers Island Prison in an earlier life, is clearly still a person who don't take no mess. Key track: "This Land Is Your Land," which is like no version of this song you can possibly imagine. It sounds like Woody Guthrie crossed with Al Green, if Al Green were a very funky woman.

The Scissor Sisters. In general, there's little in pop music I find more brain-numbing than dance music. That's the pigeonhole into which you'd drop the Scissor Sisters. However, they list Elton John as one of their influences, and he considers himself a fan. When I read somewhere that a few of the songs on their latest album Ta-Dah sounded like classic Elton, that was enough to get me to check them out. Some of what I heard I liked, and some I didn't, but I especially liked "She's My Man" from Ta-Dah and "Take Your Mama," from 2004's Scissor Sisters, an album that also features the weirdest imaginable cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb."

Amos Lee. His self-titled debut album actually arrived in 2005, with a followup, Supply and Demand, coming this year. The easy comparison is with Norah Jones--he's got that same kind of vibe. He's also sometimes compared to James Taylor, albeit with more soul. Key track: "Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight," from his debut album.

Josh Rouse. Compared to almost everybody else on this list, he's a veteran, having released his first solo album in 1998. I discovered him in 2003, when Salon praised his album 1972 by highlighting its 70s influences--folks like Steely Dan, Carole King, and Todd Rundgren. That was excuse enough for me to hear more. Rouse has released two albums since then, Nashville in 2005 and Subitulo this year. I really ought to go and buy 'em, because I have yet to hear anything from either one that I don't like. Key tracks: "Love Vibration" from 1972, "Quiet Town" from Subitulo.

The Dixie Chicks. I have rarely hated an album with as much enthusiasm as I hated the Chicks' 1999 album Fly. Halfway into the very first listen, Natalie Maines' voice started to grate on me, and if the album had been one song longer, I'd have had to flee the room. It hasn't been back in the player since. Yet I was sympathetic to the Chicks' plight when their innocuous anti-Bush remark nearly wrecked their career, and I felt a sort of moral obligation, as a good liberal, to at least listen to their post-furor album Take the Long Way, if not to actually pony up the cash for it. The first single, "Not Ready to Make Nice," was a perfect fuck-you to everybody who'd been demanding they admit they were wrong to take the stand they took.

KT Tunstall. Singer-songwriter from Scotland who grew up digging David Bowie and learned to sing by listening to Ella Fitzgerald records. Key track: "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" is one of the most distinctive records I heard all year. I'd rank it at Number Three on my list of favorite singles of the year, behind Springsteen's "Pay Me My Money Down" (which I posted yesterday) at Number One.

Who'd be at Number Two?

Corinne Bailey Rae. Rae grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and eventually sang in a hard-rock band, but a college job singing in a jazz club led to a record deal--and the record deal led to her self-titled debut album, featuring the utterly charming single "Put Your Records On." People often compare Rae and Norah Jones, but Rae's got an easy manner about her--if this were a jazz album, we'd call it "swing"--that seems to come more naturally to her than it does to Jones.

(Buy a deluxe CD/DVD edition of Tunstall's Eye to the Telescope here; buy Rae's debut album here.)

If you've heard something new in 2006 that you especially liked, please share it with the whole class in the comments.

Real Revelations

2006-12-27T16:38:00.000-06:00

Maybe 90 percent of the music blogs on the Internet deal with currently popular rock and rap. The rest of the musical universe is left to the other 10 percent. Classic R&B and soul music blogs are a particularly fertile region on a normal week, and this week, many of them are memorializing James Brown--so be sure to visit The Stepfather of Soul, Soul Sides, and Funky16Corners. There are a few blogs that deal with classic country and/or early rock, such as Living in Stereo (whose Brown obit is brief and marvelous) and Big Rock Candy Mountain. The best jazz blog I know of is Jazz and Conversation, but it hasn't been updated since September and may well be defunct.

This blog is about our Top 40 past, both on records and on the radio. (For what it's worth, we don't seem to have much direct competition in our topic area.) Although every post in the present is informed by that past, we're not entirely about the past. In fact, I've probably bought and/or listened to more new music in 2006 than in any recent year. Here are some of the notable albums, in no particular order, at first.

Other People's Lives/Ray Davies. A friend recommended this to me right after it came out, but I didn't rush out and get it, mostly because I'd heard one track and didn't like it. When I finally picked it up, I was surprised to learn that the single track I'd heard wasn't representative of the album as a whole--a batch of wry and well-crafted tunes that brings Davies' reputation as a keen observer and creator of memorable characters right into the 21st century. Key track: "Is There Life After Breakfast."

Pay the Devil/Van Morrison. In which Van sings country standards and his own compositions backed by shimmering steel guitars and whispery mixed choruses. His voice is too idiosyncratic to make this album an heir to the Jim Reeves/Eddy Arnold/Patsy Cline "Nashville Sound" of the 1960s, but that's the closest box you could put it in. But then again, the album's very existence is evidence of Morrison's refusal to be put in boxes of any sort. Key track: "There Stands the Glass."

Black Cadillac/Rosanne Cash. Next to Donald Fagen's Morph the Cat (about which more below), this was the new 2006 release I most wanted to hear. It was also the one that took me the longest to embrace. Cash wrote the songs on the album in response to the deaths of her father, mother, and stepmother over a 15-month period, and they're by far the darkest songs of her career. Stay with 'em and they become the most gorgeous and heartfelt. Key tracks: "Radio Operator," "God Is in the Roses."

Nothing But the Water/Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. There was a minor brouhaha in Paste magazine earlier this year over a snide review of a John Mayer album that suggested he couldn't credibly sing the blues because he hadn't suffered enough. I don't know if suffering is necessary to credibly sing the blues, but if it is, Grace Potter must have suffered something awful--and her band can rock. You'd have to make room for her at the head table of contemporary female blues singers with Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi. Key tracks: "Joey," "Toothbrush and My Table."

All the Roadrunning/Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris. These two had been trying for several years to make a record together, and it was worth the wait. I've said something like this before: It's great to hear so many songs in which an adult listener can easily recognize oneself. Key tracks: "This Is Us," "Red Staggerwing," "Love and Happiness for You."

Modern Times/Bob Dylan. No jokes about Dylan's singing, please--he sounds fine here for a guy in his 60s who never had the world's greatest voice to begin with. His band is in fine form, too. I've seen a few critics' lists picking this as the top album of the year. I don't know enough to say that, but I like it. Key track: "The Levee's Gonna Break."

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions/Bruce Springsteen. Once you get past just how odd it is to hear old-school hootenanny music again, this album is terrific. It's great to hear how much fun Springsteen and his musicians are having. Not all of it works, but what does is magnificent. The real revelation in the wake of The Seeger Sessions has come thanks to music bloggers, chiefly Pete at ickmusic, who have posted tracks from various live shows around the world that give us the chance to hear earlier Springsteen songs such as "Cadillac Ranch" reworked into Seeger mode. Key tracks: "Jacob's Ladder" and "Pay Me My Money Down" which is my favorite single of the year.

My favorite album of 2006 is . . . .

Morph the Cat/Donald Fagen. Worthy of standing alongside Aja as a creative triumph, Morph the Cat sounds better to me every time I listen to it--the songs are some of Fagen's best, and the band is simply wicked tight. The biggest disappointment of the year, however, was that Fagen didn't perform any songs from Morph when Steely Dan went on tour this summer. As good as the Dan's Milwaukee show was, a live version of "Security Joan" would have been the highlight of it. Other key tracks: "What I Do," "Rhymes."

("Security Joan" is a WMA file; buy a deluxe CD/DVD edition of The Seeger Sessions here; buy Morph the Cat here.)

Coming tomorrow: A few words about a few other artists I've dug this year.

Christmas Random 10: Baby Please Come Home

2006-12-22T09:28:00.000-06:00

Since I got my LastFM playlist box last spring, I haven't done a Friday Random 10, because I figure the playlist box gives you enough of a look at what I'm listening to. But before I get out of here for the weekend, I've put my Christmas music list on shuffle, just to see what comes out.

"Poor Mr. Santa"/Andre Williams. Williams' greatest claim to fame is having written "Shake Your Tailfeather," made famous by Ray Charles in The Blues Brothers. He was also a staff producer at Motown for a brief period in the early 60s. On his latest album, released earlier this year, he's backed by the Diplomats of Solid Sound, who hail from my much-missed former home of Iowa City. "Poor Mr. Santa" was posted earlier this month at Big Rock Candy Mountain, which has featured an extraordinary array of R&B and country Christmas tunes.

"The Christmas Song"/King Curtis. The list of musicians with whom King Curtis performed is lengthy. Eric Clapton and Duane Allman backed him; he backed Aretha Franklin--in fact, he led Aretha's backing band while serving as a producer at Atlantic Records--and he also played on John Lennon's Imagine. During a brief period in the early 90s when The Mrs. and I were DJing weddings and parties, we used to close our Christmas shows with this.

"White Christmas"/Bing Crosby. You think that rushing the season is a modern phenomenon? This record hit Number One on Halloween in 1942 and fell out of the top spot the week before Christmas. The song was everywhere that year--Crosby's recording shared the spotlight big-band versions by Freddy Martin, Charlie Spivak, and Gordon Jenkins, but only Crosby's version made Number One--three different times, topping the charts again at Christmas of 1945 and 1946.

"Silver Bells"/Earl Grant. Grant was a keyboard player who sounded a lot like Nat King Cole when he sang (most famously on "The End"). He sings on this track from his 1965 album Winter Wonderland. Vocals are few on the album though; it mostly features Grant on organ, creating a warm and old-fashioned vibe. (This album, along with an additional motherlode of holiday cheer, was posted earlier this month at PCL LinkDump.)

"Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"/Darlene Love. From A Christmas Gift to You From Phil Spector, which features some of the most familiar and enduring Christmas recordings of the rock era by Love, the Crystals (which she fronted), and the Ronettes. Desperation is not an emotion oft-associated with Christmas--desperately hoping Santa brings you a gift is not the same as desperately hoping your lover will come back to you--but Love is one desperate woman here.

"Christmastime Is Here (instrumental)"/Vince Guaraldi Trio. From the indispensable A Charlie Brown Christmas. I bought the newly remastered version released this year to get the five additional tracks, all but one of which are alternate takes of the versions on the original album. What they do, mostly, is make a good thing better by extending it for an extra 20 minutes. (I also bought the TV show for the third time this year, on DVD this time, to go with the two VHS copies I've owned over the years. It does not include this alternate ending to the show, which is probably a good thing.)

"Mary's Boy Child"/John D. Loudermilk. "Mary's Boy Child" celebrates its 50th anniversary this year--it was first recorded by Harry Belafonte (still the best recording of it, I think) for Christmas 1956. A member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Loudermilk's best-known hit is probably "Indian Reservation," taken to Number One by the Raiders in the summer of 1971. Others you may know include "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye" and "Waterloo"--not the one by Abba, the one by country singer Stonewall Jackson. (There's more about Loudermilk at Record Robot.)

"Angels We Have Heard on High"/Ottmar Liebert. Filed under "new age," Liebert has recorded two dozen albums since 1990. His Christmas album, Poets + Angels, was one of his first, featuring traditional carols and original songs, on Spanish guitar.

"Xmas Time (Sure Doesn't Feel Like It)"/Mighty Mighty Bosstones. A song that seems to have been recorded for a 2000 compilation called Sleighed: The Other Side of Christmas, which also features the legendary "Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope" by Sonic Youth and "Christmas With the Devil" by Spinal Tap. Contrary to what you might guess, "Xmas Time" is no headbanger, though. (Posted earlier this month at Heartache With Hard Work; don't know if the links are still live. If they are, listen to the Raveonettes, too.)

"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen-We Three Kings"/Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan. I am hipper than you know--I actually knew about Barenaked Ladies five years they hit it big in the United States. My sister-in-law dated a Canadian in the early 90s, and he was a fan. They were massively successful up there, but it was 1996 before they broke huge in the States. From their 2004 album Barenaked for the Holidays, these old carols sound great, although McLachlan is extremely annoying.

And that ought to hold you through the holidays, as this blog is now going on hiatus until next Wednesday at the earliest. Instead of posting any tracks here today, I'll simply direct you to the Hype Machine. Search "Christmas," or just browse. That's how I found a lot of stuff I've been listening to this season, at the blogs linked above and at others I haven't had time to mention.

And now, a merry Christmas to all and to all a good weekend. . . .

Forgotten 45: "Eighteen With a Bullet"

2006-12-21T13:08:00.000-06:00

One of the occupational hazards of the radio biz is that you get burned out on records a lot sooner than the average listener does. In its Top 40 glory days during the 1970s, Chicago's WLS played its top two survey hits every 75 minutes and its next two every 95 minutes. When I was a little baby DJ at KDTH in Dubuque doing 6-to-midnight on weekends, we'd play our top 10 songs three times each in the course of six hours. Certain blockbuster hits would be thus beaten to death in the ears of a station's DJs long before the public decided it had had enough. Sometimes months before.

A more common condition is when the public gave up on records that DJs can't get enough of. Take Pete Wingfield's 1975 hit, "Eighteen With a Bullet." Perhaps the reason DJs loved this more than listeners is that it's really aimed at us--Wingfield constructs a clever metaphor of love affair-as-record chart that zooms over the head of non-insiders. Favorite bit:

I'm a super-soul sure-shot, yeah
I'm a national breakout
So let me check your playlist, mama
C'mon let's make out

The very title refers to Billboard's practice of assigning "bullets" to records that show the strongest chart growth from the past week to the current week. So when Wingfield says he's "18 with a bullet," he's an up-and-comer showing continued potential.

In a happenstance that seems too perfect to be coincidental, "Eighteen With a Bullet" was Number 18 with a bullet in Billboard on the chart dated November 22, 1975, before peaking at Number 15 the next week--and losing the bullet, and starting to fall down the chart. Even if listeners didn't get all the references, it's hard to figure how anybody could fail to respond to Wingfield's glorious blue-eyed soul.

Dig "Eighteen With a Bullet" here. Buy it here, but beware: You'll also get "Run Joey Run" and other inexplicable failures of taste from late 1975, but there's enough goodness apart from Wingfield to make up for it.

Welcome, Fans of Mellowness

2006-12-20T17:42:00.000-06:00

Welcome to those of you who have found your way here from JasonHare.com, and the mention of this blog on the day-10 installment of "The 12 Days of Mellowmas." Yes, "It Doesn't Have to Be That Way" is partially my fault. Thank goodness somebody else suggested it too, so it's not entirely my fault.

This is a blog devoted to music--mostly old but sometimes new--and secondarily to radio. We often post tracks (adhering as always to the standard blog convention that links are up temporarily and for sampling purposes only; we encourage you to buy anything you like, and we'll take a link down if the copyright holder gets in touch) and we occasionally podcast. Your blogger is an old radio guy who stopped making his living in the biz quite a few years ago, but who still dabbles--check the right-hand column to find out when I'm on the air and how to get the stream online.

(If you can't see the right-hand column, you're probably viewing this with IE6 or below. The site looks better if you view it with Firefox or IE7. But if there's no right-hand column visible, scroll down to see links to 2 1/2 years' worth of entries, interesting websites to visit, and suchlike.)

Apart from this welcome, this particular post is otherwise devoid of entertaining and/or useful information. Poke around a bit, though; download our Christmas 2006 podcast if you'd like. There should be a new post here tomorrow--Friday at the latest, so plan to come back regularly. Here at The Hits Just Keep On Comin', we post as often as we can, and we try not to suck.

Dan Fogelberg Gives New Meaning to the Term "Blue Christmas"

2006-12-19T13:53:00.000-06:00

Just checking in quickly here with a few things . . . first, if you're a boomer, then you need to take a moment today to remember cartoon producer Joseph Barbera, who died yesterday at age 95. Barbera and his partner William Hanna created and produced several of the most iconic kids' TV shows of all time, including The Flintstones, Josie and the Pussycats, and The Jetsons, as well as characters such as Scooby-Doo, Huckleberry Hound, and Yogi Bear. Domino Rally has a fun musical tribute.

Second, if you've never heard Simon and Garfunkel's chilling "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night," check it out over at Heartache With Hard Work. You couldn't ask for a more pointed commentary on American life at Christmastime--and even though it was recorded 40 years ago, murderers are still getting famous, people are still demanding their rights and not getting them, and political leaders are still telling us that dissent is wrong.

Third, at Jefitoblog, the ninth day of Mellowmas yaks up the hairball that is Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne." (I was going to steal the alternate title that the guys came up with for the song, but it's too good--you'll just have to read the post.) Almost exactly one year ago, I ripped it bigtime myself and said that I was prepared to hate anyone who didn't hate it as much as I do. Jason, Jeff: I love you guys.

And finally, our Christmas 2006 podcast is up. It's 27 minutes of holiday goodness, old and new. Let me know what you think of it.

This isn't the last post before Christmas--I'll be back.

Takes on Christmas

2006-12-16T14:29:00.000-06:00

(This post has been edited since it first appeared.)

Odds and ends from the inbox:

I've frequently mentioned Aimee Mann's Christmas album, One More Drifter in the Snow, this holiday season. Aimee did a live show in San Francisco a while back, featuring songs from the album--and it's streaming online, with interviews, special guests, and other stuff, here. (I am liking her Christmas tunes more the more I listen to them, but I have to say this about the album--it has the worst cover I've ever seen, bar none. It's hideous.)

One of the greatest of all Christmas records is the Drifters' "White Christmas," a classic doo-wop recording from 1954 featuring the magnificent wail of Clyde McPhatter. It's been hilariously set to animation here. (The animation has been around for a few years, apparently, and if you haven't seen it already, somebody will probably be e-mailing you the link before Christmas. That's how I got it.)

If you dig the Drifters' take on Christmas, AK at Soul Shower is your daddy. He's put up a mix of R&B Christmas classics that made my jaw drop when I first saw it. Some are well known, some are rare, but all are worth downloading.

If time permits, between now and Christmas I'll have a podcast featuring a few of my personal Christmas music essentials.

One More Thing: We must note the passing of Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records, who died Thursday at age 83. He's the second major figure in Atlantic's history to die in 2006--producer Arif Mardin died in June. Ertegun is not just important to one record label--even more so than with Mardin, his career touched upon those of nearly everybody who's anybody in popular music. Tributes here, from the Stepfather of Soul (thanks for the shoutout, Jason) and Dave Marsh and Fred Wilhelms at Holler If Ya Hear Me.

Top 5: Steppin' Up in Class

2006-12-15T13:11:00.000-06:00

Fooling around at the Airheads Radio Survey Archive this morning, I found an interesting artifact--a survey from WAWA in Milwaukee dated December 13, 1965. A little research reveals that WAWA was a daytime-only station at 1590 AM, licensed to suburban West Allis (although I would have guessed, based on the call letters, that it was licensed to Wauwatosa, hometown of The Mrs.). WAWA served Milwaukee's African American community, playing R&B and gospel and hosting local talk. For a time, it was owned by former Green Bay Packer Willie Davis' All-Pro Broadcasting, but All-Pro took it off the air when it acquired WMCS in the late 80s.

It's clear that WAWA was a smokin' great radio station musically. Here are five notable records from their chart:

1. "I Got You (I Feel Good)"/James Brown. (peak) This record has been so abused and overexposed in the last 41 years that it takes some effort to hear it now as people heard it then--an explosion of R&B energy that blasts your ass out of your chair and onto the dancefloor. It also inspired one of critic Dave Marsh's all-time great lines: "James sings the song as if God had called him to earth for the primary purpose of personifying sexual ecstasy."

2. "Ain't That Peculiar"/Marvin Gaye. (peak) In which the Motown house band, the Funk Brothers, does what it does, and brings Marvin along for the ride.

6. "Steppin' Up in Class"/Jimmy McCracklin. (debut)
11. "Black Night"/Lowell Fulson. (falling) The WAWA list covers a wide range of styles, as Top 40 often did in the 1960s, but certainly it was important for a station serving the entire African-American community to account for a wide range of taste. McCracklin and Fulson both had long and illustrious careers in R&B and often tended toward the "B" part of R&B. McCracklin is best known for "The Walk" from 1958; Fulson for 1954's "Reconsider Baby," famously covered by Elvis Presley. "Reconsider Baby" was named one of the 500 songs that shaped rock by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

15. "Hang on Sloopy"/Ramsey Lewis Trio. (debut) And they played some jazz, too, although this version of the very white original by the McCoys was a significant crossover hit around the country, reaching Number 11 in Billboard.

The lower reaches of this chart are especially interesting. "New Releases to Watch" features the Beatles' "We Can Work it Out," "A Must to Avoid" by Herman's Hermits, and Beatles soundalike "Lies" by the Knickerbockers. These records are so different from the rest of the stuff in WAWA's Top 20 that it's hard to imagine they ever got more than a brief look. And take note of the "spirituals" section at the very bottom of the chart.

During its lifetime, WAWA was never as popular in Milwaukee's African-American community as WNOV--but it featured two of Milwaukee's most well-known personalities: O.C. White and Dr. Bop, who's still fondly remembered by a lot of Milwaukee radio fans today, black and white. White and the Doctor are both sufficiently legendary to have been immortalized in a mural painted on the outside of the WMCS building a couple of years ago.

(Buy Lowell Fulson and other seriously great old school R&B here.)

Holiday Note: We have mentioned here a couple of times the Billy Idol Christmas album. Homercat has posted a couple of tracks from it at Good Rockin' Tonight; so has Rock Over Graceland. In general, the downtempo stuff is better than the rockers, which was a bit of a shock, although the downtempo cuts are occasionally spoiled when Idol ad-libs little spoken bits between verses. If you're only going to download one song, get "Silent Night." Idol takes all of the songs more seriously than I thought he might. He does "Silent Night" absolutely straight--and most shocking of all, it absolutely works.

Christmas 4 Everyone

2006-12-12T16:40:00.000-06:00

The Internets are magic. I can tell what search-engine phrases are leading to hits on this blog, so I know that lots of people were trolling the web by searching some combination of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "Christmas" last week. They were trying to find the music featured in the show's December 4 episode (which The Mrs. and I finally got around to watching last night--and which will be repeated on December 18), a gorgeous New Orleans interpretation of "O Holy Night" that captured both the wonder of Christmas and the city's lingering hurt in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The song was billed to a group called "City of New Orleans," real New Orleans musicians whose appearance was organized by the Tipitina's Foundation, which was created after the hurricane to benefit displaced musicians. (See the segment and download the song here.)

Of course, people trolling the Internet for Christmas music are thick on the ground these days. If that's you, you'll want to stop by PCL Linkdump for a ridiculously enormous collection of links. How enormous? Somebody out there digitized one of my favorite Christmas albums--The Spirit of Christmas With the Living Strings--and I'd never have found it otherwise. Not all of the links are live anymore, but you'll certainly find something there to dig.

And speaking of Christmas music: Two of my favorite music bloggers--Jefito and Jason Hare--are teaming up for the "12 Days of Mellowmas," which got underway yesterday at Jefitoblog and continued today at Jasonhare.com. For questionable music but grade-A snark, you can't do better.

Mailbag: A reader whose taste in music is eclectic but impeccable is recommending a Christmas album by Bootsy Collins, a bassist who's played with James Brown and George Clinton's Parliament/Funkadelic collective. If you know Collins' music, two things spring to mind: A) he wouldn't be among the first 500 people you'd expect to do a Christmas album, and B) if he did do a Christmas album, it would probably be unique. Which it is. Orangejello Lemonjello posted a couple of tracks from Christmas Is 4 Ever last week--the links were still live as of this afternoon, but get over there quickly before they disappear. Another reader sent me a bunch of links to YouTube videos featuring K-Tel record ads (find them here) as well as one for the late-80s Freedom Rock anthology, in which a couple of painfully bad hippie caricatures sold a really great compilation of classic rock hits.

I get all kinds of cool things in my e-mail from people who read this bilge on a regular basis. Thanks a lot.

Give Someone You Love Melanoma for Christmas

2006-12-11T17:33:00.000-06:00

By this point in December, Ebenezer Scrooge has got nothin' on your average radio person. Jocks and sales reps have been drowning in Christmas projects since early October at least. One year when I was a jock and The Mrs. was in sales, we seriously considered exchanging gifts on Thanksgiving, when we still felt a little holiday spirit, instead of waiting until December 25, by which we would be good and truly sick of the entire enterprise.

All across the country, radio stations will launch a promotion in the next day or two (if they haven't done so already) that many of them will call "The 12 Days of Christmas." The details will differ but generally, this major holiday promotion has two goals in mind: A) capturing as many holiday advertising dollars as possible and B) plying the listeners with swag. Of course, the definition of "swag" is up for grabs. The best holiday prizes my radio stations ever gave away were Christmas trees decorated with dollar bills, $50 to a tree. (Research has shown that listeners would rather win cash than anything else.) The worst were probably certificates for free tanning. If there's a worse prize to have to give away than free tanning certificates, I'm not sure what it is. I'd rather give away cigarettes. Although years ago, I worked at a station where one of our sponsors gave us movie passes, but insisted we give them away one at a time, presumably because nobody goes to the movies alone and the theater would sell at least one ticket that way. That may have been worse, but not by much.

At small-town stations (and some of the bigger ones, too), the holiday season brings out a particular sort of advertiser--the kind who hasn't been on since last Christmas, and who won't be on again until next Christmas, or until his going-out-of-business sale. A subset of this group consists of clients for whom the amount of aggravation they intend to put you through is inversely proportional to the amount of money they intend to spend. It's one of Bartlett's Laws of Radio that the more money a client has to spend, the less they care--generally, these clients know how advertising works, and they trust the station and its people to get things right with minimal oversight. People who think they're livin' large by spending $100, however, will pester you until it's like being pecked to death by a duck. Plan on at least two spec scripts and two revisions of the one they finally choose before they'll sign on the dotted line. And then, when you finally get them to approve the ad, that's when the fun is sometimes just beginning.

I once developed a spot for a hot-tub dealer who had been the subject of a long and difficult seduction by one of our sales reps. We put in hours of work, doing several revisions, including the time we burned down the whole damn thing and started over, but we got the buy, five ads a day for five days starting Monday--not a big buy, but a start. On Monday afternoon, the studio intercom blinked. It was the receptionist, who said, "Andrew [the sales rep] is out of the building. Can you talk to the hot-tub guy? He needs to talk to somebody right now." It seems the guy wanted to cancel his advertising. "It's not working," he told me. "Nobody's come into the store who says they've heard it."

It had been on twice. I gently explained the concept of frequency, and promised that I'd have Andrew call him just as soon as he got back--because Andrew got paid for that sort of advertiser triage, and I didn't.

Toward the end of the holiday season, small-town stations start selling holiday greetings. Stations put together inexpensive packages in which advertisers can thank their many friends and customers for their patronage during the past year, and say that they look forward to serving them in the new year. There are a limited number of ways to say this, and the most commonly used version is the one in the preceding sentence. But some poor Christmas-abused copywriter will have to come up with a few variations, because the station will likely be running little else on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Sponsor greetings are the tanning certificates of advertising--good enough when they're all you've got.

All that said, however, there were scattered moments during the holiday season when it would all seem worthwhile. You'd be on the air, and you'd play a spot on which you'd done good work and for which the client had paid a bundle, then you'd segue into a really good Christmas tune (the Ronettes' "Sleigh Ride," for instance) and do a nice little talkover, hitting the post perfectly, then look out the window to see snowflakes dusting the station parking lot. And you'd think, "Damn, I love my job." Tanning-certificate giveaways and all.

(Buy the Ronettes, on the insanely great A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector, here. Seriously, if you do not have this album, go buy it now. I mean it. It's too good not to have in your collection.)

Uniquely Geeky

2006-12-08T15:33:00.000-06:00

I have been deep into the music from December 1971 this week. Late '71 is another of my favorite musical seasons--by then, I'd seen my first year around as a Top 40 listener, and I'd known for most of that year that I was going to be a radio guy when I grew up. The season was made more magical by the fact that I was an 11-year-old boy looking forward to Christmas--although I was looking forward to one part of it in my uniquely geeky fashion. I knew that my favorite radio station, WLS from Chicago, would be doing its Holiday Festival of Music on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I remembered how much I had loved it the year before. I hoped it would be that way again. (In other words: At age 11, I was nostalgic for something that had happened when I was 10.)

The WLS chart from this week in 1971 is a time-traveler's delight. So much so, in fact, that I couldn't be satisfied with writing about five or 10 of the songs, and posting only one or two. Thus, it's podcast time, featuring five of the hits from that week's chart. Which five? For me to know and you to find out, baby.

Recommended Listening: Today's the anniversary of John Lennon's murder. Leaky Sparrow has posted an aircheck from WCBS in New York with reports from that night. At WFMU's Beware of the Blog, there's much, much more from the radio dial the night Lennon died. (And also here.) And at Davewillieradio, there's an eclectic (and recommended) hour of hits, from the 60, 70s, and 80s.

(This post has been edited slightly since it first appeared.)

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

2006-12-05T18:30:00.000-06:00

Many thanks from The Mrs. and I to everyone who extended condolences via the comments to my post about our cat, Abby. The loss of a pet is one of those situations in life where if you have to ask why it matters, you wouldn't understand the explanation--and I'm glad so many of you didn't have to ask. We now return to happier subjects--I'm happy to link you to some worthwhile music posts at other blogs. First, the Christmas division:

--Pogo A GoGo has a Christmas mix featuring "Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto" by James Brown. It's worth hearing, if just for that title.

--Some Velvet Blog has been posting music that was essential radio fare during the golden age of Top 40 radio. First it was John Denver and the Muppets--now it's the Carpenters, including "Merry Christmas Darling"--which is, in fact, the most popular Christmas single released in the 1970s and one of the biggest Christmas hits of all time.

--Indieblogheaven has another track from Aimee Mann's One More Drifter in the Snow, "The Christmas Song." This is the best track I've heard yet from the album. (While you're there, check out Fiona Apple's "Frosty the Snowman," too.)

Now, the non-Christmas division:

--The Duke of Straw at the Late Greats put up Dolly Parton's cover of "Stairway to Heaven," and you really ought go listen to it, because you may never come across a recording that will lead to a more ambiguous set of reactions. Hell yes, it's a sacrilege for anybody to cover the most famous recording in the classic-rock canon; hell yes, it's silly for someone as undeniably non-rock as Dolly to even presume to try it. But then again--it's not without its charms, either.

--The Idolator (part of the Gawker Media empire that includes sports blog Deadspin and political gossip blog Wonkette) posted the Four Tops' "Are You Man Enough," their last trip into the Top 20 until 1981's fine "When She Was My Girl." This is another mighty example of the glory that was early 70s soul, and the third big hit from the Tops' post-Motown era, coming on the heels of "Ain't No Woman Like the One I've Got" and "Keeper of the Castle."

--And finally: If you're my age, your parents may have owned a bunch of records by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass back in the '60s. Mine did. You may not have heard them since. I hadn't. Not until Mike at nialler9 put up a few TJB tracks that are stored in my memory bank--and yours.

From Now On

2006-12-03T21:14:00.000-06:00

It's a lovely Sunday night at our house. We put up the Christmas decorations this afternoon, and Christmas music is on the box. A fire is blazing in the fireplace, and the house smells of wood smoke and the popcorn that The Mrs. just got out of the microwave. It's been so pleasant for the last couple of hours that I decided to move the laptop down from my office to the chair right next to the fire. This tableau normally includes a couple of cats--Sophie, the white and brown one, and Abby, the gray one, who loved the fireplace especially. Sophie's in her spot tonight, but Abby's not.

We put Abby to sleep on Friday, after several months of difficulties. Perhaps we could have taken more measures to prolong her life, but we finally decided that to do so would be to postpone the inevitable. And so, on Friday morning, we built a fire, and she was sleeping in front of it at noontime when our kind veterinarian came. A few minutes later, Abby's life ended in her favorite spot in the house. She had been with us just a few weeks shy of 16 years.

(I kid The Mrs. that she wasn't yet 30 when we got Abby. She retorts that I had a lot more hair back then. And I shut up.)

This particular post has nothing to do with music, although I toyed mentally Friday night with a cat-themed Top 5 list (Cat Stevens, "Honky Cat," "Nashville Cats," Cat Mother and the All-Night Newsboys, and the Stray Cats). However, almost every post here has had something to do with Abby and Sophie, inasmuch as one or the other of them, and often both, was usually within a few feet of me as the posts were written. They like to be wherever I am. For the last three years, I've worked at home, so I've spent more waking hours with them than I have with The Mrs.

It will be different around my house from now on. And as lovely as this night has been, it's not as complete as a night in front of the fire should be.

So that's why there have been no posts here since Thursday. And since I've got lots of actual remunerative labor in my life this coming week, there likely won't be anything new here until Tuesday at the earliest. In the interim, please read this--a commenter to an earlier post claimed to be confused about how I could legally post mp3s on this blog, so I explained the mp3 posting conventions to which this blog adheres. And then visit some of the music blogs listed in the column at the right, which adhere to the same conventions.

And if you have a cat, spend some extra time with it. Someday, you'll be glad you did.

Schticks of One and Half a Dozen of the Other

2006-11-30T15:34:00.000-06:00

Had he not died more than 30 years ago, Allan Sherman would be 82 today. For a brief moment in the 1960s, Sherman was one of the biggest stars in America--and there are still a few of us around who continue to be entertained by him.

Sherman's career started as a TV producer, best known for creating the original I've Got a Secret. Steve Allen hired him to produce the Tonight Show in 1962, but for various reasons, that job didn't last long. Out of work, Sherman managed to land a recording contract with Warner Brothers, the same label that had made Bob Newhart a star a couple of years earlier. Taking advantage of the folk boom in the early 60s, Sherman released an album of folk-song parodies--although he had been doing similar parodies at Hollywood parties ever since hitting town in 1950 or so. The album, My Son the Folk Singer, became a surprise hit. My Son the Celebrity quickly followed, and in the summer of 1963, My Son the Nut, which went to Number One. The single from the album, "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah!" rose to Number Two (behind Stevie Wonder's first single, "Fingertips") in August. That same month, Sherman was invited to sit in for Johnny Carson--back to the Tonight Show as a star, about a year after having been sacked.

What happened next is a familiar showbiz story--at the moment of one's greatest triumph, something happens, often something one can't control, and wham--career over. That's more or less what happened to Allan Sherman. John F. Kennedy (who had famously been overheard singing a Sherman parody to himself) was assassinated; Sherman's next album was a relative stiff, and, according to Allmusic.com's Jason Ankeny, the assassination was the reason. Sherman's brand of frivolity suddenly seemed inappropriate to the times.

Perhaps, although by the time Sherman released Allan in Wonderland in early 1964, the British Invasion was underway, transforming the record business, radio, and popular culture itself in ways that made it difficult for a lot of artists who had flourished beforehand to thrive afterward. The sunny pop of the early Invasion period was in some ways the spiritual opposite of Sherman's heavily Jewish comedy. (Sherman proved it later in 1964 by recording a song called "Pop Hates the Beatles.") After several more poorly selling albums, Sherman's showbiz career ended in 1966 after Warner Brothers dropped him. He was already suffering from emphysema and financial difficulties by that time, and he died in 1973. Sherman's schtick lives on, however, in the work of Weird Al Yankovic, who lists Sherman as one of his influences.

There are any number of Sherman tracks a fan might post. "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah!" is the obvious one. "Pop Hates the Beatles" is another, although it's sung in the sort of gritted-teeth manner that makes clear Sherman knows he's lost the battle and the war. Like Yankovic, Sherman frequently recorded parody medleys, in which he'd take off on several songs one verse at a time (sample title: "Shticks of One and Half a Dozen of the Other"). But given that the holiday season is here, how about "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas"? Next to "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah!," it's the most enduring item in Sherman's catalog.

(Buy Allan Sherman here. )

Panorama

2006-11-29T16:18:00.000-06:00

If you prowl the music blogs these days, you'll find lots of interesting Christmas music, some old but much new, and the season's barely started. Blogsarefordogs has a holiday mix featuring a couple of tunes that are essential at my house from Nat King Cole and Vince Guaraldi, but also a fine version of Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Death Cab for Cutie and a strangely compelling take on "Welcome Christmas" from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands has a track from Aimee Mann's new Christmas disc. Historically, Christmas discs have been perceived as either a cynical cash-in or a give-up move, and when they're not, it's usually because they offer some sort of compelling new vision of the season. (That doesn't happen very often, however.) The tracks I've heard from Mann's album seem pleasant enough, but I wouldn't call them compelling. Still, I'll probably buy the whole album--but not until it gets to be December--and perhaps I'll be compelled by hearing the whole thing together.

Off the Christmas track, John at Lost in the 80s has a couple of cuts from the Cars' Panorama, their third album, a distinctly different experience from the first two. Because it didn't adhere to the formula established by The Cars and Candy-O, it was perceived as less radio-friendly--although John's point is that radio was more unfriendly to Panorama than Panorama was to the radio.

It's the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine

2006-11-28T11:43:00.000-06:00

You may have noticed all hell breaking loose around us these last few days--earthquakes, tidal waves, cats and dogs living together--clearly time is out of joint, and the universe is not the place it used to be. From Forbes, last week:

"Absolutely, for radio to be competitive it has to be local," says Tom Barnes, CEO of MediaThink, a business strategy consultant that works with several radio stations in various-sized markets. While syndication works for relatively generic shows like pop chart countdowns and some morning drive slots, everyday music radio isn't going to compete with MP3 players and online streaming by mimicking them. Differentiation is the key.

Barnes notes that while 95% of U.S. households still tune in to broadcast radio, the average time people spend listening has dropped steadily for years.

A renewed concentration on going local "is the only thing that can save the industry," he says.

Back when I was a program director in small-town radio, I had my own version: We are not going to be able to compete with the big sticks in the larger markets up the road head-to-head on the music we play. Where we're going to carve our niche is with what goes on between the records. Now it seems that all these years later, the radio industry's biggest players are starting to get the message. That's right, kids: Local radio featuring actual personalities is coming back into fashion.

On the list of things I thought might happen before I'm encased in Lazarus' Box--Cubs win the pennant, Kate Hudson calls for a date, etc.--this development ranked pretty far down the list. But if the consultants understand it--the same people who homogenized radio into irrelevance in the first place (and, I might add, who largely ignored iPods and satellite radio until those horses were pretty far out of the barn)--I think I'll be getting a call from Kate any day now.

Top 5: Like a Dinosaur

2006-11-25T10:37:00.000-06:00

It's 20 years now, sometime between Thanksgiving and the first full week of December, that I bagged my job as program director and Top-40 morning show host in Macomb, Illinois, to move up to a larger market--on an elevator-music station.

By the fall of 1986, I'd been at WKAI for 2 1/2 years. The owner who'd brought me on board had sold the place about a year before; the new owner was, to borrow a phrase from a friend of mine, neither ignorant nor simian, but I ended up wanting to leave anyhow. As a programmer, I wanted to strive for excellence regardless of our market size; the new owner was OK if the stations sounded good enough for where they were, which I interpreted as settling for mediocrity. Sometime during the last half of 1986, he hired a guy to take over programming of the AM station so I could concentrate on the FM--but he also gave the guy the title of operations manager, which put him above me on the organizational chart. We co-existed, and for the most part he didn't mess with me--but his very presence was a daily reminder of the gulf between the owner's goals and my own.

So I started poking around for another job, and landed an interview at what was billed as a "soft AC" up the road a couple of hours in Davenport, Iowa. It turned out to be an elevator-music station, but one that was supposedly committed to doing elevator music with a touch of personality, and I was just the kind of guy they said they wanted. In addition, the program director and I hit it off on a personal level, trading banter like old friends about 15 minutes into the interview. Davenport was a place we wanted to live, even though the station was not exactly the kind I wanted to work for. When they offered me the job at about $2,000 a year more than I was making in Macomb, it didn't take long for The Mrs. and me to decide.

So anyway, this is an incredibly roundabout way of introducing the top five songs on the Cash Box chart from this week in 1986, while we were deciding to move on. Perhaps it was time for me to start exploring an entirely new musical genre, because looking back on it now, this was a perfectly dreadful week for the Top 40. If you can find something on the chart worth posting as an mp3, let me know, because I can't.

5. "The Next Time I Fall"/Peter Cetera and Amy Grant. With this, Cetera had flown millions of miles from Chicago. A guy who'd been an integral part of a politically aware and progressive rock band, who'd been hippie enough to get beaten up at Wrigley Field one day in '71 for being a longhair, he decended willingly into a solo career from adult-contemporary hell. With a mullet, yet.

4. "You Give Love a Bad Name"/Bon Jovi. Sounds like a hard-rock record, don't it? There was always something about phony about Bon Jovi, though--as if they were the product of a focus group designed to sell records to teenagers. The biggest joke was on Jon Bon Jovi himself, who actually believed he was a genuine rock icon.

3. "True Blue"/Madonna. Her most charming record. It's like you took the Material Girl out of the expensive gown, put her in a cheerleader sweater and jeans, and took her to a sock hop. This is grade A girl-group bubblegum, like Abba by way of Josie and the Pussycats.

2. "Human"/Human League. In which hot-producers-of-the-moment Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who were making a star of Janet Jackson at about the same time, put some warmth into a group that had, up to this moment, sounded pretty cold.

1. "Amanda"/Boston. It had been almost eight years since Boston's last visit to the Top 40. I remember thinking when "Amanda" came out that it was an interesting novelty, only to be shocked when it smoked up the charts and made Number One. If Boston had waited another year, however, it's likely that "Amanda" wouldn't have had the same impact. The pop landscape was changing; rap and dance-pop were on the rise. By the fall of 1987, "Amanda" would have sounded even more like a dinosaur than it did in the fall of '86.

The Way it Is

2006-11-23T08:47:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. I wasn't going to post here until tomorrow, but idle hands make bloggers blog. Once I got going I wanted to post a track, but they're apparently already in a turkey-and-football coma at Savefile.com (the same coma I expect to be in by mid-afternoon), so there's no audio today. Yet here we go.

November 23, 1995: Motown sax legend Junior Walker dies at age 64. "Shotgun" rocked as hard as anything on the radio in the 1960s; the main riff of "What Does it Take (To Win Your Love)" is the quintessential sound of summertime.

November 23, 1994: Songwriter Tommy Boyce commits suicide at age 55. If you do not know the name, you know the songs he wrote for the Monkees with partner Bobby Hart, including "Last Train to Clarksville," "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone," and other songs including the Monkees' theme. Boyce and Hart also wrote the theme for Scooby Doo, Where Are You?, which, if you are a certain age, is imprinted in your DNA. And they scored a hit of their own in 1968 with "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight."

November 23, 1976: In the early hours of the morning, Jerry Lee Lewis is arrested outside the gates of Graceland, where he's waving a pistol and demanding to see Elvis. It's the Killer's second arrest in the last 12 hours.

November 23, 1899: Louis Glass and William Arnold install the first jukebox at the Palais Royal Hotel in San Francisco. It's an Edison phonograph with a coin attachment, and it plays cylinders instead of flat records. For the next quarter-century, phonographs are too expensive for most home consumers, so coin-operated players become fabulously popular. The term "jukebox" would not be coined until the 1930s.

Birthdays Today:
Bruce Hornsby is 52. Hard to believe it's been 20 years now since "The Way it Is," Hornsby's debut single, which sounded like nothing else on the radio at the time. An exhaustive box set released last summer demonstrates that Hornsby's career has been far more interesting than his handful of hit singles would indicate, generally terrific though they have been.

Alan Paul of Manhattan Transfer is 57. Dismiss Manhattan Transfer as mere revival act or gay icon at your peril. A couple of years ago I picked up a copy of their two-disc anthology Down in Birdland mostly for The Mrs., who digs that sort of thing--but then I discovered that I dig that sort of thing, too. Key tracks: "The Morse Code of Love," "Ray's Rockhouse, "Soul Food to Go"--all of which, in a rational universe, would have been enormous hit singles.

Betty Everett is 67. Think of the great opening seconds in pop music history--the shattering chord that starts "A Hard Day's Night," for example, or the enormous piano glissando that opens Abba's "Dancing Queen." Does either of them top Betty Everett's blast of "Does he love me I want to know/How can I tell if he loves me so" at the top of "It's in His Kiss"? I think not.

Number One Songs on This Date:
1996: "No Diggity"/Blackstreet featuring Dr. Dre. I note this because it topped the last-ever chart published by Cash Box magazine, which ceased publication after 54 years with the issue dated November 16, 1996.

1987: "Mony Mony"/Billy Idol. Despite the reputation this song had at the time--the ultimate hard-rock party anthem, complete with an obscene chant to go with it--the Tommy James original kicks its ass. (Billy Idol is releasing a Christmas album this year. Be very afraid.)

1974: "I Can Help"/Billy Swan. In which Swan gets his Roy Orbison on.

1970: "I Think I Love You"/Partridge Family. If you have to ask, you'll never know.

1899: "Curse of the Dreamer"/Dan Quinn. It's a good bet that this was on that first jukebox in San Francisco, because Quinn was one of the top recording stars of the 1890s. You can hear some of his recordings at the website of the University of California-Santa Barbara's amazing Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.

Sequel

2006-11-20T17:30:00.000-06:00

I'm not surprised that at least one "Taxi" fan uncloaked him/herself in the wake of my rip on it last week. It's that kind of record: Not only do people adore it, they're willing to defend it against somebody who doesn't, although people never say exactly what it is that makes them consider the song a classic.

A couple of commenters have mentioned "Sequel," Chapin's updating of the story, which reached Number 23 in December 1980. It's been a long time since I heard it, but I went out and found the lyrics online--and I'm actually offended less by it than I am by its predecessor. Unlike "Taxi," "Sequel" doesn't overtly announce its pretensions to Great Art. It's just a song, and it's a harmless one, although it does contain a fair amount of philosophical gibberish: "We talked of the tiny difference/Between ending and starting to begin/We talked because talking tells you things/Like what you really are thinking about". You're left with the feeling that a lot of what's in the lyric is there to fit the tune, and not because it actually means anything.

If you still think I'm hideously wrong, there's always the all-purpose argument stopper: "Well, who the hell are you, anyway? Have you ever written a song?"

Nope. But you don't have to be a chef to know you don't like the taste of something.

If you've decided you hate me now, there's good news for you: Due to the press of actual remunerative labor (three deadlines in the next 10 days or so) and the holiday (turkey and football coma wiping out Thursday), posting will be mighty light here this week. So you might consider visiting any of the music blogs listed at the right--they're all fine and worthy, and many are better than this blog anyhow. (At least one would probably have kind things to say about "Taxi," if you asked.) And if you haven't done so yet, poke around the Hype Machine (also linked at the right) and explore the world of mp3 bloggery.

Top 5: Bottom Feeding

2006-11-17T16:43:00.000-06:00

The people at Boston.com are out with another list of the 10 Worst Songs of All Time. When I first saw it mentioned somewhere, I thought it might be good blog fodder, and it is, but only inasmuch as it shows how these lists have jumped the shark. Everybody does 'em nowadays, but nobody's trying too hard anymore. By now, there's not a single sentient being left in the observable universe who doesn't know that Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time" is the suck. Similarly, making fun of "We Built This City" or "Ice Ice Baby" hasn't been cutting-edge for a long while either--not since the first three or four times the songs appeared on lists like these. It doesn't seem entirely kosher to bash a record because the accompanying video is stupid: Journey's "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" is probably one of the Ten Worst Videos of All Time, but the record itself isn't nearly so bad. And I'd even go as far as defending Kevin Federline, ostensible inspiration for the list, because what the hell did everybody expect? The second coming of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan? Federline's vanity rap record is merely the latest in a long line of cynical record-company cash-ins designed to separate idiots from their money. I'd submit Federline's probably not smart enough to be put to blame for it. (I will give Boston.com credit for getting one thing right, though: including Fergie's execrable "My Humps" on its list. Do not, under any circumstances, click the YouTube link at that particular entry, or you will be walking around for the next several hours humming about the dumbest goddamn thing imaginable. I mean it. Don't go there.)

With a little more thought and creativity, you and I can surely come up with a better list of The Worst Records of All Time. Here are my nominees, biased toward the 70s and 80s as usual, in order of increasing awfulness:

"Sugar Walls"/Sheena Easton. (chart peak: #9, March 2, 1986) Famously written by Prince, whose generally juvenile attitude toward sex was never more strongly demonstrated than it is here, and sung in a clueless and unsexy whine by Easton, its title metaphor would be considered less than clever in a junior-high locker room.

"Rock Me Amadeus"/Falco. (chart peak: #1, March 29, 1986) Sheer sonic ugliness masquerading as art. I realize Falco was Austrian, but if the Germans had won World War II, every record in the 80s would have sounded like this.

"Taxi"/Harry Chapin. (chart peak: #24, June 3, 1972) One of the first entries in the history of this blog bashed "Taxi," and I haven't changed my opinion. I hate that record.

"Christine Sixteen"/Kiss. (chart peak: #25, September 3, 1977) In which a sexual predator latches onto an underage girl outside her school--although what's really obscene is the barely competent whorehouse piano banging throughout. Relentlessly vile. I not only hate that record, I hate anybody who doesn't hate that record.

"The Last Game of the Season"/David Geddes. (chart peak: #18, December 20, 1975) The story of a scrub high-school football player whose blind father dies during the first half of a game. The scrub somehow gets into the game in the second half and singlehandedly wins it for the home team, explaining afterward, "It's the first time Dad ever saw me play." This record's most amazing achievement might be that it makes Geddes' more famous record, "Run Joey Run," sound like "Stairway to Heaven" in comparison. Ecch ptui.

Deciding which of these tracks to post was a chore. I finally settled on "The Last Game of the Season," because to people used to the concept of ironic distance, it sounds like something from another universe. Today, this kind of unabashedly sentimental treacle would never make the Top 40, although it would probably still get some traction on country radio. And in fact, a country version by Kenny Starr rode high on the charts in early 1976, albeit under a different title: "The Blind Man in the Bleachers." Starr's version made it to Number Two--an apt description indeed.

Buy Geddes' version here, if you dare. It's Rhino's Super Hits of the 70s: Have a Nice Day, Volume 20, but be forewarned that it contains a few other records that could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, such as "Disco Duck" and Engelbert Humperdinck's "After the Lovin." However, you will get some decent songs in addition, including the Sanford/Townsend Band's "Smoke From a Distant Fire" and Smokie's "Living Next Door to Alice." I mention the latter because ever since last summer, I've been getting dozens of hits to this blog from people Googling "Living Next Door to Alice," mostly from Europe. I'm not sure why, but for those of you looking for the tune, there's where to find it.)

So anyway: I'd stake those five choices against anybody else's list of the truly awful. What are your choices for Worst Records of All Time? Let's see 'em in the comments.

Clearance Sale

2006-11-16T17:27:00.000-06:00

Big radio news today: Broadcast behemoth Clear Channel, the nation's largest radio owner, is selling out to a private equity firm. It will also sell off almost 40 percent of its radio stations and all of its TV stations. The sale of the company itself wasn't necessarily a surprise--it's been up for sale for a month. Neither is it news that they'd sell off some stations. The scale of its station sale--every last one it owns outside of the nation's top 100 radio markets--is what's surprising. The company says the 448 stations it will sell accounted for less than 10 percent of its revenue last year. So you wonder why the company wanted them in the first place. It's as if the nation's radio landscape were a floor covered with money, but they were being just as diligent in picking up the change as they were in grabbing the $50 bills. Nevertheless, 448 stations is a lot to shed at one time.

The move may put a boatload of radio stations into the marketplace, but it doesn't necessarily mean I'll be able to go out and buy me one. Other major media companies are likely to snap up a lot of them, especially in the biggest markets, the ones in the low 100s of the market rankings. It's not known whether Clear Channel will sell the stations individually or put them up for sale in blocks--and what Clear Channel eventually decides to do will be important if it wants to keep the prices up in a suddenly glutted market.

My concern in all this is not for the corporate high rollers who are already unconscionably rich and will get richer as a result of it. I know some people who work for Clear Channel in markets that are going to be sold off. (Madison, market number 96, is apparently not among them.) I went through several station sales in my radio days, so I know that today has been an uncomfortable day for Clear Channel staffers, and today's only the first of many uncertain days to come. The thing about a sale is this: You always go into it hoping for the best, but you should never be surprised if the worst happens. I've had both. I've been through sales where the new company was a vast improvement over the old--and given some of the horror stories you hear about working for Clear Channel, lots of its employees are probably looking forward to a change. But I've also been through sales that went badly. I got fired as a result of one, albeit indirectly. Everybody in the biz knows somebody, or knows somebody who knows somebody, who got caught up in a mass execution on the first day of new ownership. It happens.

If you're a Clear Channel employee reading this, let us know what you're thinking. You can be anonymous in the comments. I'll never tell.

Four Out of Five Dentists Surveyed Recommend You Skip This Post

2006-11-14T12:20:00.000-06:00

Sugar: We love bubblegum here, as you know--and Foxbase has posted six compilations of obscure "sunshine pop" that is almost 100 percent pure refined sugar. You probably don't need six zip files full of the stuff--but if you dig it, it's good to have in overdose proportions. Here's a sample: the Sugar Bears' sublime "You Are the One." This was an actual Hot 100 hit (chart peak: #51, May 13, 1972) available on actual vinyl, although lots of people--myself included--cut if off the back of a Post Sugar Crisp cereal box. As was often the case in the bubblegum era, the group featured people who were happy to be making a living as musicians and didn't trouble themselves with artistic pretentions: The Sugar Bears included Mike Settle, onetime member of the First Edition with Kenny Rogers, Baker Knight, who wrote such hits as "Lonesome Town" and "Never Be Anyone Else" for Rick Nelson, "The Wonder of You" for Elvis, and "Don't the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time" for country star Mickey Gilley, as well a pre-stardom Kim Carnes.

(It looks like the Sugar Bears have slipped out of print--imagine that!--so if you're looking to buy "You Are the One," eBay is your best option.)

Soda: If you've been watching TV (especially, but not exclusively, sports on TV), you have probably seen a new Dr. Pepper commercial touting its supposed 23 flavors. And if you've seen it, you've heard another pop tune converted to a jingle--the Vapors' "Turning Japanese," heard in the ad as "Turning 23." I intended to blog about this last week--until I discovered that "Turning Japanese" wasn't in my library. But it is now, thanks to Kelly over at Looking at Them, who posted it along with other songs from the soundtrack of the 80s flick Sixteen Candles. Better get there quickly before the tracks disappear. (One wonders if the people at Dr. Pepper or their ad agency realize that "turning Japanese" is an obscure euphemism for excessive masturbation, and when taken as such, is also racist. I'm guessing not.)

Sweet: The inimitable Locust St. is up to the 1976 installment of 100 years in 10 jumps. That's my favorite year, of course--and I was fascinated by both the commentary and the tunes, those familiar to me and those unfamiliar, too--especially "You to Me Are Everything" by the Real Thing. By 1976, soul and R&B were being subsumed by disco, but before disco became first formulaic and then robotic, there were a number of gorgeous records that straddled the genres, and 30 years later, they're the ones worth remembering.

Heart of Darkness

2006-11-10T16:23:00.000-06:00

Here's a bunch of tunes on your radio this week in 1969, all of which have the same thing in common. If I listen to all of these songs in a row--and I've done it--I'm left feeling uneasy. They all hint at the dark side of the 60s, a darkness that would break over Altamont in December 1969, and in other places in 1970: Kent State and Jackson State in April, Sterling Hall in August--Vietnam every day--and on and on. These records are, to me, the sound of the happy dream of the 1960s as it started to die: even the uptempo ones, even the ones that sound happy on the surface, even the bubblegum. They're taken from the WLS chart dated November 10, 1969.

1. "Come Together"-"Something"/The Beatles. (peak) That's maximum value for your 95 cents right there, although the darkness manifests itself in the first second of side A: On "Come Together," John Lennon is heard to say, "Shoot me."

3. "Baby It's You"/Smith. (climbing) Damn, does this record ever rock. But there's something ominous about that thumping bass line and Hammond B3 organ, too. (Pay no attention to the pastoral images on the YouTube video, which have nothing to do with the song.)

5. "Eli's Coming"/Three Dog Night. (climbing) A few weeks back I wrote about Aaron Sorkin's use of pop songs to punctuate episodes of his various TV series. "Eli's Coming" is the single greatest example, from the single greatest episode of Sports Night (which may be the single greatest entertainment program in the history of television, but that's another post entirely). One of the characters discusses how he first heard the ominous "Eli's Coming" as a kid, and associated it with the feeling that something bad was about to happen--and before the episode is over, something does.

7. "And When I Die"/Blood Sweat and Tears. (climbing) Now here's a lyric guaranteed to make many people feel uneasy: "I'm not scared of dyin' and I don't really care/If it's peace you find in dyin', well then let the time be near." It used to bother me too, although now, worrying about death seems like a waste of time. But nevertheless . . . .

13. "Smile a Little Smile for Me"/Flying Machine. (climbing) Do not confuse this Flying Machine with a group James Taylor formed in the 1960s; this Flying Machine belongs to Tony Macaulay, the British songwriter/producer responsible for (among others) "Build Me Up Buttercup," "Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again," and "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes"--in other words, a freakin' bubblegum genius who ought to have a statue erected somewhere in his honor. But "Smile a Little Smile for Me" leaves you with the feeling that no matter how hard he tries, Tony won't be able to get Rose Marie to smile. Maybe because she feels the darkness closing in.

14. "Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)"/Steam. (climbing) This record was made as a joke, an intended B-side that was supposed to be so bad that no one would mistake it for a hit--which makes it a bit like a dead man walking. And if you listen for it, the drums and vibes sound a bit like a skeleton dancing, or something. Kiss him goodbye, if you dare.

17. "Ball of Fire"/Tommy James and the Shondells. (falling) Another great, trippy Tommy James record. (Let this man into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, dammit.) James sings about how the "ball of fire in the sky/keeps watchin' over you and I," and although it's supposed to feel peaceful and secure, it feels a little spooky to me.

22. "Yester-me, Yester-you, Yesterday"/Stevie Wonder. (climbing) One of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs, this record is atypical for Motown, starting off with an old-school mixed chorus and featuring some shiveringly beautiful string flourishes--and a powerful sense of loss.

29. "Hot Fun in the Summertime"/Sly and the Family Stone. (falling) You could stack this and "Everyday People" against any two singles from any other group--even the Beatles--and Sly would come out pretty well. But given that this song was a hit in September and October, after summertime was over, it too carries a sense of loss with it.

Extra: "Cherry Hill Park"/Billy Joe Royal. (off the chart) I'm throwing this in as a ringer--it did a single week on the WLS chart dated November 3 and then dropped off--but like all of the other records on this list, there's darkness, or at least mystery, at its heart. We're supposed to think only that Mary Hill is a girl of easy virtue there on the merry-go-round in Cherry Hill Park, but the song's minor key hints that she's up to something else entirely.

(Buy "Cherry Hill Park," "Baby It's You," "Smile a Little Smile for Me," "Na Na Hey Hey," and other Top 40 landmarks here.)

Keepin' it Mellow

2006-11-09T14:21:00.000-06:00

Here's a quick word of welcome for those who may have found their way here from JasonHare.com, home of "Adventures Through the Mines of Mellow Gold." Jason was kind enough to mention this blog and link to an earlier post in his latest installment. The latest Mellow Gold also takes on "Dance With Me" by Orleans, which I'd hoped Jason would get to eventually--and notes that Orleans leader John Hall got himself elected to Congress from New York State on Tuesday.

It's a bit early to talk about Hall's reelection race already--but clearly his campaign song in 2008 will have to be "Still the One."

Recommended Reading: Homercat on the wind of change blowing through America this week.

Jocks and the Jockless

2006-11-08T17:14:00.000-06:00

Another Chicago radio legend is back on the air on WZZN, the "true oldies" station left standing after Real Oldies 1690 perished. According to Chicago Sun-Times media columnist Robert Feder, Dick Biondi, who first lit up the nighttime airwaves on WLS in the early 60s, is doing nights at the station, which also recently added John Landecker to its lineup. Rumors are flying that Fred Winston might be the next on board.

(Thanks to Willie--who has started blogging and podcasting--for the tips.)

Poking through Feder's archives, I saw a story from last week that Chicago's WLIT-FM launched its all-Christmas format on November 2--two-and-a-half weeks earlier than last year. WLIT scores big ratings when it goes all-Christmas--but c'mon. November 2? The people I feel sorry for are the jocks. Poor bastards.

Speaking of jocks: If you've visited my station lately, you may have noticed the lack of jocks. On November 1, The Lake bagged the phrase "timeless rock" in favor of "everything classic," and both broadened and deepened its music library considerably. (Heard recently: "Absolutely Right" by the Five Man Electrical Band and "The Slider" by T. Rex.) The station is currently going jockless during the week, although the jocks are on the air on weekends. This will apparently continue for a while, although we've been assured it's not permanent.

Couple of housekeeping tidbits:

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 recently, and you'll want to upgrade to it for a couple of reasons. First, Microsoft will badger you incessantly if you don't, and second, this blog will finally look right if you do. When viewed with earlier versions of IE, the sidebar drops to the bottom of the page, but that doesn't seem to be happening with IE7. Of course, if you've been using Firefox like I do, everything has always looked right.

And also: Since I've started posting mp3s regularly, this blog has finally been listed at the Hype Machine, a website that aggregates music blog posts from around the Internet. It's a small thing, but if it brings in some more eyes and ears, I'm for it, because I'm a whore like everybody else.

Siberian Lockdown and Other Punishments

2006-11-06T18:18:00.000-06:00

November 6, 1993: The box set Citizen Steely Dan is released. It features all seven of the Dan's studio albums plus a few rarities, including the non-album single "Here at the Western World," an alternate version of "FM," a live version of "Bodhissatva," and a demo version of "Everyone's Gone to the Movies." On the same date in 1971, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are hired as staff songwriters at ABC-Dunhill Records in Los Angeles. They get the gig because independent producer Gary Katz demands ABC hire them before he will accept the contract the label has offered him. Katz later produces the albums that end up on the box set 22 years later.

November 6, 1973: Phil Kaufman, manager of singer Gram Parsons, is fined $300 for stealing Parsons' body from Los Angeles International Airport. After Parsons' death in September due to complications from a night's overindulgence in alcohol and heroin, his family had wanted him buried in Louisiana. However, Parsons and Kaufman had made a pact that whoever died first would cremate the other at Joshua Tree National Monument in California, and Kaufman resolved to live up to it. If the tale of the hijacking of Parsons' body hasn't been made into a movie yet, it should be.

Birthdays Today:
Glenn Frey is 58. When I was writing about the fall of 1982 last week, I could have mentioned Frey's debut solo single, "The One You Love," which was on the charts back then. I didn't--because it's pretty inconsequential, as is most of Frey's solo material, except for 1991's "Part of Me, Part of You," which was the most Eagle-ish thing he ever did, but which went largely unheard.

Ray Conniff would be 90, had he not died in 2002. Conniff's achievement was to, as he described it, "put voices alongside instruments so you couldn't tell them apart." Although there's a tendency to think of all elevator music as sounding alike, Conniff's sound was distinctive: Nobody ever did more with "ba-ba-ba" and "doot-doo-doo." Between 1956 and about 1976, the Ray Conniff Singers became one of the largest-selling album acts of all time. They scored only a few hit singles, most notably "Somewhere My Love," which made the Top Ten in the late summer of 1966. You know that record, even if you think you can't remember it. Of course you do. Click the link and hear for yourself.

Adolphe Sax, the Belgian inventor of the saxophone, would be 192, had he not died in 1894. The saxophone is probably the only instrument in history apart from the electric guitar to be criticized for immorality--according to The Devil's Horn by Michael Segell, the sax was banned in Japan, saxophonists have been sent to Siberian lockdown by Communist officials, and a pope even indicted it.

Number One Songs on This Date:
1993: "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)"/Meat Loaf. From Bat Out of Hell II, on which Mr. Loaf returned to the charts doing the same overproduced sludge he'd done in the 70s. Because yet another new generation of listeners has grown up since 1993, he released Bat Out of Hell III last week, on Halloween. (Volume 3 is problematic for a number of reasons, ably catalogued here.)

1990: "Ice Ice Baby"/Vanilla Ice. Every generation has music in its past that it will have to answer for. This is Generation X's.

1988: "Kokomo"/Beach Boys. A cross-generational hit, sounding fresh to kids who couldn't remember the Beach Boys, and familiar to their parents, who could. Right song, right time.

1979: "Pop Muzik"/M. The future was writ large on this record. The soulless, mechanical music presaged the early 80s, and the mostly rapped lyric presaged the late 80s--but this record also came with a video.

1958: "It's All in the Game"/Tommy Edwards. One of the most gloriously romantic records of the 1950s, this was actually an old song even back then, written in 1911 by Charles Dawes as "Melody in A Major." (Dawes would become Vice President of the United States under Calvin Coolidge.) Lyrics were added in 1951, and the song was recorded by Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole before Edwards did it. Since Edwards, it's been done by the likes of the Four Tops, Van Morrison, and Elton John.

Plug: Nothing new will appear here for a couple of days. However, tomorrow night I'll be liveblogging the midterm election returns at Best of the Blogs all evening starting at around 6PM Central, so come on over for news, analysis, and snark.

Top 5: Steppin' Out

2006-11-03T14:34:00.000-06:00

By autumn 1982, I was out of college. I'd finished my coursework that summer (thanks to a professor who passed me in my last course, even though I'd flunked both tests and didn't turn in any assignments) but wouldn't walk through graduation ceremonies until December. I'd been working full-time at KDTH in Dubuque since the spring. Over the years, KDTH was great to me. They hired me part-time in 1979 at a time when my on-air experience consisted of less than three months at my college station. They let me leave for the summer of 1980 to work a full-time gig at another station, then took me back in September. And they reconfigured their weekday schedule to make room for me as a full-timer when I finished school in the spring of '82.

I'd planned to stay in Platteville and commute to my job in Dubuque, but we had a fire in our apartment in January, so I found a place in Dubuque and commuted to Platteville instead--from a furnished one-bedroom walkup, old building, urban neighborhood. There was a grocery store and a gas station across the street, and a sub shop down the block. I wouldn't live there now, but in 1982, it was fine. And by autumn, I was feeling pretty comfortable with the life. I liked my job, I liked living alone, I liked living in a big city--compared to Platteville and growing up on the farm, anyhow. (Dubuque was, and is, gorgeous in its own way, with beautiful old houses, duplexes, and apartment buildings clinging to the Mississippi River bluffs along streets that are impossibly steep, impossibly narrow, and often both.)

That autumn is one of the last ones in my life that's vividly brought back by certain songs, and here are five of 'em:

"Blue Eyes"/Elton John. There's a quality to this song that I can't describe well except to say that reminds me of how it feels to bundle yourself against the wind while you crunch through the fallen leaves. Probably because it was the last song I heard one day before bundling myself against the wind to crunch through the fallen leaves.

"Steppin' Out"/Joe Jackson. Killer hooks aplenty--drums and bass marking a brisk beat, then the piano crashing in with those big, beautiful chords. Elec-tricity so fine, indeed.

"Southern Cross"/Crosby Stills and Nash. All about trying to escape your feelings for another person by lighting out for the ends of the earth, and how well that always works. As beautiful a lyric and tune as they ever recorded.

"You Should Hear How She Talks About You"/Melissa Manchester. One way to hear this is as an uptempo example of the adult contemporary sludge that clogged the Top 40 in the early 80s--and Manchester contributed her share with records like "Don't Cry Out Loud" and "Fire in the Morning." Or you can hear it as a clever bit of adult bubblegum made to sound great on the radio--which is the way I like to take it.

"IGY (What a Beautiful World)"/Donald Fagen. We didn't know at the time that The Nightfly would be the last gasp for Steely Dan fans until the 1990s. In one of the Top 40's most unsatisfying eras, "IGY" raised the level quite a bit.

There's a cut on The Nightfly, not released as a single, that brings autumn back even better than "IGY." "Maxine" gives me that same kind of buttoned-up-against-the-cold feeling I get from "Blue Eyes"--and it's one of Fagen's best lyrics, too, about a young couple graduating from college who are eagerly anticipating sophisticated lives in the adult world: "We'll move up to Manhattan/And fill the place with friends." Dubuque's no Manhattan, but I could relate nevertheless.

("Maxine" is a WMA file again this time. Buy The Nightfly here.)

Soul Nirvana

2006-11-02T11:22:00.000-06:00

After cranking out so many posts in the last few weeks, I wasn't planning to post today--but there's something out there you've got to hear.

All of us who love music have a handful of records we remember fondly from back in the day but have, for one reason or another, been unable to lay our hands on. The record that's been at the top of my most-wanted list for a long time is a gorgeous record from my earliest days of listening to the radio: "5-10-15-20 (25-30 Years of Love)" by the Presidents, a classic one-hit wonder whose moment of fame came at Christmastime of 1970, when they reached Number 11 on the Hot 100. The last time I saw it for sale anywhere was on an out-of-print volume of Rhino's Soul Hits of the 70s series at a prohibitive cost, so I've done without it. Up until today. The Stepfather of Soul is celebrating his first anniversary as a blogger this week, and today he put up this superb soul rarity. You don't want to miss it, so stop by, listen, and leave Jason some anniversary greetings. And watch for his anniversary podcast coming soon--as his podcasts frequently are, it's likely to be filled with further transmissions from Soul Nirvana.

While I have your attention: Another friend of this blog, Homercat at Good Rockin' Tonight, put up a dead-on rant about the latest list of nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He suggests that if R.E.M. gets in before several overlooked acts from the 1970s--the Doobie Brothers and Jethro Tull, to name two of the most egregious omissions--there's something seriously wrong with the induction process. Although we kind of knew that already, when ZZ Top got in.

And one other thing: Sometimes a band's name is all you need to know about whether you want to hear them or not. Take Hoobastank, for example. If you're a band stupid enough to think that's a good name, I'm not going to bother with you. But on the other hand: A band called Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse deserves at least three minutes of my time, and yours. Thanks to Nathaniel at I Guess I'm Floating for including JHC and the FHotA in his Halloween mix.

Surviving Studio 60

2006-11-01T16:28:00.000-06:00

When we're not listening to tunes around here, we're watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. A report earlier this week that the new TV series created by Aaron Sorkin was on the verge of cancellation. Not true, apparently. NBC has ordered three more episodes of the show. (The same report earlier this week containing that news also said cast members were telling friends that the show's being canceled.) NBC replaced the show in its timeslot last Monday night, but it will air as usual next Monday. The show reportedly rebounded in the ratings a bit on its October 23rd airing, and NBC has acknowledged two critical facts--first of all, it attracts the kind of educated and upscale audience advertisers want, and second, they haven't got anything else that would do any better against CSI: Miami.

There are lots of people who passionately hate Studio 60, calling it smug and/or self-important. (And if you don't like what you're seeing in the first place, Sorkin's trademark combination of literate dialogue delivered at high speed isn't going to raise your opinion of it.) And the critical voices have gotten louder as the ratings have slumped. I can see how people might see it as smug or self-important--a show about the trials of very rich people producing a very popular TV program might seem a bit far removed from the real-life concerns of most viewers. But then again, few of us are young, nubile medical interns, and people still love Grey's Anatomy. Does the phrase "suspension of disbelief" mean anything to anybody? How about "living vicariously"? In all of Sorkin's series (including Sports Night and The West Wing), I find myself wishing I could crawl through the screen and become part of the group that's making a TV show--or governing the free world. I don't get that from any other show on TV.

My guess is that Studio 60 will get a lot more rope than most other struggling shows, not just because it attracts a highly desirable demographic, but because Sorkin delivered NBC one of the most honored shows in history with The West Wing. And maybe the extra time will be enough to build an audience of smart people who like smart TV about smart people.

Big Whompin' Music Blog Roundup: The first links are long-overdue heads-up on great stuff at three of my favorite sites, which I hadn't visited recently. Look what I missed:

Over at Take 'Em as They Come, Danny Alexander counted down to Halloween with a series of 13 essays on ghosts, horrors, fears, monsters, and lots more. It's great, thought-provoking stuff, and even though Halloween is past, it's still a worthwhile read. You can find the first parts at this link, then use Danny's archives to find the rest. Locust St.'s series of 100 years in 10 jumps, 1906 to 2006, is up to 1956. You can find the entries from 1906 to 1956 at this link. Living in Stereo paid tribute to Chuck Berry's 80th birthday with a series of posts. Find the first one here; browse for the rest of them here.

Also notable: Bob Dylan played the Kohl Center in Madison last night. (I probably should have gone, but I didn't.) Wild Mercury has a review and the setlist for his Chicago-area show this past weekend. And Stereogum has a rundown on the new Christmas albums for 2006. Every year I swear I'm not buying any more Christmas music, and every year some artist I like makes a liar out of me. This year: Aimee Mann. I've heard a couple of tracks from One More Drifter in the Snow already, and I'll be buying it, but not until Christmas gets closer.

Inevitable Endings

2006-10-31T22:21:00.000-06:00

A few years ago, I wrote the following:

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am all about September and October. Let others wax lyrical about the miracle of rebirth in the springtime, and all those little green shoots poking their hardy heads through the last of the snow. I say it doesn't take much skill to be born. Anybody can do it. The meaning of life, I am convinced, is in how we deal with ripening, harvest, and the onset of winter. Yes, those little green shoots grow strong and tall in the summer sun, but they don't last forever. When September comes, they begin to grow old, as will we. In October, they begin to wither and die, as will we. The lesson of September and October is that while the end is inevitable, we can at least expect to share some moments of indescribable beauty before we go.

If forced to state a philosophy of life, I think I could stand on that. The central fact of our existence is not so much that we're here, but that all we have while we're here will eventually slip away. Thus we'd best enjoy what's beautiful in our lives while it's here, all the better to cherish it after it's gone.

All this month I've written about my October experiences and the music that brings them back to me each year. From the 10-year-old riding the school bus, to the 15-year-old discovering the meaning of home, from the 16-year-old getting kicked out of the park after closing, to the 19-year-old meeting the woman who would become his wife--all of those people are still inside of me somewhere, and the experiences they had on their autumn days have contributed to whatever the 46-year-old me has become today.

I warned you when this blog began that sometimes, it was going to be so personal that maybe I'd be the only one who'd get it. I thought maybe the October series might be one of those times, but I'm pleased by the comments indicating that many readers could relate to them. If you've missed any of the series, you can scroll down to the bottom at this link and read up.

Here's one more bit of October music before November arrives in an hour or two. It didn't make the Hot 100 in the United States during the fall of 1978, but it had been a Top 10 hit in England during the summer. I remember hearing it on the radio that fall and liking it, but I couldn't have known then how appropriate it would come to be in later years. On the face of it, Justin Hayward's "Forever Autumn" is about missing one particular person, but you can also hear it as an acknowledgement of what I said at the start of this post: Endings are inevitable, but at least we get to share some moments of indescribable beauty before we go.

(It's a WMA file this time. Buy "Forever Autumn" along with hits by the Moody Blues here.)

Not for Everybody

2006-10-31T11:19:00.000-06:00

It's a double post day today. I'll have a few final words about October on this last day of the month later on, but I also wanted to mention the following and, given the subject of this post, it wouldn't be appropriate to put the two topics together.

All around the music blogs today, you'll find various postings of Halloween-themed music. (Our friend Homercat has been at it for over a week at Good Rockin' Tonight--clearly, he's a man who knows how to celebrate Halloween.) Halloween horrors come in all flavors--mutants, monsters, guys in goalie masks, etc. But there's also the horror that people inflict on one another. To me, there's nothing more monstrous than our inhumanity to our fellow creatures. Exhibit A: "The Boiler" by Rhoda Dakar and the Specials.

I first read about "The Boiler" several years ago, when Dave Marsh placed it at Number 880 on his list of the top 1000 singles in The Heart of Rock and Soul, and despite Marsh's graphic description, I had trouble imagining it. Over the weekend, I finally got to hear it when bitterandrew at Armagideon Time posted it. It seems ordinary enough. The Specials sound almost jaunty, although Rhoda's thick British accent makes it hard to understand her until you get used to it. Rhoda describes herself as a "boiler," a derogatory phrase for an unattractive, often older, woman. She gets mixed up with a man who seems to treat her well at first, before things go terrifyingly wrong.

There's nothing more monstrous than our inhumanity to our fellow creatures. In the last two minutes of "The Boiler," you will know.

Amazingly enough (and despite being banned by most radio stations in Britain), "The Boiler" was a modest hit on the British charts in 1982, when the Specials' ska/punk fusion was hugely popular. It didn't chart in the States, where the Specials didn't translate well. And in truth, it's impossible to imagine any American radio station playing it. I'd rather not hear it again myself.

October 1979: Million Mile Reflections

2006-10-30T14:16:00.000-06:00

I was hanging around the campus radio station one day in late August 1979. I may have been getting ready to go on the air, or I may have just come off, or I may have been there simply because I'd missed it over the summer. I'd worked a lot of radio since my first shift in December, and three months later I'd managed to snag a paying part-time gig at KDTH in Dubuque. I was already making plans to run for program director of the campus station in the elections later that fall. In short, I felt like I had life pretty much by the tail. At the start of my sophomore year, I was a much different person than I'd been the previous fall.

So anyway, August 1979. I'm hanging out with a few friends at WSUP. It's the first week of school, so new freshmen interested in radio have been coming in to check the place out. On this particular afternoon, a girl walked in and started looking around. She was wearing a red-and-white striped sweater--which she filled out extreeeemly well--and had long dark hair down to her waist, dark eyes, and a distinctive nose. "Holy crap," I said to my friends. "Who's that?" And then: "I have an overwhelming desire to go over and ask her out."

I didn't, of course, because that's not the way I rolled back in those days. I did find out that Sweater Girl's name was Ann. And when I found out she was going to be reading news on the air Tuesday nights, I did what any radio guy shy around women would do--I signed up to host the Tuesday evening show. I soon found out she already had a boyfriend, but I asked her out for drinks after the show a couple of times anyhow, and she accepted. She seemed to like me, but she kept dating this other guy, too.

At the end of October, the radio station hosted a Halloween party in the student center bar. It was a rager--legend has it that the party marked the last time dollar pitchers were ever offered on campus because beer consumption broke some sort of record. And the two guys who DJed the party--one of whom, Willie, has been a friend ever since those days and remains a regular reader of this blog--put together what we would have called back then the greatest balls-to-the-wall night of rock and roll in the history of mankind. Ann came with her boyfriend, but she also hung around my table, and after about two beers, I wrapped my arm firmly around her waist and didn't let go of her for the entire night. (Except, it is said, for the brief time I climbed up on a table to do the bump with one of the sports guys from the radio station.) I am not sure what became of the boyfriend that particular night--but she still didn't dump him, even after all that.

Every year in the late fall, the radio station held a banquet. It was ostensibly a time to hand out awards and to honor the outgoing heads of various station departments, but it was mostly an excuse to dress up and drink. I asked Ann if she would like to go with me, not as a date but as a couple of colleagues going to the same function, since I had a car and she didn't. (Christ, I was smooth.) But I recall that after I dropped her at her dorm room, I asked if I could kiss her goodnight, and she said yes. I arranged to have roses delivered to her a few weeks later on Christmas Eve, and the boyfriend was out of the picture soon after that. I had actually won the girl.

There's more to the story I could tell, but I'm going to skip ahead. Ann became The Mrs. in 1983, and is still The Mrs. today. The red-and-white sweater is hanging in the closet in my office.

In the fall of 1979, WSUP was an album rocker, so instead of listing five hits from the singles chart during this week in that year, I'll list five albums that bring back the season. (No tracks posted this time. Sorry.)

In Through the Out Door/Led Zeppelin. A commenter to an earlier post mentioned that her college station played jazz, so I suppose I should acknowledge how fortunate we were that our station had a student-programmed rock format with student DJs instead of National Public Radio. Our program director during the fall of '79 had worked the summer at a Lee Abrams-consulted album rocker in Milwaukee, and he created his own version of the Abrams "Superstars" format, the first classic-rock format, for WSUP. Thus the Zeppelin album was in heavy rotation for a long time. Key track: "All My Love."

The Long Run/Eagles. I was on the air the day this came in to the radio station, and it was on my turntable shortly after the music director opened the package. I've heard it so many times that it's pretty crisp to me now, but it remains one of The Mrs.' all-time favorites. Key track: "The Sad Cafe."

Cornerstone/Styx. An album much awaited by all of us at WSUP--and by almost everyone in the world between the ages of 12 and 24 in 1979. Too bad it wasn't remotely as good as The Grand Illusion or Pieces of Eight. I didn't know what to make of the big single, "Babe"--although we know now its success meant that Styx, which had largely avoided ballads on their earlier albums, would include at least one "Babe"-like sludgefest on each forthcoming album. Key track: "Borrowed Time."

Candy-O/The Cars. The Cars' chilly sound would be everywhere on the Top 40 by the year Ann and I got married, but in 1979, it was still fresh and unusual. Candy-O remains the Cars' best album, and it still sounds pretty good today. Key track: "Dangerous Type."

Million Mile Reflections/Charlie Daniels Band. In the fall of '79, right up there alongside Zeppelin, the Eagles, Styx, and the Cars, every bit as important on album-rock radio, was the Charlie Daniels Band. Million Mile Reflections ended up being the biggest hit of Charlie Daniels' career. The lead cut, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," scored an unusual triple as a hit on album-oriented radio, Top 40, and the country charts, where it spent a week at Number One. I've apparently lost the argument over whether country rock belongs on classic-rock radio anymore--listeners sufficiently interested to weigh in said yes, it does--but honesty compels me to report that I haven't played "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" on any of my shows at the classic rock station yet. Key track: "Passing Lane."

While I was living it, it seemed to take a long time to get from 1970 to 1979. Looking back on it now, it seems to have passed in an eyelash. Coming next: A few final thoughts on Octobers, then and now.

October 1978: Right Down the Line

2006-10-27T22:05:00.000-05:00

In the fall of 1978, I became a radio guy. I was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville, majoring in radio and television. I couldn't wait to start working at the campus radio station, WSUP. I was on the music staff at first, having sufficiently impressed the music director with my knowledge of the arcane. One of my first assignments was to pull 45s from the library to put in the studio bin for airplay, and I still remember how it felt to hear on the air one of the songs I had picked.

But I wanted to be behind the microphone. Before I could do that, I had to get my license. In those days, on-air people who operated a station's transmitter needed a third-class radiotelephone operator's license. To get that, you had to pass an actual federal test. In October, I took the four-session prep course the university offered, but was disappointed to find that the test wouldn't be offered at the Federal Building in Madison on a Saturday until December. However, I found out I could take it in Rock Island, Illinois, in November--and so, one fine Saturday, I went there--2 1/2 hours each way.

I passed the test and got the license. A couple of weeks later, it came in the mail--a government-issued certificate with seals and signatures and everything. Next, I had to make an audition tape in the station's production studio ("The Cave") and submit it to the chief announcer so I could be "cleared for air." I must have impressed him. Normally, freshmen didn't get to do morning shifts, but it was finals week and the chief announcer badly needed a morning off, so on Thursday, December 14, 1978, from 6 to 9AM, I did my first real radio show. (First song: "Everybody Needs Love" by Stephen Bishop.) With a little help from the newsman (who's now a writer and anchor with ABC Radio in New York), I made it through the morning, and shortly before the end of the show, the program director came into the studio. He asked, "Are you sure you've never done this before?" Almost 28 years later, it's the highest compliment I've ever gotten for anything I've ever done. To tell the truth, however, I had done it before--in my head and in my dreams for a lot of years leading up to that day.

There were better songs on the radio than "Everybody Needs Love" in October 1978, including:

"Hot Child in the City"/Nick Gilder. On my second day on the air, I played the album version of this, from City Nights, which has a different ending, instead of the single, as the station's format required. I must have felt pretty comfortable to be breaking the rules on my second damn day.

"Reminiscing"/Little River Band. This song is capable of transporting me back to my dorm room in McGregor Hall, which I occupied for only a couple of months before moving in with a friend from home, who lived in another dorm. There were nine of us from my graduating class at Platteville that fall. One of the nine was my on-again, off-again girlfriend. We were on again, briefly, at the start of the year, only to end up off again soon thereafter, permanently.

"Who Are You"/The Who. I actually got on TV at Platteville before I got on the radio. For a week in September I anchored sports on the campus station's 5PM newscast. I remember it every time I hear "Who Are You"--Keith Moon's death was the newscast's lead story one night. The experience taught me to stay the hell away from the business end of a television camera--I never went back in front of one.

"Right Down the Line"/Gerry Rafferty. City to City is one of those albums that grows in my estimation as the years pass. There's a warmth and intelligence on that record I couldn't have articulated in 1978, although I certainly felt it. Whenever "Right Down the Line" came on back then, it always gave me a lift, which I often needed as I navigated my new world.

"Love Is in the Air"/John Paul Young. This record doesn't involve very much--an insistent bass line, some high-hat cymbal, rhythm guitar, piano--and the lyrics aren't much, rhyming "look around" with "sight and sound." But put it all together and "Love Is in the Air" works spectacularly well, especially the way it keeps going up the scale and building in intensity. If it went on for 15 minutes, I'd keep listening.

October's almost over, but we'll make it to 1979 before November arrives. Coming next: the girl in the red-and-white sweater.

Livin' on the Air in Cincinnati

2006-10-26T20:36:00.000-05:00

Chances are pretty good that if you're reading this blog, you probably watched WKRP in Cincinnati. The show premiered in September 1978, the same fall I went off to college to major in radio and TV (we'll talk more about that tomorrow), and ran for four seasons on CBS. I haven't seen it in years, but a reader sent me some links to a bunch of YouTube videos from the show, and just watching the one of the show's opening theme brings back lots of memories.

Although WKRP wasn't a massive hit in its day, it was much beloved amongst its fans, and if it ever came out on DVD, it would probably do pretty well. Except it may never see the light of DVD day. If you'll recall, the show used a great deal of real popular music, and it's extremely difficult to get clearances to use that music now. The handful of episodes that were released on VHS, and even the syndicated episodes that appeared on Nick at Nite in the 1990s, substituted other, generic music, or edited out altogether the scenes involving music. Because one of the reasons people buy DVDs is to have the original, unedited episodes, Fox Home Entertainment is reluctant to release the truncated versions. As of last year, Fox wasn't willing to say WKRP would never come out on DVD. Other shows with music clearance problems at first, such as Moonlighting, have eventually been released. But nobody should be too optimistic.

(A German company released the series on DVD a few years ago, but the video is reportedly unwatchable. It was essentially a bootleg, and a poor one at that.)

You can access more WKRP clips at the link above, at least until they get pulled--now that Google owns YouTube, they're cracking down on clips that violate copyright. For tons of interesting trivia on WKRP, visit the show's Wikipedia entry.

October 1977: Boogie Nights

2006-10-25T08:36:00.000-05:00

(Eighth in a series. Navigate to the others from here.)

During the fall of 1977, when I was a senior in high school, I was approached by a group of cheerleaders (the only time such a thing ever happened, for damn sure) and asked if I'd DJ a postgame dance they were having. "I'd love to," I said. Only afterward did I remember that I didn't have a sound system that could do it. Fortunately, a few of my stereo-geek friends were eager to strut their stuff. One had a set of powerful JBL speakers; another had an amp with sufficient wattage to fill the cafeteria where the dance would be held. We scrounged a couple of turntables and rigged up a microphone after a series of trial-and-error experiments, and that was that. We did several dances throughout the school year.

At one point, somebody even wired up some disco-style lights so we could add a bit of disco-style ambience--although disco music was not especially popular, at least not in the fall. We had a rock-and-roll crowd--in fact, the single most popular record we played, the one guaranteed to clear the chairs and get everybody out on the floor, was "Peace of Mind" by Boston. It wouldn't be until the spring dances that we started getting disco requests.

Being the high school's ace DJ appealed to me. A lot. And there was a moment during one of the dances that the die was cast for my future. As we were setting up, I told my friends that I was going to play "I Think I Love You" by the Partridge Family at some point that night. They were aghast. I was adamant. About midway through the evening, I dropped the needle on it, and I will never forget the reaction. The first few notes of the introduction stopped every conversation in the room. A few people looked up at the balcony where we were set up. Then people started looking at each other.

Nobody danced.

Everybody sang.

I learned at that moment the power of the perfect song at the perfect moment, as well as the power of old songs to transport people back in time. I've never forgotten the lessons.

October 1977 wasn't one of the Top 40's golden seasons. Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" hit Number One on the 15th and wouldn't give it up until December, and it was emblematic of the generally bland nature of a lot of the most popular songs that month. Still, there were a few exceptions, and here are five of 'em. Well, six, actually:

"Star Wars-Cantina Band"/Meco and "Star Wars (Main Title)"/John Williams. The theme song from the hottest movie of our lives up to that time, in your choice of flavors, disco or symphony orchestra.

"Keep It Comin' Love"/KC and the Sunshine Band. As I've written here before, I love me some KC. Those who hated the repetition on KC's records surely hated this, which was the most repetitive of them all. But there's something to be said for getting into a groove and staying there for as long as it feels good, which this record does. Turn off your brain and shake your booty.

"Black Betty"/Ram Jam. In the context of 1977, this sounded like Ram Jam was fighting a one-band holding action against the encroaching blandness. A record so seriously loud and raunchy that it could probably kill Debby Boone.

"Boogie Nights"/Heatwave. This must have found its way onto our turntables during one of those dances, and in October 1977, it was one of the fastest rising records on the chart. Heatwave would score hits with better songs in 1978 ("Always and Forever" and "The Groove Line"), but this was their biggest.

"Strawberry Letter 23"/Brothers Johnson. I wrote about this song in January and posted it as part of a Forgotten 45s podcast (no longer available) in February. I'm putting it up again because it's one of the really great records of the 1970s. It frequently turns up on various oldies tapes of mine and on the computer, and it's inevitably the perfect song at the perfect moment.

(Buy "Strawberry Letter 23," as well as the Brothers' superb 1976 hit "I'll Be Good to You," here.)

Coming next: Lost in the new world.

Regular Guys

2006-10-24T09:25:00.000-05:00

A few minutes at Baby’s Named a Bad Bad Thing will reveal the depths to which some parents are willing to sink for the sake of giving their child a unique or memorable name. To me, it's better if your kid becomes unique and memorable based on what he does than to have you give him a name that's likely to get him beaten up twice a week for his entire childhood. (Perhaps I'm prejudiced, as the possessor of a fairly generic first name.) All this is by way of introduction to a post mentioning some regular guys with regular names.

Bob: The Mrs. and I caught Bob Newhart doing his standup show over the weekend. I was a Newhart fan before his 70s TV show, thanks to my parents' copies of The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back and The Button-Down Mind on TV. Newhart's recording career began with a series of prank phone-call tapes he made with a partner that got some radio airplay in Chicago. Warner Brothers Records, which had been left behind as record sales exploded in the 1950s, signed him and told him they'd record his first album at his "next live appearance." Trouble was, he'd never done a live appearance, so his first album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, is actually a recording of his first gigs. After it went to Number One, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back followed it up the charts. Newhart held down both Number One and Number Two on the album chart for something like eight months in 1960 and 1961--the Beatles didn’t do that, Elvis didn’t do it, nobody else did it until Guns 'n' Roses in the 90s. Newhart's show Saturday night was a bit light on his famed one-sided phone conversations, although he did a reprise of the famous "Driving Instructor" bit. One quibble was that he relied on creaky ethnic stereotypes for several jokes, but I'd chalk that up to generational differences--the man is 77 years old. In general, he was the same funny guy he's been, in various incarnations, for over 45 years.

John: Chicago radio legend John Landecker is officially back on the air, doing 3-7pm weekdays at WZZN in Chicago. His show is only the second local show on the station. It's had a live morning show for a while, but has been voice-tracked the rest of the day by one guy--New York DJ Scott Shannon. If the reason isn't extreme cheapness, I'm not sure why a major-market radio station would want to have the same voice on the air for 20 hours a day--especially one with no Chicago pedigree, no matter how famous he might be elsewhere. Landecker's arrival ought to liven things up considerably. (Now Shannon's only on for 16 hours a day, though, so clearly WZZN is on its way to the top.)

Dave: A few weeks back, Aaron Sorkin ended an episode of his Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip with Dave Mason's gorgeous cover of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" I promised to post it when I got it, and here it is. Sometimes the long version of a song represents more of a good thing, but I'm not sure that's true with this tune. The 45 version, which is a little over a minute shorter, benefits from being tighter--but the full-length version is what I got, so it's what you’re getting, too. (Chart peak: 39, July 8, 1978)

(Buy Dave Mason here.)

October 1976: The Song Remains the Same

2006-10-22T20:29:00.000-05:00

(Seventh in a series. Navigate to previous parts from here.)

October 22, 1976, was a Friday. Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford held their final presidential debate in Williamsburg, Virginia. Earlier that day, Ford signed an executive order exempting Ashton C. Barrett, a member of the Federal Maritime Commission, from mandatory retirement for one year. Before the presidential debate on NBC, an episode of Sanford and Son titled "I Dream of Choo-Choo Rabinowitz" featured Fred's attempt to break a record for staying awake. On ABC-TV, Cindy Williams of Laverne and Shirley and country singer Charley Pride were guest stars on the Donny and Marie show. Four former American Basketball Association franchises (Denver Nuggets, New York Nets, San Antonio Spurs, and Indiana Pacers) played their first games in the NBA on the season's opening night. Chicago Cubs catcher Michael Barrett was born. The movie Car Wash opened in theaters. Amendments to the Tennessee Department of Agriculture's rules governing movement and handling of livestock at fairs and exhibitions went into effect. My girlfriend and I (and five other cars with five other couples, all friends of mine) got kicked out of a city park by the police for parking after closing time. Elvis Presley played Champaign, Illinois. Barry Manilow played Dallas. Black Sabbath opened a tour in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Eagles played the Los Angeles Forum, where they did "Wasted Time," a song that would appear on their forthcoming Hotel California album. The performance was recorded and would appear on Eagles Live in 1980. Led Zeppelin's live album, The Song Remains the Same and Elton John's Blue Moves were released. (Elton's release was in the UK only; Blue Moves would be released in the States six days later.)

In both 2004 and 2005, I provided two possible soundtracks for October 1976. (Here, too.) Here's another, briefly:

"A Fifth of Beethoven"/Walter Murphy. Disco adaptations of classical standards. It was a moment when such a thing seemed like a good idea.

"Play That Funky Music"/Wild Cherry. Another of my guilty pleasures. If pop music is supposed to be fun, then this is what pop music is about.

"Shake Your Booty"/KC and the Sunshine Band. See above.

"Love So Right"/Bee Gees. Opens with a synthesizer noise that's nearly as piercing as the falsettos, which figures, I suppose.

"(The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether"/Alan Parsons Project. The Project's debut single, from Tales of Mystery and Imagination, a concept album based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe--in this case, an 1845 short story. It wasn't an especially big hit (Number 37 on the Hot 100), but it appealed to my taste for prog rock, although I wouldn't consider it especially proggy now, despite the five-part suite on side 2 and the presence of Orson Welles as narrator on one track. Plus, I tended to like those odd little records that were hard to catch on the radio, and this was surely one. Whatever the reason, "Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" has stuck with me for 30 years as a pretty good time-travel trigger.

(Buy Tales of Mystery and Imagination here.)

Coming next: Avoiding Debby Boone.

October 1975: Who's Gonna Help You Through the Night?

2006-10-19T16:20:00.000-05:00

I've made pretty clear on this blog during the two-plus years of its existence that October is my favorite month of the year. As I put it last year, it's a time when "the temperature falls, the leaves change, and time runs in reverse." A lot of the most fondly remembered tales from my younger days take place in October. This month I'm featuring a bunch of Top 5 lists, mostly from the 1970s (and not just on Fridays), because they provide the soundtracks for some of those tales. This is the fifth post in the series. Part four, at which you can find your way to the other parts, is here.

Think about the house you grew up in, or the place you associate most closely with the concept of "home." Now, think about this--what season is it when you picture that place?

I grew up on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin, almost within sight of the Illinois border. One autumn night during high school--it would have been 1976 or 1977--I was driving home in the dark after wrestling practice. I crested the hill east of the farm and started the slow climb up the next hill, where our farm was. For a moment, the farmstead in the distance resolved itself like a painting--a little oasis of warm light in an otherwise dark and vast night. I carried the picture in my head for years before I knew what it represented: It was a metaphor for the life we lived in that place, as a family while we were growing up. The world was a big place, not always easy to navigate, not always friendly--but we had our oasis of warmth and safety there, halfway up the hill. There were rocky times, as in every family--we let our parents down in various awful ways, and sometimes they were oblivious to the reality of our lives. But underlying all the temporary crises was the rock-solid assurance that in the long run, everything was going to be OK if we'd just hang on, both to that place and to the people who lived there. So we did, and it was. When I think back on growing up in that house, it's almost always autumn. I remember vividly what it was like to live in that house during those years when the security of the place mattered most.

By the fall of 1975, I'd switched radio stations, to Chicago's WCFL, and I listened to Madison's Z104 when 'CFL became inaudible after dark. Five tunes playing on both of those stations are part of our first podcast in approximately forever. It runs about 19 minutes, and you can download it here. It includes some politically incorrect commentary on the battle of the sexes, the irresistable comeback hit from an important 60s group, my favorite single of all time from one of the best albums of the 1970s, a slice of mellow gold that Jason Hare should get around to someday, and a fine cross-pollinated soul/disco record that sounds insanely great. Hope you enjoy it.

Coming next: One day in your life.

Obits

2006-10-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

Florida talk-radio legend Bob Lassiter died last Friday at age 61. After WLS bagged its music format and went all-talk in 1989, Lassiter came to Chicago and did afternoons--and it's fairly safe to say nobody in Chicago had ever heard his kind of radio before. The first few times I heard him, I was outraged by what seemed to me like his wanton cruelty to many of his callers. The guy could be unremittingly vicious, and when he reached the point where you'd be sure he'd have to dial it back, he'd dial it up higher. But the more I listened--and you couldn't not listen--the more I understood why he was doing what he did, even though it still made me uncomfortable sometimes. A talk-radio host's job is to get people to react, and few did it with Lassiter's brilliance. The way he attacked every show, day after day, takes a level of intensity, dedication--and talent--I can't imagine having.

I rediscovered Lassiter a year ago, online--he started a blog, in which he wrote some about his radio experiences, but also about his life. (He was much gentler as a blogger than as a talk host.) Toward the end, a lot of his blogging was devoted to the illness that was killing him. The truthfulness of those posts makes them painful to read. Lassiter signed off the blog in September, but there was one more entry, posted two days after his death by his wife, made up of a few fragmentary entries Lassiter was unable to post himself during the last weeks of his life.

There's a tremendous tribute to Lassiter by Michael J. West at Blogcritics.org. (I didn't know that after leaving WLS, Lassiter briefly relocated to his wife's hometown, Davenport, Iowa. I was living there at the time, and I know he didn't do any radio while he was there. If he'd brought his style to the market's one-and-only talk station, villagers with torches would have stormed the place.) West links to some of Lassiter's classic airchecks. Word of advice: Listen to more than one of them before you form an opinion.

Another radio voice, better known nationally, is also silent now. (You can't avoid cliches like that when you're writing about dead radio guys.) You may not know Christopher Glenn's name, but you've probably heard his voice. Glenn anchored hourly newscasts on CBS Radio for many years before retiring last winter. From 1971 to 1986, he was the voice of In the News, a series of short current-events features that ran between the Saturday morning cartoons on CBS-TV. Glenn died yesterday, only about three weeks before he was set to be inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago.

(Thanks to Willie for the tip about Christopher Glenn.)

October 1974: Gimme Something That I Can Remember

2006-10-17T10:43:00.000-05:00

(Fifth in a series. Part four is here; part three, with links to preceding parts, is here.)

October 1974: I am equipment manager of the freshman football team, a job I really like. I play tenor saxophone in the band, which I don't like quite so much. I am in like with another unattainable girl, which I hate, although I try not to let it bother me inordinately--and fail. I am taking advanced algebra, which I hate, but I have another one of those cool English teachers, Mr. Prueher, and I can't wait to get to his class each day. I continue to listen to the radio every minute I can. And on the radio that month, there were these:

"Beach Baby"/First Class. In which British pop-meister Tony Burrows (England's answer to Ron Dante) created a California paradise that's based entirely on Beach Boys records. I once heard a DJ back-announce it by saying, "An English band singing about California in the '60s is like Donny Osmond singing about Africa."

"Nothing From Nothing"/Billy Preston. While struggling with advanced algebra, I often felt like "nothing from nothing means nothing" was all the math I really understood.

"Sweet Home Alabama"/Lynryd Skynryd. I once read an academic journal article that called this the single most potent expression of Confederate mythology in popular music. By criticizing Neil Young for "Southern Man," which condemned slavery and the Klan, and by celebrating segregationist governor George Wallace, it's arguably the most racist record to make the charts since the era of coon songs.

"Who Do You Think You Are"/Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. This is the Looking Glass redux, really--"Billy Don't Be a Hero" was the pop smash of the summer, but group's followup hit in the fall barely scraped into the Top 40 even though it's extraordinarily good. The liner notes to Rhino's Super Hits of the 70s: Have a Nice Day Volume 13 calls "Who Do You Think You Are" "the great lost Buckinghams record," which is the best of all possible descriptions of it.

"Rock Me Gently"/Andy Kim. The idea of being rocked, but gently, is a concept that could only have come out of the sensitive 70s. Kim hit bubblegum paydirt with "Baby I Love You" in 1969 and a cover of "Be My Baby" one year after that, but this is nearly as good as his pop monument, the Archies' "Sugar Sugar," which he co-wrote with Jeff Barry.

(Buy "Who Do You Think You Are," "Rock Me Gently," "Beach Baby," "Billy Don't Be a Hero" and several other Top 40 essentials from 1974 here.)

Coming next: home.

Jimmy Loves Mary Anne in That Sweater

2006-10-16T08:35:00.000-05:00

In the comments over the weekend, Kevin from Got the Fever (who's got a great post about John Lennon up right now) wondered why radio stations "insist on playing only one song by an artist--no matter how big they are," and then said, "Maybe that's a post you can tackle another time."

Well, all right then: Radio listeners choose oldies and classic rock formats because they're the audio equivalent of a beat-to-hell old sweater. The people who program those formats know this, and they aren't about to make that sweater itch. Familiarity breeds contentment. With so many choices elsewhere on the dial (and off of it), many stations are programmed with the idea that listeners are looking for reasons to leave, so you don't want to give them any.

Also: These formats burst to popularity starting in the 80s, so better than 20 years of canon development has brought its own logic to them. In my ongoing October series, I've focused on two songs that were enormous hits in Chicago, War's "All Day Music" and "Jimmy Loves Mary Anne" by the Looking Glass, both of which vastly outperformed their national chart figures on WLS. But are they oldies-radio staples in Chicago now? I'd guess not. Although stations do local research to tweak their playlists, in most cases, the musical foundation from which the tweaking is done is the same from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. And "Jimmy Loves Mary Anne" is not often on the list. After all, it only got up to Number 33 in Billboard. There's a fine argument that oldies stations in Detroit should be playing Richard and the Young Lions and the other bands I wrote about a couple of weeks ago--but any station that's doing so is by definition the most adventuresome in the market.

It's worth remembering, too, that those of us who are into music deeply enough to blog about it (or to read blogs about it) are not normal listeners. We burned out on "Brandy" a long time ago, which is why "Jimmy Loves Mary Anne" sounds so good to us. My radio station played listener-submitted "perfect playlists" the past two weekends, and for every one that contained unusual choices, there were many more that stuck so strictly to the canon they were indistinguishable from the regular format. (Of course, many lists were chosen for air precisely because they were indistinguishable from the regular format--see paragraph 2.) Although my station has one of the broadest and deepest classic rock libraries you'd ever want to hear (30 Bob Seger tracks, for example), a large percentage of every hour is devoted to the same stuff every other classic rocker plays the hell out of: "Rocky Mountain Way," "Sunshine of Your Love," "Magic Man," etc., because research shows, again and again, that's what the average listener wants to hear.

I could go on, but I'd rather open it up to you--especially if you're a radio person, as I know a few readers are, but being a thoughtful music listener is sufficient, too. What is it about oldies and classic rock radio, anyhow? With all the music that's been popular in the last 50 years, why does so little of it endure on these formats?

Recommended Reading: From The Onion's AV Club (recently expanded to become one of the web's best sources for information on music, movies, and pop culture), a list of 17 Essential Books About Popular Music. Lots of my favorite music writers are on this list: Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, Dave Marsh, Peter Guralnick--and Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, is on it, too. Another author on the list: David Cantwell, whose blog, Living in Stereo, is one of my favorites, and whose book with Bill Friskics-Warren, Heartaches by the Number, is highly recommended.

(This post has been edited since it first appeared.)

October 1973: We May Never Pass This Way Again

2006-10-13T16:48:00.000-05:00

I recall hearing somewhere--although I can't find anything online to substantiate it--that something about the hormones that rage through us during adolescence interferes with our memory. I'd buy that, based on the evidence of my own life. Whether it's hormones or some other reasons I've completely forgotten, October 1973, unlike other Octobers when I was a kid, is largely a black hole in my memory.

It was an eventful time in history, though, and I do remember watching a lot of that unfold. On October 20, the Saturday Night Massacre occurred when President Nixon ordered the attorney general to fire the Watergate prosecutor. The attorney general quit; his deputy refused to fire the prosecutor and got fired himself before Nixon found somebody in the Justice Department who would follow his order. It happened while the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East had the United States and the Soviet Union on edge, and days after Vice President Agnew resigned in a corruption scandal. (Some observers at the time feared that Nixon might be on the verge of instituting one-man rule.) As a news junkie, I would have followed all these events. I can remember watching the evening news and hearing of the Massacre, and of hearing stories about the Middle Eastern war on the radio. And after the news was over, it was back to music--even though I don't remember it much. Here are five records that were playing on WLS during the week of October 13, 1973:

"Jimmy Loves Mary Anne"/Looking Glass. This record is closer to the way the Looking Glass intended themselves to sound than their legendary Number One, "Brandy," which had that classic 70s pop sound--and that was after they'd already rejected one producer's version of it as too bubblegummy. "Jimmy Loves Mary Anne," on the other hand, is elegant, adult, and extremely cool, which probably explains why it was a relative stiff compared to "Brandy"--although in Chicago, it went all the way to Number Two.

"Keep on Truckin'"/Eddie Kendricks. The famous R. Crumb cartoon came first, but Eddie Kendricks turned the title into a catch-phrase, at least amongst the junior high crowd.

"Free Ride"/Edgar Winter Group. In the 1970s, there were sometimes huge differences between 45 mixes and album versions, and this is perhaps the greatest example. The album version, from They Only Come Out at Night, sounds muffled and clunky. The 45 version has more guitar bite, louder drums, and tweaks the bass for maximum thunder through those little radio speakers.

"We're an American Band"/Grand Funk. I went out and bought this sledgehammer 45 almost immediately upon hearing for the first time. Gold vinyl, picture sleeve. Still own it. Produced by Todd Rundgren.

"We May Never Pass This Way Again"/Seals and Crofts. I was quite taken with this song back in the day. Not enough to buy the single, but enough to buy the sheet music. It was the only piece of sheet music I ever bought. If you have never heard this song played by a single tenor saxophone . . . count yourself lucky.

(Buy the Looking Glass here.)

Recommended Reading: The amazing Locust St. is undertaking another ambitiously themed project to celebrate its second anniversary--by jumping from 1906 to the present in 10 steps. The first two steps are up now. I love the whole concept for two big reasons: First, The Hits Just Keep On Comin' may be the only other music blog on the whole freakin' Internet that's written about pioneer recording stars Billy Murray and Bert Williams. Second, we've actually heard of pioneer recording star Vess Ossman.

Also recommended: Did you ever try editing music by using the "pause" button on your cassette deck? If so, Beware of the Blog's "A Moment of Pause" is for you. And me.

Bonus Tracks

2006-10-12T15:32:00.000-05:00

If you have time or inclination to read only one music blog regularly, it should probably be Jefitoblog. (If I could read only one, that's the one I'd pick, and I write one, fer chrissakes.) Up now (among other things), the Complete Idiot's Guide to Mary Chapin Carpenter. She's one of my favorite performers, and now you can find out why. I'd sign off on most of Jefito's analysis, although I like Stones in the Road more than he does, and he likes Time Sex Love more than I do. The post has some some key MCC tunes to download as well. Be sure you get "Why Walk When You Can Fly."

Also from the music blogs, Rock Over Graceland has a sampler of Jerry Lee Lewis tunes, including four from his new album, Last Man Standing: Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" featuring Jimmy Page, Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac" featuring Bruce (which kicks ass completely), "Just a Bummin' Around" with Merle Haggard, and a bonus track, "The Last Cheater's Waltz." The latter is available only when you download the album from Target.com. When the Rolling Stones made an exclusive deal a few years ago to sell a compilation CD only in Best Buy stores for a certain period, people lost their minds, but nobody seems to mind the idea of bonus tracks available only when the album is downloaded from certain specific retailers. (Last Man Standing also features appearances by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, John Fogerty, Eric Clapton, and Don Henley, as well as celebrity parasite Kid Rock. One of these things is not like the others.)

Because I love it when people send me stuff, I want to be sure to note that John Landecker is back on the air in Chicago, having been signed to do afternoons at True Oldies 94.7. (Two different readers e-mailed me the story.) Elizabeth Giangrego, who runs the website memorializing Real Oldies 1690 doesn't have much good to say about Landecker, but I'd agree with the Sun-Times' Robert Feder that it's a big deal for 94.7, especially at a time when plenty of Chicago listeners appear to be missing some of the city's legendary jocks. Landecker was format-changed out of a gig at another oldies station in Chicago three years ago, and for a brief time did weekend and fill-ins at WGN, trying talk for the first time.

October 1972: No Exception to the Rule

2006-10-10T22:28:00.000-05:00

(Third in a series. Part two, with a link to part one, is here.)

I've told the tale at least a couple of times here--about being the first kid on the school bus in the morning starting in the fall of 1970, and how I found myself in the seat under the radio one day. I thought I was going to write about that again this time, but then, memory intervened.

By October 1972, I was in seventh grade--junior high, as we called it then. That meant several things--new teachers, the new seven-period day, the new experience of showers in gym class, and new friends to make, given that several elementary schools fed the lone junior high in our town. And it also meant there were new girls to watch. Not that we had done much watching of the "old" girls. Although I don't remember ever thinking girls were icky, I do remember that my friends and I didn't pay much all that much attention to them in grade school. But that changed in seventh grade.

We will call her Moira, because that is not her name. She had all the necessary attributes--short brown hair framing a pretty round face, a body that curved in all the best places and a wardrobe that proved it. From the moment I saw her in math class, I was head-over-heels in like. However, if I had developed a crush on someone from another planet, I'd have had about the same chance I had with Moira. Never mind the gulf between us in terms of social class--the odds of a farm kid dating a doctor's daughter were astronomical, and if the farm kid wasn't an athlete, they were impossible. I didn't realize that, though. My immediate problem was that I knew that even if I lived to be 100, I was never going to work up the courage to talk to her. So I took the only way available to a tongue-tied potential suitor--I let it slip to some of my friends that I liked her, knowing it would get back to her. This worked about as well as you might expect. I suppose I was asking for the sneering, vehement, and very public rejection I got--after all, I'd badly outkicked my coverage--but it did nothing for my confidence with the ladies, and probably contributed to the sorry lack of it that plagued me for years thereafter.

So anyway: Here are five songs from the WLS chart dated October 9, 1972, that bring back the fall of 1972, Moira and all.

"Go All the Way"/Raspberries. Well, this is just what a horny adolescent needed to hear on the radio every 90 minutes. However, it is the greatest record with which to start a radio show, bar none--and I could already do talkovers by the fall of 1972.

"Everybody Plays the Fool"/Main Ingredient. A lesson in love's reality that was on the radio every 90 minutes, although it didn't help me one damn bit.

Lovin' eyes they cannot see
A certain person could never be
Love runs deeper than any ocean
Clouds your mind with emotion

"Black and White"/Three Dog Night. This is another Three Dog Night monument, with a fashionable 1970s brotherhood message and more of their irresistable hooks. More cowbell, indeed.

"Saturday in the Park"/Chicago. From a DJ's point of view, this has one of the best talkover intros ever, blasting in at 100 percent on your VU meters. For the rest of you, it's impossible to hear this without remembering the last few carefree days at the end of summer.

"You Wear it Well"/Rod Stewart. Exactly a year after "Maggie May," Rod did it again, with his band in top form as he delivered a sweetly nostalgic lyric: "So when the sun goes low and you're home alone/Think of me and try not to laugh." I'd have settled for that from Moira.

(Technical note: "Everybody Plays the Fool" is a WMA file, not an MP3. Sorry, Mac users. Buy it here.)

Coming next: Tales from the black hole.

Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

2006-10-08T09:22:00.000-05:00

Our friend Q-SKY checked in with an article from Radio and Records, an industry trade magazine, about a part-time jock in Chicago who got fired for expressing, in a letter to a Chicago media columnist, some sentiments familiar to readers of this blog.

"It's unbelievable how many Chicago radio icons are not currently on the air in this town," [Cara] Carriveau wrote. "It's amazing that we can no longer flip through the dial and hear Mancow, John Landecker, Fred Winston, Dick Biondi, Bobby Skafish, among many others. My heart goes out to those talented personalities, and I am empathetic to the many disappointed listeners. This situation is sad. Very, very sad."

Innocuous enough, right? Wrong. Carriveau, who'd moved from full-timer to part-timer at WLUP at her request last spring, was promptly sacked. The station's general manager, Marv Nyren, insisted that there were other reasons for Carriveau's ouster, and that this was merely "the last straw." If you've been around the radio biz at all, you know that this is plausibly true--although previous other "straws" may have included such egregious violations as getting back late from lunch and taking ballpoint pens from the studio.

Nyren also indicated his displeasure that Carriveau's not down with the enlightened management philosophy being practiced by the leading executives of the broadcasting industry today. But then, the universe laughed: Nyren commented on possible replacements for Carriveau, who include somebody named Jeff "Turd" Renzetti. Said Nyren: "I'm a big fan of Turd." If enlightened management philosophy suggests that one of the keys to a station's continuing success is somebody named Turd, karma has exacted its revenge.

Tune of the Day: Last night, the Mrs. and I caught up on taped episodes of NBC's new series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, created by Aaron Sorkin, whose previous TV series, The West Wing and Sports Night, are two of the greatest TV shows of all time. Sorkin has always been good at using pop songs to punctuate episodes. The most recent Studio 60, which aired last Monday night, concluded with Dave Mason's cover of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow"--and it may have been Sorkin's greatest use of a hit song to date. I hadn't heard Mason's version in 20 years, maybe, and I'd forgotten just how beautiful it sounds in his hands. I don't have it to post, but when I get it, I will. (By the way: the ratings for Studio 60 have been falling since the premiere three weeks ago. So I beg you to watch it, Monday nights at 9PM Central. The failure of Studio 60 would be disastrous to the concept of TV for smart people--so if only to stave off more damn reality TV, you have a moral responsibility to watch.)

Downloadable: From >bounce/oz (look closely at the title; it's a sinker), a mix of 80s R&B records with a telephone theme. The list includes Midnight Star's "Operator." When we started playing it on WKAI in Macomb, Illinois, in 1985, it was probably the blackest record ever played on the radio in that town.

October 1971: All Day Music

2006-10-06T14:42:00.000-05:00

(Second in a series. For part one, click here.)

I'm looking at a yellowed newspaper clipping of the team picture of the 1971 Northside Browns, undefeated champions of the Grade Football League's sixth-grade division who, minutes before, finished thrashing the South Raiders 13-0 for the title. I'm in the back row, on the left, clashing ridiculously in a striped shirt and striped pants of entirely different patterns, hands on hips, doing my best to look like a grizzled gridiron warrior flush with victory. The moment the photo is taken marks the pinnacle of my sorry athletic career. I wasn't much of a contributor to the championship. The city park and rec department made the schedule and provided officials, but the teams had no coaches, so we scrubs had to depend on the starters to take themselves out of the game to let us play, which they rarely did. But I was there, and I remember the feeling, on those golden September and October afternoons, as deliciously intense. The outcome of those touch-football games mattered to me in a way very few things have mattered since.

There are 14 of us in the photo. Some of the guys I still know: One is a college professor. I run into another at University of Wisconsin hockey games sometimes. One was my mother's boss for a while before she retired. Another runs his family's construction company. Still another is a banker. Some of the guys I've lost: Two of my best friends at that moment are in the picture, but they would be strangers to me now if I saw them on the street. Right in the middle of the picture is a classmate who was already a gifted athlete in sixth grade. Even in a still picture, you can see it--he's bigger and stronger and faster and tougher than the rest of us, the kind of kid whose athleticism makes coaches dream of championships. What we didn't know then was that after dominating performances in junior high, he would play only a couple of years of high school football before washing out. We'd eventually learn he was gay, although I don't know whether one had anything to do with the other.

What I remember most about those games now, more than the intensity and more than my teammates, is the light. We'd stand there on the field with the late afternoon sun in our eyes and the shadows lengthening, and if we looked around, over the baseball diamonds and the swimming pool and the shelter houses, we'd see the trees in Recreation Park crowned with color and glowing in that light. And that's probably the best thing to remember, because it's the easiest thing to recapture. By some odd alchemy involving memory and time, the light has encoded itself into some of the records I was listening to back then. Here are five of them, from the WLS chart dated October 4, 1971:

"Maggie May"-"Reason to Believe"/Rod Stewart. At least once that fall, we must have played at a game on the sandy lot across from Lincoln School instead of the Rec Park field, because the light in "Maggie May" comes at me from that particular angle. There's no way an 11-year-old would have gotten the older woman/younger man relationship, but he could surely have identified with the line "It's late September and I really should be back at school." What I hear in these two tunes now is their incredible artistry: "Maggie May" is Rod's greatest achievement, and his band, which could sometimes sound ragged (albeit in a good way) never played better. And that's not just a piano on the first few seconds of "Reason to Believe"--it's a bell, one that commands your attention for at least four minutes--or perhaps, 35 years.

"I've Found Someone of My Own"/Free Movement. Count the hooks--that quiet and understated opening, the lead singer's smooth, calm vibe throughout, and the way the rest of the singers crash in on the refrain: "She said 'I found somebody new/To take your place'". Not to mention the twist in the lyric--she's trying to tell him she's leaving, but he beats her to it: "I've found someone of my own." A spectacularly underrated pop/soul record.

"Spanish Harlem"/Aretha Franklin. "Respect," "Chain of Fools," "A Natural Woman," you can have 'em all--just leave me this one, which is the single most potent time-travel device on this list. The instrumental break in the middle, in which Aretha on piano toys with the rest of her band, might be the finest single half-minute of her whole recorded career.

"Marianne"/Stephen Stills. Pretty good taste for an 11-year-old, I think--I bought this on a 45, and I still like the way it starts out at top speed and never slows down.

"All Day Music"/War. This is cool from the first second and mighty funky before it's done. (Dig that organ.) "All Day Music" is done at a languid-enough pace that you can imagine the band trying to make an autumn afternoon last as long as possible. When I hear it today, I'm standing on that sideline again, hoping to get into the game. Several lifetimes later, it's OK that I don't have many memories of actually playing--as long as I can see the light.

(Buy "All Day Music" and more grooves from War here.)

Coming next: An oft-told tale of rural adventuring, just after the crack of dawn.

Alright With Me

2006-10-05T14:25:00.000-05:00

A few cool downloads for today:

Robert Randolph is a guy who's been on the fringe of my musical consciousness for a while. He played a gorgeous steel guitar on the Dixie Chicks' "I Hope," done for a Hurricane Katrina charity record last year. (He's not on the inferior remake of "I Hope" on the Chicks' Take the Long Way.) Earlier this week, he was featured on Monday Night Football. Today I came across a track from his new album, Colorblind, and holy smokes, it's great. It's a cover of the Doobie Brothers' "Jesus Is Just Alright," and it's scary-good enough to make Satan keep his distance. It's posted at the (unfortunately-named) Music Nazi, and it's the Tune of the Day.

Blogworld is abuzz with tunes from Lindsey Buckingham's first album in 14 years, Under the Skin. The mighty Jefito has some tracks from that album, as well as Buckingham's "lost" album, Gift of Screws.

A friend of Jefito's, Jason Hare, has been doing some hilarious stuff lately, riffing on 70s "mellow gold," and he's also doing a weekly chart feature that's not unlike some of the stuff you read here, so go over there and browse.

If you download any of the tracks mentioned here, just remember to delete them from your computer after a few days and go out and buy the albums, kids. It's the friendly thing to do.

October 1970: It Says So in My Dreams

2006-10-04T14:09:00.000-05:00

I've made pretty clear on this blog during the two-plus years of its existence that October is my favorite month of the year. As I put it last year, it's a time when "the temperature falls, the leaves change, and time runs in reverse." A lot of the most fondly remembered tales from my younger days take place in October. This month I'm going to feature a bunch of Top 5 charts, mostly from the 1970s (and not just on Fridays), because they provide the soundtracks for some of those tales.

Although the radio had been a big part of life at my house from my earliest memories, in the fall of 1970 I found my own station and my own music, which was a lot different from the polkas and country music my parents listened to. The station was WLS from Chicago and the music was Top 40, although I didn't know at the time that it was a soft Top 40 when compared to what some other big-city AMs were doing at the time. Here are the top 5 from the WLS chart dated October 4, 1970:

5. "Candida"/Dawn. The story is told that Tony Orlando, a music industry veteran by 1970, laid down a vocal track for a friend and never heard the finished record until he turned on WABC in New York one day to find it was a smash. He wouldn't even meet Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson, the other members of Dawn, until after "Knock Three Times" had gone to Number One, in early 1971. "Candida" is still one of my favorite records of all time, which is quite something given that it was my first favorite record. It's almost perfectly constructed to take advantage of my tastes for both bubblegum and starry-eyed romance, which were present in the 10-year-old me, and still are.

4. "Indiana Wants Me"/R. Dean Taylor. This record is quite nearly sui generis--there's never been anything quite like it. It's thoroughly 1970s, made-for-TV melodrama all the way, albeit infused with its own brand of romance--Our Hero apparently capped a guy who insulted his beloved. It's also a marvelously overblown production, including sirens and a cop on a bullhorn saying, "You are surrounded! Give yourself up!" The long version (which wasn't on the 45 everybody bought back in the day) ends with Our Hero matching firepower with the Indiana State Police. Priceless.

3. "I'll Be There"/Jackson Five. A century from now, if there's anyone around to recall it, Michael Jackson's career will be defined by two records--this and "Billie Jean." Listeners a century hence will still relate, I hope, to the breathtaking beauty of this melody and the innocence in Jackson's voice. In the long run, they'll be wrong about his innocence, but right here, it's still intact.

2. "All Right Now"/Free. A somewhat bigger hit in Chicago than it was nationally, and an anomaly compared to the rest of the tunes on the chart. In the fall of 1970, WLS was playing the hits, but dayparting extensively--daytimes had a distinct housewife feel, and you likely wouldn't have heard this until night fell.

1. "Cracklin' Rosie"/Neil Diamond. A 10-year-old listener didn't get the pun in the title, or think twice about the lines "Cracklin' Rosie you're a store-bought woman/But you make me sing like a guitar hummin'." He just dug the hooks, and it would be one of the first 45s he would ever own.

Other notable records on the chart that same week: Michael Nesmith's "Joanne," a beautiful country song that proved there was more to Nesmith than a Monkee with a wool hat, and "Groovy Situation" by Gene Chandler, in which the guy who'd done "Duke of Earl" in the 60s proved he was down with the soul sound of the 70s.

(Buy "Candida," "Indiana Wants Me," "I'll Be There," and other great 1970 tunes here.)

Coming next: In the fading light of an October afternoon, I reach the pinnacle of my athletic career--at age 11--while great tunes abound.

Sound Qualities

2006-10-02T12:28:00.000-05:00

Longtime friend, reader, and fellow radio geek Willie checks in with news that another Chicago legend has retired from the broadcasting biz. Unlike Larry Lujack's departure from Real Oldies 1690, this retirement was voluntary: Newsman Lyle Dean did his last shift on WGN this past Saturday. Dean came to Chicago in the late 60s, and over the course of his long career worked alongside some of Chicago’s most fabled on-air personalities while becoming one himself. As morning news anchor at WLS in the 70s, he served as foil to both Larry Lujack and Fred Winston. After moving to WGN in the early 80s, he anchored news on the Wally Phillips and Bob Collins shows. Outside Chicago, he's known as the host of "To Your Health," a short program sold to hospitals and medical clinics across the country and airing on local stations. Dean also possesses one of the ballsiest sets of pipes in the biz, and can be heard doing image liners on WLS airchecks from 1970 ("Hit to hit, back to back!")--a strange gig for a guy doing news at the same station. While answering the phone at a radio station years ago, The Mrs. once talked to him, and she says it took her about three words to know who he was. (Find a taste of Dean at WLS here. Scroll down a bit.)

Tune of the Day: Either "Nothing But the Water" or "Joey/Joy/Joey" by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, taken from a live show unearthed by the Duke of Straw at The Late Greats. On "Joey/Joy/Joey," Grace incorporates a bit of Lucinda Williams' "Joy" (one of my favorite tunes from Lucinda's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road album) into her own "Joey" (my favorite tune on Grace's own Nothing But the Water). Meanwhile, "Nothing But the Water" starts off slow, but it's a tornado by the end. The show appears along with lots of others at the Live Music Archive section of the Internet Archive--one hell of a site for music fans. The audio quality of the Grace Potter show (as is the case on many archive shows) isn't the greatest, but Grace and the band rock so hard you'll barely notice.

This Is Not a Very Good Blog, Really

2006-09-29T15:57:00.000-05:00

I'd like to welcome readers who've found their way here from the Classic Rock page at About.com. I've been on Dave White's blogroll over there for a while, and yesterday he was kind enough to link to last Friday's Top 5, which spotlighted some of the more obscure artists getting radio play 40 years ago this week. That brought lots of people over here, and I surely appreciate all those eyeballs.

You're probably expecting to read some sort of chart feature here today, given that it's Friday and all. And I confess, I've been poking around all afternoon for a likely chart to feature. We're into autumn, so it ought to be easy to find a chart from '74, '75, or '76 to talk about. But I'm just not into it today.

I don't know why. It's gray and cold out my window, but that's never a problem in the fall--it's a good and necessary part of the season's emotional landscape. Certainly the news is depressing. It took the Western world until the year 1215 to enshrine the right of habeas corpus in the Magna Carta, and one day in the United States Senate 791 years later to give it away, but music is supposed to be the escape from that. (There's a reason why I blog here more often than from my current-events perch at Best of the Blogs.) I had a pretty good week, really, although our weekend plans went sideways this afternoon when the friends we've been trying to get up here for several years had to cancel at the last minute with a sick kid. But we'll still be heading for a local beer festival tomorrow, albeit with a slightly smaller group, to sample the best of 30 Midwestern microbreweries. So what's not to like today?

I have no idea. But whatever the reason, this is not a normal Friday. Here's a couple of tunes to make it up to you for wasting your time by reading this far. (I intended for there to be more, but every upload site I try this afternoon is FUBAR in some way, so I'm quitting at two.)

"Then He Kissed Me"/The Crystals (buy it)
"Love and Loneliness"/The Motors (buy it)

Sweet Forgiveness

2006-09-27T14:07:00.000-05:00

I've written here before about the traveling I do, and the music that goes with me. When I'm driving at night, blues albums, or blues-influenced artists, often find their way into the player. Last night, Susan Tedeschi's most recent album, Hope and Desire, came up as I hit the interstate. I had picked it up in the used bin a couple of weeks ago and had listened to it only once before, casually, while doing other things. But in the car, I tend to pay a little more attention. Not that I was completely focused on the music last night. I was on my way back to Madison from Milwaukee, going through the motions behind the wheel while my mind was miles away. Feeling a bit morose, I was thumbing through my (well-thumbed) catalog of regrets. Susan's sweet blues were merely background.

Until track 7, a song written by Iris DeMent and first recorded by Bonnie Raitt in 1977, "Sweet Forgiveness." As Susan started singing, I got completely caught up in it. Only someone without a heart (or perhaps, without regrets) wouldn't be moved, not just by the words but by the absolute conviction and powerful emotion with which Susan sings them:

Sweet forgiveness, dear God above
I say we all deserve
A taste of this kind of love
Someone who'll hold our hand
And whisper: "I understand
"And I still love you"

It's a good thing we don't usually get what we deserve, because a lot of the time, we deserve the worst for our various sins of commission and omission. That we sometimes are forgiven instead is both miracle and gift, and occasionally we need to be reminded of that--as I was last night.

And then I hit the button and played it again.

(The whole Hope and Desire album is great, by the way, largely made up of R&B covers and gospel tunes, plus songs by Bob Dylan and Jagger/Richards. I can't imagine what it was doing in the used bin-- how somebody could listen to anything so fine and then decide not to keep it, I don’t know.)

I've been on the receiving end of some great musical gifts in the last couple of weeks. First it was the 1976 airchecks from Paul; the other day Kevin at Got the Fever sent along "Open Up Your Door" by Richard and the Young Lions after I wrote about it. (I eagerly await Kevin's bloggery on that and other garage-band topics.) So it's time to pay it forward. Here’s "Sweet Forgiveness." (Buy it here.)

Rockin' in the Free World

2006-09-25T12:15:00.000-05:00

September 25, 1993: George Harrison and David Crosby appear on The Simpsons. Their animated selves and voices, that is.

September 25, 1989: Neil Young performs "Rockin' in the Free World" on Saturday Night Live, considered one of the show's greatest musical performances.

September 25, 1981: The Rolling Stones officially open their 1981 tour with the first of two dates at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Around my college radio station, we're pumped because on November 20, they'll play the UNIDome in Cedar Falls, Iowa, just a couple of hours away.

September 25, 1980: Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham meet the quintessential rock demise, asphyxiation from inhaling his own vomit after heavy drinking. Around my college radio station, we're crushed because Zeppelin's plans for an American stadium tour are also killed in the accident.

September 25, 1975: Jackie Wilson suffers a stroke onstage at a New Jersey casino. He lingers in a coma for over eight years before dying in 1984.

September 25, 1970: The Partridge Family premieres on ABC. "I Think I Love You" has already been released, like a rocket waiting for the fuse to be lit. On the same day, Janis Joplin records "Me and Bobby McGee" during sessions for her album Pearl. A little more than one week later, she'd be dead.

September 25, 1965: The Beatles cartoon TV series premieres on ABC. None of the Beatles are involved in the show, and in fact they reportedly didn't like it much, as their Liverpudlian accents were softened for American consumption. Thirty-nine episodes of the series were made, and ran regularly until 1969. With so much Beatlestuff out there for our consumption, where are these cartoons?

Birthdays Today:
Anson Williams, Potsie Weber on Happy Days, is 57. Happy Days spawned several minor hit singles during its run--its original theme, "Rock Around the Clock," made it to Number 41 in 1974; the more well-known theme by Pratt and McClain was a Top-Ten hit in the summer of 1976. Williams and Donny Most (Ralph Malph) charted, too--Williams' record, "Deeply," made it to Number 93 in the spring of 1977.

Burleigh Drummond of Ambrosia is 55. I note this for two reasons. First, because I dig Ambrosia, and second, because Drummond is one of only three people I can think of named Burleigh, along with the old baseball pitcher Burleigh Grimes, and my father, who is allegedly named after Burleigh Grimes.

Keeping it in the family, my brother John is 40, and possibly still hung over from this past weekend's celebrations. His only musical credential is that he played cornet for about five minutes late in grade school.

Number One Songs on This Date:
1988: "Sweet Child o'Mine"/Guns 'n' Roses. This band was poised to become the biggest rock phenomenon since maybe Led Zeppelin, and for a while, perhaps they were. But Axl Rose wasn't cut out for that kind of stardom. Or for adulthood, really.

1986: "Stuck With You"/Huey Lewis and the News. One of the most comfortable radio records of all time--you could learn the words after hearing it just once, and after hearing it just once, you'd be OK with hearing it again.

1974: "Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe"/Barry White. White's lone Number One song on the pop charts, in which he dialed down the heavy breathing of his earlier hits. And for which a certain horny 14-year-old listener was grateful.

1971: "Go Away Little Girl"/Donny Osmond. If this were good bubblegum, that would be explanation enough for its three weeks at Number One. It isn't. If the meta-joke of a pre-pubescent boy singing a song to a girl who's much too young for him were clever instead of just creepy, that might explain it too. It doesn't. As it is, the success of this record is one of those things about my favorite decade that defy explanation.

1956: "Hound Dog"-"Don't Be Cruel"/Elvis Presley. The Number-One single of the rock era until well into the 1990s, in terms of weeks spent at Number One. Living in Stereo had a great post last week about how "Don't Be Cruel," a smash on the country charts at the time, prodded Nashville toward more sophisticated country sounds--but at the same time, how Nashville prodded "Don't Be Cruel" to be more country than it might otherwise have been.

Tune of the Day: "AM Radio" by Everclear. (The Stepfather of Soul turned me onto this last summer.) It's based on a sample of Jean Knight's "Mr. Big Stuff," and it's all about when the radio was all there was, and all you needed to be cool.

Top 5: Beyond the Classics

2006-09-22T16:12:00.000-05:00

From our vantage point today, 1966 seems like a lost golden age. Look at some of the Number One songs in that year: "Monday Monday," "Summer in the City," "Cherish," "Wild Thing," "Paint It Black," "Reach Out I'll Be There," "When a Man Loves a Woman," "The Sounds of Silence," "Paperback Writer," "Good Vibrations," "Sunshine Superman"--it reads like the hot rotation at an oldies station. I pulled up a radio survey from 1966 today mostly because my brother is celebrating his 40th birthday next week and it seemed like a good hook for this post, but what I found beyond the 1966 classics everybody knows proved to be more interesting than the classics themselves.

The survey I chose was from WKNR in Detroit, the legendary "Keener 13," which changed to a Top 40 format on Halloween 1963 and was Number One in the market by shortly after New Year's. It was Detroit's unchallenged rock radio leader in the fall of 1966--and it was as adventuresome as any radio station in the country at that time. Radio stations weren't afraid to play local bands and/or create regional hits back in that day, and WKNR's list from this week in 1966 is full of records that were huge in Detroit without becoming major national breakouts. Many are still beloved and sought after by collectors today, and here are five of them:

3. "Open Up Your Door"/Richard and the Young Lions. (holding) In which a New Jersey garage band goes psychedelic, with something called an African hair drum used on record for the first time. According to a history on the group's website, after having seen the Young Lions outperform some of its acts in Detroit, Motown tried to sign them, but they couldn't get out of their existing contract. (Thus Rare Earth became the first white act signed to the label.) To hear the band tell it, the Young Lions' demise after "Open Up Your Door" (Hot 100 chart peak: 99) and a couple more regional hits was a case of a manager insisting on a direction contrary to the band's best instincts, and getting his way because he controlled the purse-strings.

9. "Respect"/The Rationals. (rising) In which a Ann Arbor, Michigan, garage band covers Otis Redding's original a full year before Aretha Franklin gets around to it. According to an online bio of the group, the Rationals' version inspired Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records to have Aretha record it. (Hot 100 chart peak: 92.) At the end of 1966, WKNR listeners voted the Rationals Detroit's most popular group. They, too, appear to have been victimized by bad management, and by 1970, split up after being continually booked into shopping malls rather than the concert halls and clubs it would have made more sense for them to play.

10. "Rosanna"/The Capreez. (falling) I can't find much about this group. They were apparently from the Detroit area, too. Some websites call them a garage band, but "Rosanna" is mentioned by several soul-oriented websites, and one site splits the difference: "We expect this Detroit group is actually a rock group trying their hand at soul." The Rationals did the same thing, although with more success. (Did not make the Hot 100.)

11. "Off to Dublin in the Green"/Abbey Tavern Singers. (falling) They were authentically Irish, and actually formed at a place in Dublin called the Abbey Tavern. This became a massive Canadian hit when it was used in a Carling beer commercial, so it was natural that it would be big just across the border. (Hot 100 chart peak: 94.)

17. "Gloria's Dream"/Belfast Gipsies. (rising) A post-Van Morrison offshoot of Them, sort of. Two dueling versions of Them arose after Morrison's departure, and their story, and how it resulted in the Belfast Gipsies, is a bit hard to follow, but if you're interested, you can read it here. (Did not make the Hot 100.)

If I were any kind of blogger at all, I'd have at least one of these tracks to post for you, but I don't. I suck, really.

Radio Man

2006-09-20T22:49:00.000-05:00

I had the good fortune of being a little baby disc jockey at KDTH in Dubuque, Iowa. It was one of those beloved radio stations I wrote about a few months back--it mattered to its community in a way radio stations rarely do anymore. We frequently heard from listeners who claimed their radios had never tuned away in 40 years, and we believed them. And while I was there, the personality who mattered most was Gordie Kilgore, who anchored the noon news, hosted a twice-daily call-in show called Sound Off, and produced some public-affairs programs. Kilgore had one of those old-fashioned radio voices, with a distinctive inflection that can be impersonated to this day by everyone who worked with him--the sort of thing that's bred out of today's aspiring announcers from Day One. He'd been at KDTH 28 years by the time I arrived in 1979, and because I had heard him on KDTH's FM sister, D93, while I was still in high school, I already knew who he was. And what he was, mostly, was intimidating. Not because of anything he said or did--although it was clear that he possessed a fairly substantial ego--but simply because of who he was, and the gravitas that came from his long experience.

Kilgore died yesterday at age 81, and those of us who knew him, whether we knew him personally or only through the radio, can't help remembering stories about him. Other people who knew him longer and better may have more colorful stories, but these are a couple of mine.

Kilgore was not an actual Dubuque native, although he was accepted as an honorary one, which was a big deal in pre-casino Dubuque. Back then, Dubuque was the biggest city in the country not located on an interstate highway, and its insularity was legendary. You could have lived in Dubuque 50 years and moved there when you were three, and some Dubuquers would still look down at you as an outsider. Kilgore cut through that. He loved the Mississippi River, and led each noon newscast with the river stages at various points in our listening area. He did this with such dedication that I once joked that the ultimate Kilgore lead would be, "Moscow in flames, Russian missiles headed toward New York, but first, these river stages. . . ."

One Friday before a long holiday weekend, Kilgore and the station's program director got into a disagreement over something Gordie had done, or left undone. Harsh words were exchanged, and Kilgore stomped up to the station manager's office and resigned. The next morning, the Des Moines Register reported that the longtime Dubuque broadcaster had quit, complete with a quote from Kilgore himself. (To this day, I wonder if Gordie tipped the newspaper.) That Saturday, I saw him quietly cleaning out his office, cardboard boxes full of plaques and memorabilia. On Tuesday, he showed up for work as if nothing had happened. It was the program director who ended up leaving not long afterward.

Like any lifelong radio man, Kilgore took severe weather seriously. One sunny Saturday afternoon, he stopped by while I was on the air. We had an alarm in the studio that blinked whenever the weather wire sent an urgent alert, and on that day, it had been blinking regularly, even though the weather out the window looked fine to me. Every time I checked it, there was nothing, so after a while, I stopped checking. He happened to be in the studio picking up a tape or something when the alarm blinked yet again. I saw him looking at it and I said, "Stupid thing's been going off all day." He looked at me for a second and then said, "Hmm . . . west side of Dubuque just blew away," and walked out. His point was clear--as the guy on the air, it was my job to make sure the alarm wasn't the real thing, and what if, that time, it was? I never forgot the lesson.

Although he retired several years back (during the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993, actually, which must have made his first day at home very hard on his wife), he continued to do a bit of on-air work at KDTH until just a few months before his death, because that is also what lifelong radio men do. They aren't making broadcasters like him anymore. Beloved stations need beloved personalities, and in Dubuque, Gordie Kilgore was surely that.

(Tune of the Day will return next time; this post has been slightly edited since it first appeared.)

You Can't Always Get What You Want

2006-09-19T09:23:00.000-05:00

Time to pick up a few odds and ends that have been piling up around here.

Horse Gone, Barn Door Shut: If you've been to a sporting event in the last 15 years, you have certainly heard Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2." It's played after touchdowns at football games, where marching bands play it and students sing obscene lyrics to it; it's played after goals at hockey games; it's become the ultimate jock-rock anthem. But this year, the National Football League has banned it. Last spring, Glitter was jailed in Vietnam on child-porn charges. And so the ever-image-conscious NFL has asked its teams not to play the song in their stadiums anymore. Two things: First, Glitter was jailed in Britain on child-porn charges in 1999. Why the NFL didn't ban "Rock and Roll Part 2" then, I have no idea. Second, I have doubts as to whether Glitter is even receiving royalties from the song anymore. It could have been worse for Glitter with the NFL, I suppose: He could have inadvertently exposed a breast.

Radio Woe: A reader sent along a link to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel column about "radio's cloudy future." It seems that Clear Channel is planning to sell some of its stations, that listenership across the board is down from five years ago, and that even satellite radio is having its problems. Not only that: HD radio, terrestrial radio's supposed savior, is unknown to more than half the population. Clear Channel's plans to sell stations doesn't indicate much to me, though. Their mission is solely to make money, and if they can make more of it by selling stations than by keeping them, they'll do it. That's more business-cycle than anything else. The other stuff is more interesting to speculate about. Arresting the decline in listenership may be impossible in an iPod and Internet world. Why listen to what Steely Dan described as "somebody else's favorite songs" when you can listen to your own? A station might succeed if it can give people something they can't get anywhere else, but that's a lot harder than it used to be, now that the competition is not just coming from a station's home market but from around the world. (Satellite radio has the right idea in that regard--Howard Stern is Exhibit A; shows hosted by the likes of Bob Dylan and Tom Petty are close behind.)

So radio is off the radar for millions of people--it's something they used to listen to, but not any more. And there are children of school age now, the iPod generation, who may never have listened to radio. How do you lure 'em back? At best, satellite radio is ultimately going to end up like premium cable. It will never have the penetration of basic cable, because there will always be people who won't or can't pay for it. That said, it is likely to become to radio what HBO is to TV--the real art of the medium is going to be made there, even as it becomes rarer and rarer on the free version of the medium. That may attract some members of the iPod generation, but will it be enough? And as for HD radio, I've written about this before--for a lot of station owners, it's going to exacerbate a problem they already have--too many signals in a market slivering the audience. And as long as it requires special hardware to pick it up, it's likely to remain a geek thing--for the next several years at least. During those years, radio's relevance to a lot of people is likely to erode still further.

Tune of the Day: Since I haven't put any music on yet this morning, this is actually the Tune of Yesterday, but it's a good one. "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is the last track on the Rolling Stones' Let it Bleed, a dark and disturbing album that alternates images of violence and death ("Gimme Shelter" and "Midnight Rambler") with drug-fueled bouts of dementia ("Country Honk" and "Monkey Man"). But it ends gloriously, and if there's a more exciting stretch in the Stones' catalog than the last couple minutes of this, where the Stones chase the record's choir of angels out of the building, I can't think of it.

Face the Promise

2006-09-15T11:09:00.000-05:00

Bob Seger's new album, Face the Promise, came out this week. It's the first album of new material for Seger since It's a Mystery in 1995. That album was far better than anybody had a right to expect--one track, "Lock and Load," would have sounded at home on Stranger in Town or Against the Wind, and deserves to be up there with Seger's all-time great tracks. There's nothing nearly so fine on Face the Promise, though. The single, "Wait for Me," a midtempo love song in the "Against the Wind" vein, is the best track on the album, and does the best job of recapturing the classic Seger sound. "No More" is a declaration of independence that sounds like it could have been sung by the motorcycle rider in "Roll Me Away." On that track and several others, you'll notice that Seger's voice is deeper now, and not always in a good way. He occasionally sounds like a slowed-down tape of himself. The only song on the album Seger didn't write, "Real Mean Bottle" is a Vince Gill tune and features Kid Rock on duet vocals. Several years ago, I had to ask The Mrs. what Jessica Simpson was famous for--was she an actress? A singer? A reality TV star? I find myself asking the same thing about Kid Rock. Why is this guy famous, apart from marrying Pamela Anderson? He proves you can have a decent career hanging on to more talented performers, I guess. "Real Mean Bottle" sounds pretty good, although it's not because of him.

If you are a Seger fan, you'll probably want to snap this album up pretty fast. And if you are a Seger fan, the CD/DVD edition is for you. It contains a career retrospective, previously unreleased concert performances of "Still the Same" and "Hollywood Nights," and videos for "The Fire Inside" and "Like a Rock." Everybody else can download "Wait for Me" at iTunes for 99 cents and be just fine.

Note to somebody at Capitol Records: If ever there were an artist who needs a box set, it's Seger. There was an unauthorized compilation of early singles a couple of years ago, and the two Greatest Hits albums contain the big singles and the best-known album cuts. However, Seger is one of the biggest stars of the 70s and 80s never to receive the scholarly box-set treatment, if only to resurrect the good stuff from his hard-to-find pre-1975 albums. Such a set is long overdue.

Tune of the Day: For record collectors, the Internet has taken away the thrill of the hunt to a certain degree. You can order up any record in the world with a few mouse clicks, but many collectors (myself included) consider that less than sporting. We like to find them in the wild. The other day I found "Hey St. Peter" by Flash and the Pan, which got some radio play in the summer of 1979 without breaking into the Hot 100. That failure to chart is a bit of a mystery, because it's the kind of record that gets in your head and under your skin. If you heard it once back then, you're likely to remember it today, so go get it here. (You can buy it here.)

(Our customary Friday chart feature will return next week.)

Virtually Fabulous

2006-09-12T19:33:00.000-05:00

One of the first things anybody noticed about the Internet way back in the 90s is the way it creates virtual communities--people are linked by shared interests even though they aren't located physically in the same place, and may never actually meet. We have got ourselves a nice little community here at this blog--when I referred to the Stepfather of Soul and Homercat yesterday as "friends of this blog," that's what I'm talking about. I've never met either of them, although we've exchanged e-mails, we read each other's blogs, and we share our musical interests. If you read this bilge regularly, you're part of it, too. In those early Internet days, culture mavens worried about the replacement of real communities by virtual ones, imagining a nature of people sitting by themselves typing away at keyboards, mired in isolation while the outside world withered away. I don't worry about that, myself--the rewards of being part of our little virtual community far outweigh any desire I have to actually meet you people.

OK, that's a joke. But just as people in real, physical communities sometimes benefit from acts of kindness by strangers, I have recently been on the receiving end of what I think is my first act of virtual kindness. A web surfer, searching for information on the song "Moonlight Feels Right," found my posts about the song and the summer of 1976, and discovered that he and I share a love for that year, and for old-school Top 40 radio. So, for no reason whatsoever besides the idea that I might be interested, he uploaded and sent me links to a glorious radio aircheck from August 23, 1976. It's a slice of the night shift on X-Rock 80, licensed to Juarez, Mexico, across the river from El Paso, which blanketed the Southwest and beyond with 150,000 watts of power, three times the legal limit for American AM stations, into the 80s, and was once the single highest-rated radio station in America. The aircheck is fabulous--it's got all the jock energy and music and cranked-up audio processing we associate with the golden era of AM Top 40, along with the clicks, pops, and buzzes that were a part of life on the AM band.

If you'd like to hear what radio really sounded like in the summer of 1976, the links are still active. Part 1 of the aircheck is here; part 2 is here. The last 10 minutes of Part 1 are especially interesting and important. You'll hear my favorite disco record, "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel" by Tavares, followed by one of the greatest AM-radio records of all time, "Brother Louie" by Stories. (The call-and-response between the guitar and strings before the last refrain of that record, especially with the AM ambiance, is as intense as radio ever got--until you hear it as it was surely intended to be heard, you'll never believe anything could sound so damn hot.) Part 1 ends with "Ballroom Blitz" by the Sweet, which is old-fashioned loud rock and roll to begin with, but when it's processed for and broadcast on AM, it achieves its full flowering as a teenage anthem, and you hear it, too, as it was always meant to be heard. In those 10 minutes, you'll hear why I loved AM Top 40 back in the day, and why I still love it now.

And to Paul, the newest member of our little community, who sent it: I've already expressed my thanks via private e-mail. This one's going out to the world: Your act of kindness is much appreciated.

Tune of the Day: "Oh Marianne" by Peter Wolf, although it could have been any of a half-dozen other cuts on his 2003 album Sleepless. It's one of my favorite albums of all time, drawing from several musical streams--country, R&B, Stones-ish rock, and even, in the case of "Oh Marianne," Drifters-style pop. Get it before you grow another moment older. You can't afford not to.

Soul Deep

2006-09-11T20:29:00.000-05:00

And now, for the most uncharacteristic post in the history of this blog. This blog is not a place for politics. That's what Best of the Blogs is for. But for some reason, I'd rather write about this here, for the people who read this blog, than for the crowd at BotB.

September 11 is a terribly sad day to me, not so much because of the people lost on that day--I didn't know anyone, and I don't know anyone who knew anyone, who died at the World Trade Center or Pentagon. It's painful because I feel like I lost my country on that day--starting on that morning, the United States of America has become a place we would never have recognized on September 10, 2001.

Not only that: The mourning we've done as a nation today seems misplaced. Those who lost friends and family members are entitled to mourn their dead, but for the rest of us to mourn seems odd to me after all this time. What are we mourning, exactly? And are we mourning at all? Or are we, in some bizarre way, celebrating? Here in America, we believe that we do everything bigger and better than any other country in the world--so why wouldn't that attitude extend to our suffering? Couldn't we be demonstrating, through our ostentatious displays of media-delivered grief today, that we also hurt better than any other people in the world?

For what it's worth, on September 11, 2001, I got to my corporate job at 7:15AM, as usual. Just before 8:00, our video producer, Kym, came in and flipped on the TV in her cubicle. She'd been listening to the radio on the way in. "They said that an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center." As I looked at the fuzzy picture on the tube, I kept imagining a small plane, and it didn't really register to me that the hole in the building was a lot bigger than that. At some point, somebody said that there was a second plane. Pretty soon, the TV was sitting on the window behind my cubicle in hopes of getting better reception, and we watched pictures we could barely process. At some point, somebody said that the towers had collapsed. "What does that mean, collapsed?" I wondered. I imagined half-standing rubble, and couldn't fathom that they'd go down like a controlled demolition. Our office stayed open all day, and at one point during the afternoon, we had a regular weekly team meeting for one of my projects, which was distinctly surreal. Younger staff members seemed to have an easier time working than those of us who were a bit older--we gathered in various cubes and talked in hushed, barely believing voices.

As a media guy, what sticks with me about September 11 is the utter lack of calculation on the part of the TV networks that day. Reporters ceased to be Reporters, conscious of having the sacred duty of Explaining Things to People. They became regular folks caught in the middle of something the likes of which they'd never seen and could never have imagined. Image didn't matter, competition didn't matter--it was the single most small-d democratic day in the history of modern media. It didn't last long. It ended as soon as each channel gave September 11 its own logo and musical theme, which signaled that even a transcendent event like September 11 would eventually become a mere part of the media torrent.

Some friends of this blog have made their own September 11 posts, with appropriate music. The Stepfather of Soul meditates; Good Rockin' Tonight gets angry.

Tune of the Day: "Soul Deep" by the Box Tops. Here's another one for the list of people who should have been bigger stars than they were: Alex Chilton, the Box Tops' lead singer. In an alternate universe, he had a solo career that produced a boatload of hits. In our reality, at the very least, his post Box-Tops group, Big Star, should be more than a cult favorite.

Top 5: Gonna Drive You Home

2006-09-08T15:05:00.000-05:00

Lots of notable birthdays today in the music world--here are five of them, in approximate order of coolness.

5. Star Trek. The debut episode was broadcast on this date in 1966. By making stars of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, the show is indirectly responsible for some of the most misguided musical ideas in history, including (but not limited to) Nimoy's version of "Proud Mary" and Shatner's "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."

4. Benjamin Orr. The Cars' bassist was born in 1947. Orr dropped out of high school to pursue a musical career, but it didn't happen for him overnight. He was nearly 30 when the Cars got together, not quite 40 when he released his only solo album, and one month past his 53rd birthday in 2000 when he died of pancreatic cancer. Key tracks: "Drive" (with the Cars), "Stay the Night" (solo).

3. Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. A founding member of the Grateful Dead, McKernan was born in 1945. By 1968, more talented musicians had joined the band, and McKernan was eventually replaced on keyboards and relegated to playing congas. When the rest of the band started getting deeply into psychedelic drugs, McKernan stuck with alcohol, and he died from complications of alcoholism in 1973. Given all the 60s stereotypes about dirty hippies, one can only speculate why McKernan got the nickname "Pigpen."

2. Aimee Mann. Born in 1960, and first noticed by everybody as the photogenic front-woman of the 80s group Til Tuesday. Mann's solo career has resulted in some of the most consistently interesting and creative music of the last 10 years or so. Key tracks: the Magnolia soundtrack, "Two of Us" (with Michael Penn from the I Am Sam soundtrack).

1. Patsy Cline. Born in 1932, she had it all: a gorgeous bluesy voice, great songs, a glamorous image, and the kind of tragic death from which legends are made. It was only a little over five years from her first hit, "Walkin' After Midnight" to her death in a plane crash in 1963, but in that time, she recorded several of the greatest records Nashville ever produced: "She's Got You," "I Fall to Pieces," and "Crazy," by some tabulations the most popular jukebox record of all time--all of which were substantial pop hits, too. She also helped break the stereotype of female country singers as blushing, demure girls in cowgirl outfits in favor of outspoken women in sequins and heels, which was controversial at first and copied later on.

Tune of the Day: This is something new I want to see if I can keep up--with every post just a mention, although sometimes a link or a posted MP3, of the best song I've heard yet today. For this day, there are two: First, a song that will make you laugh like crazy--I wept, that's how funny I thought it was--but merely listening to it will probably send you straight to Hell after you die. Second, "Detroit Diesel" by Alvin Lee, which popped up on a crappy-sounding oldies tape I had on in the car today. It's the title song from a 1986 album, and it rocks as hard as anything I've ever heard in my life. I'll have to find a cleaner copy before I can post it, though.

Stupefaction

2006-09-06T09:27:00.000-05:00

Just checking in from the road, where WiFi access has been scarce, but the weather has been great, and I've seen some good friends for the first time in a while, so, as the kids say, it's all good. (The best song of the trip so far: "Joanne" by Michael Nesmith and the First National Band.)

So anyway: Have you ever wondered why songs get stuck in your head--and not just songs, but annoying songs, and often the most annoying little bits of annoying songs? (On this trip, my curse has been the line "don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me," from the Pussycat Dolls' "Don't Cha," which I heard on a beer commercial a couple of nights ago.) Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist whose new book This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession attempts to answer this, and some broader questions, such as: What's music for, anyhow? How and why did human beings develop this form of art and method of communication? And why do the songs we first hear as teenagers stay with us and speak to us throughout our lives, in ways that music we first hear later in life does not? Salon has more; you can read the article by watching a brief ad first.

Also: There's rich bloggy goodness over at Jefitoblog, including another Idiot's Guide, this one detailing the early career of Graham Parker. I mention it because it contains a track that demonstrates why I didn't become a big-deal radio programmer with magic ears. I dug Parker's 1979 album Squeezing Out Sparks, so in 1980, I was absolutely sure that "Stupefaction," the first single from Parker's next album, The Up Escalator, was going to be a smash. I even added it to the playlist at WXXQ in Freeport based largely on my own ears, and less so on airplay data from the radio trade magazines. It stiffed. Didn't even make the Hot 100, I don't think. But it's still a good tune, and you can hear it at Jefitoblog.

The Prettiest Thing I'd Ever Seen

2006-09-03T10:33:00.000-05:00

Back to school for most people on Tuesday, if they haven't gone back already. Which means that for some guys--and this is more of a guy thing than a girl thing--it will be necessary on various occasions over the next several months to crank up a favorite song in order to get oneself in the frame of mind to do something or be something one couldn't necessarily do or be as well without the music's help. Danny Alexander at Take Em as They Come wrote about that, and related subjects, on Friday, narrating a personal history that might seem familiar, if you're of the same approximate vintage as Danny (and me).

I’d met this girl at a high school football game where her friends were talking to my friends. Kristi Hall was wearing a pink satin jacket and chewing gum, and she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. A few weeks later in school, a mutual friend told me that Kristi liked me and gave me her phone number.

The night that everything changed, I sat staring at her number with the phone in my hand, and I kept trying to think of what to say. I put on my favorite record, and the urgency of the opening song said “Wait a second there, bud.” “I got a head on collision smashing in my guts man,” Bruce sang, and I knew the feeling. The entirety of the song that followed--particularly that bridge that said “it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive”--told me that I had to go back in that room, pick up that phone and dial that number.

And I did, and rock and roll never again meant to me the same things that it had before.

Other worthwhile reading and listening around the music blogs this weekend:

Through the magic of TiVo, Chaka at Timedoor watched the first 24 hours of MTV, as broadcast on August 1, 1981, and repeated a few weeks back on VH-1 Classic. He's helpfully transcribed a list of all the songs featured, some of which will leave you scratching your head: Lee Ritenour? Cliff Richard's "A Little in Love?" Michael Johnson's "Bluer Than Blue" and an Iron Maiden song in the same quarter hour? Once, this was hip.

Also: Earlier this week, I tagged Kevin at Got the Fever to complete the favorite songs meme, which he did. He's also posted about the mighty Tower of Power.

And finally: More cowbell!

Random Rewind: 1959

2006-09-01T16:23:00.000-05:00

As long as we've had the pre-Beatles era on the brain the last couple of days, let's stay there for this week's record chart from WAXX in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for this week in 1959. It's a weird-looking thing, largely because of the shorthand way it lists the artists for each record, generally by last name, or by truncating the name of groups: "Presley," "Everlys," "Santo" (for Santo and Johnny) and "Hurricane" (for Johnny and the Hurricanes). But it won't deter us--let's dig the Nifty 50, the happy sound of Color Channel 115. (With the rise of TV, it became common for radio stations to call themselves "channel" something. Calling oneself "color channel" was even more cutting-edge.)

1. "The Three Bells"/The Browns. (peak) Shown on the survey as "These Bells" by "Brown," this is the simple story of the birth, wedding, and funeral of Little Jimmy Brown. Thanks to its lovely melody and old-fashioned feel, it was rarely off country radio well into the 1970s. And I gotta admit--the world being what it is in 2006, there's something charming about the idea of being born, living, and dying happily in a little village somewhere, while a church bell tolls the years.

2. "Til I Kissed You"/Everly Brothers. (climbing) The first of five straight Top Ten hits for the Everlys, which would make 1960 the best year of their careers. That would also be the year they left Cadence Records for Warner Brothers, helping to make that label into a force.

12. "Gonna Be a Wheel Someday"/Fats Domino. (climbing) I recently finished reading a new biography of Domino called Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock and Roll, by Rick Coleman. And now I have to revise my personal rock 'n' roll pantheon, because Fats clearly belongs near the top. He was rockin' as early as 1950, and his records influenced everybody up to and including Elvis. "Gonna Be a Wheel Someday" was the flipside of the great "I Want to Walk You Home."

13. "What'd I Say"/Ray Charles (holding) There'd never been anything on the radio that sounded like this in 1959, and it remains as fresh today as it was back then.

18. "I'm Gonna Get Married"/Lloyd Price. (climbing) In addition to restoring Fats Domino to his place in history, Rick Coleman's book also illuminates New Orleans' underrated role in early rock. Price, from Kenner, Louisiana, was 19 in 1952 when he recorded "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" in New Orleans, with Domino's producer, Dave Bartholomew, running the session, and the Fat Man himself banging piano.

20. "The Mummy"/Bob McFadden and Dor. (climbing) Bob McFadden was a voiceover artist, famed for work on lots of Rankin/Bass holiday specials, including The Year Without a Santa Claus and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. This is a movie-monster-meets-beatnik novelty, written by Rod McKuen. Yep, that Rod McKuen.

30. "Poison Ivy"/The Coasters. (debut) One of the most openly subversive groups of the Eisenhower era. Coasters records consistently demonstrated that decorum and authority figures didn't necessarily need to be followed. And they got Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

34. "Mack the Knife"/Bobby Darin. (debut) The carelessness with which the station lists artists on its survey--in this case, showing just "Darwin"--makes me wonder how committed WAXX really was to this music. Maybe they thought the kids wouldn't care, so they didn't care all that much either. Despite its Hollywood big-band trappings, "Mack the Knife" is one of the great party records of all time. It is also the only song for which I have invented my own dance, and one of the few dances I willingly do without being intoxicated first.

40. "Lipstick on Your Collar"/Connie Francis. (falling) As massively successful as any artist in the pre-Beatles period, Connie Francis was better as a belter ("Where the Boys Are," "My Heart Has a Mind of His Own," "Who's Sorry Now") than as a rocker. But "Lipstick on Your Collar" might be the quintessential record-hop cheatin' song.

50. "I Ain't Never"/Webb Pierce. (debut) Here's one of those country crossovers from the pre-Beatles period. Only Eddy Arnold was a more popular country music star in the 1950s--in fact, in the first 50 years of the Billboard country charts (1944-1994), Pierce was among the top stars, up there with George Jones, Johnny Cash, and others. But he may have been most famous in Nashville for the guitar-shaped swimming pool at his house.

A Noble Experiment

2006-08-31T14:26:00.000-05:00

My post from two weeks ago on Real Oldies 1690 in Chicago and the comments received on it have sparked two posts' worth of additional thoughts. To read Part One, click here.

I was critical of the music format on Real Oldies 1690 in my original post, calling it "largely 50s and 60s MOR." That was a mischaracterization--the intent of the station, as Tommy Edwards described it in this 2003 interview with Edison Media Research, was to cover a specific period of the rock-n-roll era in more depth than mainstream oldies stations do:

We’re really focused on ’54-63. We’ll play a few songs from 1964, but those were holdovers by groups like the Four Seasons--there’s no British invasion music whatsoever. The songs we play from Sinatra and Nat King Cole were songs that were on the pop charts, although there are a few album cuts like “Chicago (My Kind of Town)” for obvious reasons. We also play a lot of the great R&B stuff that was segregated off the pop chart at the time . . . and the country crossovers and instrumentals of that era. Neil Sedaka and Paul Anka had a lot of hits; we’ll play 10-15 when you only hear one or two on other stations.

I don't know if Edwards' statement at the time the station signed on reflected the reality for very long. When I listened to the station, what I heard seemed pretty housewifey, and I didn't hear much R&B or country crossover stuff, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there.

Other stations around the country have tried this sort of pre-Beatles format, but it seems unlikely to me that that there's a big-enough audience for it to succeed anymore. Part of the reality is demographic: the kids who grew up on the music of the 1950s are pushing 70 now. The Grim Reaper killed elevator music radio in the early 90s, and he'll put big pressure on 50s-based formats in the next 10 years or so. In addition, "narrowcasting" has been fashionable for quite a while now, but the format as Tommy Edwards originally described it is one of the narrowest pop formats you'll find on terrestrial radio. It's more scholarly historical excavation than living format. Even with the broadening variations Edwards describes--adding R&B and country crossovers to the pop stuff--the format is ultimately airless. The artists who make up the core of mainstream oldies formats (and classic rockers like my radio station) are in many cases still touring and recording, so they retain some contemporary resonance. Far fewer artists from the pre-Beatles period are still viable, or even visible outside of PBS pledge specials.

But me no buts about the viability of jazz and classical formats. Even though the pioneers in those forms are long since dead, new generations continue to work in them, thus they are self-renewing in a way that rockabilly and doo-wop are not. It's not that there isn't any audience at all for pre-Beatles radio pop. There are people who remember when it was the stuff of mainstream radio, and people who are merely searching for something different, and certainly some of them will gravitate to such a format--but not in large-enough numbers to make it viable on terrestrial radio. In the future, they'll likely have to go to Internet radio or satellite to get it.

In the end, the ace up Real Oldies 1690's sleeve--the one that could have turned the game if Clear Channel had understood it--was its jocks. If the station was going to make it, it would do so as much on its personalities as on its music. However, there's an argument that a station staffed by guys who made their reputations in the 1960s and early 70s, as Larry Lujack, Scotty Brink, Ron Brittain, Jerry G. Bishop, and others did, might have done better overall by covering a different slice of time in the same way--say from the rise of Elvis to the release of Revolver, 1956 to 1966, playing the hits plus the MOR and country crossovers that don't make it onto oldies radio now. But there would be more duplication of that format with traditional oldies radio. One thing a pre-Beatles format doesn't have to worry much about is duplication, apart from Elvis, Buddy Holly, and maybe Jerry Lee Lewis--and even they're disappearing from mainstream oldies stations, which are largely 60s based anymore. But a 60s version of what Real Oldies 1690 was trying to do with the 50s would have to include artists such as the Beatles, Beach Boys, and various Motown performers, who are also core artists on mainstream oldies. However, if a station were willing to sell its veteran jocks as hard as it sells its musical image, it might be able to separate itself--but such a station wouldn't be viable outside the country's largest markets, and there'd be little point in doing it on national satellite. The attraction of Scotty Brink and World Famous Tom Murphy is obvious in Chicago, but in New York, you'd need different personalities to resonate in the same way.

In the end, we can probably chalk Real Oldies 1690 into the column of "noble experiment." Said column is littered with failed ideas that might have worked if they'd been executed better, but that's the thing about noble experiments: We'll never know what might have been.

Real Oldies Redux

2006-08-30T12:27:00.000-05:00

My post on the demise of Real Oldies 1690 in Chicago is still generating traffic and comments, even though it's nearly two weeks old and has dropped off the front page. (I even heard from my former colleague Len O'Kelly, who'd been doing overnights and production there--per the usual format-change ritual, the staff got practically no notice and had to vacate the building almost immediately.) And I've got enough left to say about the station's end that it's going to take two more posts to get it all in.

As is often the case with niche formats, Real Oldies 1690 inspired serious passion among its fans, some of whom have organized a campaign to save the station. I'm pleased to see that they recognize the essential futility of what they're doing--because it is indeed futile. At the same time, I'm skeptical about the suggestion that Clear Channel's decision to lease the frequency to WVON is racist--which is not supported by the Chicago Defender articles the campaign website links to. I can't believe I'm going to defend a company that's done more harm to the soul of American radio than any other single actor in the last 10 years, but here I go: Surely Clear Channel sees upside in developing a closer relationship with Chicago's African-American community, but that's essentially a business decision, a decision not much different than a grocery store opening a branch in a neighborhood that doesn't have one. It's got far more to do with demographics and opportunity than race. Like major corporations in other industries, Clear Channel lives for one thing only, and that's to make money, and they believe there's more money to be made by leasing the frequency to WVON than there is to continue the Real Oldies format.

This leaves aside the question of whether Real Oldies could have been profitable with better marketing and promotion, of course. One commenter observed that the station was clogged with advertisements for products and services aimed at a seemingly elderly audience. He/she wondered why there were no ads for the kinds of places he/she, a person in his/her 50s, regularly patronizes: "Target, restaurants, movies, travel, etc," and hits the nail precisely by asking, "who was going around selling commercial air time for Real Oldies? A bunch of 25-year olds?" Probably. The age of the people selling the time shouldn't matter--if you're paid to sell the product, you should be able to sell the product. Also, ad agency people will tell you that demographic reports rule their decisions--but the fact is that often, station sales representatives and agencies simply don't "get" certain formats, and as a result they steer clients to formats they do get. (This is a bigger problem than it used to be, because one set of sales reps may be marketing seven or eight stations today, whereas back in my day they would have marketed two at the most.) When I was in elevator-music radio in the late 80s, we had research showing our target demographics, 45-64 and 55-death, were among the leaders in disposable income in our market. But we lost agency buys for restaurants and discount stores to a Top 40 station whose audience was largely ages 12-24.

Another commenter gets at another issue that's rarely discussed--the continuing devaluation of jocks. Clear Channel has been one of the leaders of this movement, taking advantage of automation and voice-tracking technology to slash personnel budgets, and other radio companies have followed suit. It's spun to station managers thusly--"Even though you are located in West Overshoe, you too can have major-market talent on your station." Except you will be giving up much of what makes radio attractive to a lot of listeners--the immediacy of a local guy sitting in a hometown studio.

Real Oldies 1690, too, was extensively voice-tracked from outside the Chicago market. The difference that makes up for the lack of immediacy was that many of the station's jocks had major Chicago pedigrees, and as such were tapped into the city's collective radio memory. You'd listen to them now because you listened to them then. They should have been as much a part of the station's image as the core musical artists. Not living in Chicago, I don't know whether the station ever promoted the return of Uncle Lar and Little Tommy, let alone the other guys, like Ron Brittain or Jerry G. Bishop, who'd be almost equally well-known to a significant number of longtime Chicago listeners. But I doubt it--because in Clear Channel's world, jocks don't matter all that much. They're interchangeable parts.

Coming tomorrow: some thoughts about the music on Real Oldies 1690.

What You Need for Modern Times

2006-08-29T15:38:00.000-05:00

I hadn't been over to the Plagiarist for a while, but thank goodness I stopped by today. I found something that will keep me from having to do actual remunerative labor for the rest of the afternoon while I'm listening to tracks from the new Bob Dylan album. It's a meme--one of those lists that one blogger will complete and then tag other bloggers to complete on their own sites. This is one of the lengthiest memes I've ever seen, so I'm not going to tag anybody else with it officially (although I'd like to see what Homercat could do with it when he gets back from his current hiatus, and I'll bet Kevin at Got the Fever could have some fun with it, too). And here we go:

Favorite Beatles song: "In My Life"
Favorite Rolling Stones song: "Brown Sugar"
Favorite Doors song: "Riders on the Storm"
Favorite Bob Dylan song: either "Hurricane" or "Positively Fourth Street"
Favorite Led Zeppelin song: "Over the Hills and Far Away"
TV theme song: "Cleveland Rocks" (The Drew Carey Show)
Favorite Prince song: "Musicology"
Favorite Madonna song: "Borderline"
Favorite Michael Jackson song: "I'll Be There" (cheating; sue me)
Favorite Queen song: "You're My Best Friend"
Favorite Motorhead song: none
Favorite Ozzy song: none
Favorite Public Enemy song: none
Favorite song from a cartoon: either "Happy Happy Joy Joy" (from The Ren and Stimpy Show) or "O Tannenbaum" (from A Charlie Brown Christmas)
Favorite Bruce Springsteen song: "The Wish" (from the Tracks box)
Favorite Depeche Mode song: none
Favorite Cure song: none
Favorite song that most of your friends haven't heard: "This Is Love" by Mary Chapin Carpenter
Favorite Smiths song: none
Favorite Beastie Boys song: none
Favorite Clash song: "Hitsville UK"
Favorite Police song: "Wrapped Around Your Finger"
Favorite Eurythmics song: "Would I Lie to You"
Favorite Beach Boys song: "Sloop John B"
Favorite Cyndi Lauper song: "All Through the Night"
Favorite song from a movie: "Wise Up" by Aimee Mann (largely for the way it's featured in Magnolia)
Favorite Duran Duran song: "Union of the Snake"
Favorite Peter Tosh song: "(You Gotta Walk and) Don't Look Back"
Favorite Johnny Cash song: "Sunday Morning Comin' Down"
Favorite song from an 80s one-hit wonder: "Tragedy" by John Hunter
Favorite song from a video game: In my day, we were happy when there were bells on the pinball machine
Favorite Kinks song: "Come Dancing"
Favorite Genesis song: either "Follow You Follow Me" or "Throwing it All Away"
Favorite Thin Lizzy song: "The Boys Are Back in Town" (anybody who names anything else is a better man than I)
Favorite INXS song: "What You Need"
Favorite Weird Al song: either "One More Minute" or "Hooked on Polkas"
Favorite Peter Gabriel song: "Games Without Frontiers"
Favorite John Lennon song: "Stand by Me"
Favorite Pink Floyd song: "Comfortably Numb"
Favorite White Stripes song: none
Favorite dance song: It doesn't matter; I can dance to anything provided I'm drunk first
Favorite U2 song: "Pride (In the Name of Love)"
Favorite song from an actor turned musician: I'm still waiting for Abe Vigoda to make an album; that's gonna rock
Favorite disco song: "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel" by Tavares
Favorite power ballad: "More Than a Feeling" by Boston (the first power ballad)
Favorite Guns 'n' Roses song: "Paradise City" (didn't think I'd have one, did you?)
Favorite Who song: "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Favorite Elton John song: "Rocket Man"
Favorite song, period: "(They Just Can't Stop It) Games People Play" by the Spinners

Nothing especially unique there, I know--but I am a 70s guy raised on the Top 40. If you'd like to play along at home--whether you want to tackle the whole list or just a few--use the comments.

About the Dylan: As I've written previously, I missed Dylan during his most explosive period. Although I've gone back and listened to some of his landmark albums and sampled him now and then over the last 20 years, I wouldn't call myself a fan. But anybody who cares about rock and roll has to respect Dylan's place in the pantheon, and admire his desire to keep on keepin' on at his relatively advanced age. And based on a few tracks I've downloaded from various music blogs (via the Hype Machine), Bob's sounding good on Modern Times. "The Levee's Gonna Break," which is playing as I write, is superb; "Thunder on the Mountain" is pretty good, too.

Random Notes on a Rainy Afternoon

2006-08-28T15:42:00.000-05:00

I don't know what the weather's doing where you are, but here it's been raining all day--the sort of rain that makes you think autumn is not far off. Here are a few thoughts that have been in my head this afternoon.

In the comments a couple of weeks ago, my pal Willie mentioned the impending demise of Tower Records, once one of the behemoths of record retailing. Over the weekend, a story about the bankruptcy of the company appeared online and in newspapers. I agree with the analyst who said that the failure can't be blamed on digital downloads, although that would make sense at first blush. Tower's bankruptcy is more about getting left behind as the music business changed--music sales slumped generally, having an online business became critically important, and other retailers, most notably Walmart, could undercut their prices. And it's not just Tower that's getting killed that way. There's no music store in the big mall out here on the west side of Madison anymore, and hasn't been for nearly a year. The ones that used to be there, FYE and before that Musicland/Sam Goody, were ridiculously expensive toward the end--you'd be paying full list price for most of the stuff you bought, although the selection was usually extremely good. You could walk across the parking lot to Shopko and pay a lot less.

Coincidentally, another good comment to the same post noted that downloading, which allows consumers to buy songs they like one at a time, is merely the modern equivalent of buying 45s, as so many of us did back in the day. I haven't quite gotten used to that yet--if I'm going to buy music online, I still feel like I have to download entire albums. And I bought a killer yesterday: Nothing But the Water by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. I should have discovered this band a month ago when Homercat at Good Rockin' Tonight posted about them, but I didn't. And so I have gone an entire month, unnecessarily, without having this album in my life. If you're a Bonnie Raitt fan, or you dig a blues band anchored by a smokin' Hammond B3, you'll dig this. Which is basically what Homercat said, but because I am an idiot, I missed hearing Grace until this past weekend. If you want a taste, click here.

I should mention too that jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson died last week. For a brief period in the late 70s and early 80s, he was probably the most famous jazz musician in the country. His version of "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky and the album Conquistador was a hit single in 1977, and sometime around 1980 he played a concert at my college that brought rock fans to their feet, repeatedly--although by that point, jazz fans were abandoning him precisely because he'd gone pop. In the Washington Post, David von Drehle wrote an appreciative column from the point of view of a late-70s teenage fan.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled afternoon, already in progress.

Top 5: Ring My Sharona

2006-08-26T11:09:00.000-05:00

It's one of the tenets of this blog that the disco era, on the Top 40 at least, began with the release of Saturday Night Fever, and that it continued until August of 1979. That was when "My Sharona" by the Knack hit Number One and signaled that times were changing, again. But that's just my opinion--I could be wrong. First, five records from this week in 1979 that prove I'm right:

"My Sharona"/The Knack. As roundly hated by critics as any new band in history (partly for being unwilling to court the media, partly for imitating the Beatles on their album cover), the Knack nevertheless brought power chords and rock attitude back to the Top 40 at a moment when it seemed like all was lost.

"Goodbye Stranger"/Supertramp. "The Logical Song" had ruled the radio during the summer, but it sounded like a novelty record compared to this, which rocked harder than anything Supertramp would ever take into the Top 40.

"Let's Go"/The Cars. There'd never been anyone who sounded quite like the Cars, and it would be several years until we figured out what they were--the precursor to the chilly English dance-pop of the 1980s, only with better musicianship and greater rock credibility.

"I Want You to Want Me"/Cheap Trick. Their first two albums had generated an underground buzz, and "Surrender" had been a modest hit on the singles charts in 1978. Live at Budokan was their breakthrough record, and it's as much the screaming energy of the Japanese fans as it is the energy of Cheap Trick themselves that makes the record.

"Bad Case of Loving You"/Robert Palmer. In which Palmer exchanges blue-eyed soul for guitar edge--an edge that would stomp later records like "Addicted to Love" and "Simply Irresistable," which strived to sound even harder and didn't make it.

And now, five records from this week in 1979 that prove I'm wrong, and that disco had as strong a hold as ever:

"The Main Event"/Barbra Streisand. Absolutely everybody was dabbling in disco by this time--remember, Ethel Merman made a disco record in 1979. Streisand had the beat, but she lacked the soul to be remotely credible.

"Ring My Bell"/Anita Ward. I hated this record back then--those stupid syn-drums in the intro and Ward's breathy sex-kitten voice. Although Bad Company was using syn-drums at the same time (on "Rock and Roll Fantasy") and I didn't mind them.

"I Was Made for Lovin' You"/Kiss. Make no mistake--despite their rep as the ultimate rock band, this is a disco record, and one as lacking in credibility as Streisand's. Even when they were rockin' at their hardest, they never sounded as white as they do here.

"Makin' It"/David Naughton. Another disco record thoroughly steeped in whiteness. This was the theme song from a TV show starring Naughton, who later starred in An American Werewolf in London and as an alcoholic boyfriend of Elaine's who falls off the wagon at the office Christmas party on Seinfeld.

"Born to Be Alive"/Patrick Hernandez. Completely disposable disco--you'd heard it before and you'd hear it again, although not specifically on this record. You knew this record would never get back on the radio once it fell out of recurrents.

I have a theory, which I haven't explored in detail but which I think is halfway plausible, that the period between "My Sharona" in '79 and the release of "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" from Thriller in early 1983--of which this week is typical--represents an inter-decade period that is neither entirely 70s nor entirely 80s in nature. It's a period when dance music and rock music co-existed uncomfortably on the charts, not only never meshing, but seeming utterly opposite of one another. (Thus it's no surprise that this in this period, Top 40 as a radio format began to splinter.)

But I could be wrong about that, too.

I'm Outta Here

2006-08-23T14:26:00.000-05:00

During my radio career, I got fired on four separate occasions. The first was for refusing to take a more responsible position without receiving any additional money. The second was after being suspected (wrongfully) of industrial espionage. The third was after a new program director came on board and began systematically sacking the airstaff to provide jobs for his ne'er-do-well friends. The fourth was probably the most legitimate--an owner felt he needed to cut the budget and decided to sack the burnout case.

The third one happened on a Saturday afternoon. The new PD had been on the job a couple of months, and while he'd been careful to do the customary shuck--"we plan no major changes"--it was pretty clear that change was in the air. Two jocks and a couple of sales people had already been sacked. So when the PD showed up at the office that Saturday half-an-hour before I was supposed to get off the air, I knew precisely why he was there.

I finished my last break with, "Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure"--and walked out to face my fate. Would that I had done that last break with a bit more panache: "Ladies and gentlemen, my boss is in his office right now, and since he doesn't normally drag his ass in here on the weekend, there can be only one explanation for it--I'm about to get fired. But it's OK, really--working here has sucked like a $5 prostitute since he got to town. I take consolation in the fact that tomorrow, I will start whatever the next phase of my life is--but he'll still be the same slimy bastard he is this afternoon."

(At least I got fired in person. The woman who preceded me on the air that Saturday got fired on her answering machine that night. The PD could have sacked both of us in person when we changed shifts, but then he would have had to do the Saturday afternoon show himself. And he was the kind of asshole who wouldn't. I am not a person who carries grudges, but if this guy were drowning in a puddle at my feet, I wouldn't bend over to save him, and it's been 16 years.)

So anyway: A jock in Mobile, Alabama, quit her job on the air a couple of weekends back. "Izetta the Mood Setta" from urban contemporary station WBLX wrapped her show with a blunt rant (hear it here) about how she'd been mistreated and underpaid, and signed off with "I quit this bitch." She'd apparently been working at the station six years and was making only $6.50 an hour, but was also feeling back-stabbed by the staff and management.

Management, by the way, had a priceless comment amidst the usual corporate boilerplate about how Izetta should have spoken up about her complaints. The representative suit also criticized her for using words on the air that could have been damaging to children. Please. It isn't like a child who's been listening to R&B and hip-hop hasn't heard the word "bitch" before.

(Thanks to Pat for the tip.)

Boogie Chillen

2006-08-22T17:40:00.000-05:00

Haven't done one of these history things for a while, so here we go.

August 22, 2003: A Norwegian Elvis impersonator sings the King's songs for 26 straight hours to set a world record. It must have seemed important at the time.

August 22, 1979: Led Zeppelin's final studio album, In Through the Out Door, is released. The album is shipped in six different covers, although it's also shipped in a brown outer wrapper that makes it impossible for buyers to see which cover they are getting.

August 22, 1966: Two teenagers climb to the second floor ledge of a New York City hotel and threaten to jump unless they are permitted to meet the Beatles, who are in town for a concert. The cops talk them down; they don't meet the band.

August 22, 1965: The Beatles' second film, Help!, has its American premiere. Although it hasn't endured like A Hard Day's Night, the film is credited with inspiring the visual styles of both The Monkees and Monty Python's Flying Circus.

August 22, 1956: Production begins on Love Me Tender, Elvis Presley's first film. Originally set to be called The Reno Brothers, its title was changed to "Love Me Tender" after a song that was tacked on to the end of the film. Elvis is billed third and plays Clint Reno, a supporting character who dies in the end. "Love Me Tender" was reportedly tacked on because preview audiences disliked the fact that Clint/Elvis had died.

August 22, 1906: The Victor Talking Machine Company introduces the first gramophone with a built-in speaker, which is known as the Victrola. List price: $200, which is equivalent to something like $4,300 today.

Birthdays Today:
Ron Dante is 61. Dante sang lead anonymously on the Archies' "Sugar Sugar" and the Cuff Links' "Tracy," which were in the Top 10 at the same time in the fall of 1969. He was also Barry Manilow's producer until 1981, but "Sugar Sugar" makes up for that.

John Lee Hooker would either be 86 or 89 today, depending on the source, had he not died in 2001. A blues growler better known to contemporary listeners for his famous friends, such as the Blues Brothers, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana, and Bonnie Raitt, than for his own catalog, which includes "Boogie Chillen" and "Boom Boom."

Number One Songs on This Date:
1989: "Right Here Waiting"/Richard Marx. For a few minutes in the late 80s, Marx had a perfect grasp on what pop radio required. When it required a desperately dull 4-1/2 minute ballad, he delivered this.

1980: "Magic"/Olivia Newton-John. Actually a fairly respectable pop record, neither weird nor unlistenable. That would be ONJ's other summer-of-80 hit, the title song from the movie Xanadu, an inexplicable collaboration with ELO that represented the moment at which that band's career jumped the shark.

1974: "The Night Chicago Died"/Paper Lace. Essential 70s trash. If you have to ask, you'll never know.

1970: "Make it With You/Bread. Their first Top-40 hit, and--surprisingly--their only Number One song.

1944: "G.I. Jive"/Louis Jordan. In the 1990s, when swing and boogie-woogie came briefly back into fashion, I kept waiting for the big Louis Jordan revival. It never happened, but it should have. Jordan would become an enormously popular R&B figure in the postwar era, and as such, is one of the fathers of rock and roll, albeit largely unknown.

Station Seeks Goldmine, Listeners Get Shaft

2006-08-21T16:51:00.000-05:00

There's been lots of stuff piling up in my inbox for over a week, so now's the time to clear it out.

A reader sent along the link to a Los Angeles Times story about the demise of the last country station in the L.A. market, KZLA, which went to "beat-heavy R&B and dance tunes" last Thursday. Several major markets are without country stations now, especially on the coasts. KZLA got caught in Southern California's demographic switches. Do the math: According to an executive at KZLA's parent company, Emmis Communications, the market is now about 40 percent Hispanic, 11 percent Asian, and eight percent black. Country listeners, meanwhile, are about 98 percent Caucasian.

And some of those people are pissed. One woman quoted in the story said, "I think it's racist. This is becoming a nation of minorities. I'm not going to turn on my radio anymore. Country music promotes patriotism and family values, and they've replaced it with something that just promotes money and hate." You'd be hard-pressed to find four sentences that better encapsulate our current culture wars. You've got A) a white person claiming to be the victim of racism; B) the demonstrably correct statement that the country is becoming a nation of minorities, but made with the conviction that the situation is highly regrettable; C) the insistence that country music is a bastion of "patriotism and family values"--as if non-whites are incapable of either being patriotic or valuing their families; and D) the insistence, likely without having heard note one of it, that beat-heavy R&B and dance tunes automatically promote materialism and hatred. That part is true, to a point: some R&B/dance songs do indeed promote values that run counter to what many people believe in--just as some country songs glorify alcohol, adultery, and anti-intellectualism, which runs counter to the values of others.

But the fact is that radio companies aren't stupid where the opportunity to make wheelbarrows full of cash is concerned. (They're often stupid in other ways, but not that one.) The country-music industry executives who are predictably bemoaning the decision know, behind their public faces of disappointment, that if country can be profitable in Los Angeles (or New York, or San Francisco, or anywhere else), somebody will figure out how to do it. If country radio is dead in major coastal markets, it's for good reasons. It surely isn't because the executives at Emmis Communications hate white people. And the country execs are weeping crocodile tears anyhow--as the article notes, 2006 so far has been one of the best years ever for sales of country music. Its fans are finding it--and they will continue to do so.

On another subject: A friend of mine, long out of radio himself, responded to my statement a while back that I find being on the air in the year 2006 like riding a bicycle, but that the bicycle is more technologically advanced than the one I learned on. He reminds me just how complicated it was being a combo announcer/engineer back in the day--there were pots, meters, cart machines, turntables, and reel-to-reel racks to mess with, plus a program log to follow and meter readings to take. And yeah, that's a far cry from point and click--although we've still got pots to play with.

And finally: Doing research for my radio show a while back, I found an interesting site called Acclaimed Music, which purports to be a sort of meta-critic site, compiling the opinions of many music critics into consensus lists of the most acclaimed albums and artists in various years, and for all time. There's plenty of interesting clicking to be done there. During the same bout of research, the mysterious hand of Google brought me to Up the Downstair, a music site based right here in Madison that features a regular podcast and posts on "live music from divers artistes." Recent editions have featured prog rock, Madeline Peyroux, and surf guitar--which is sho-nuff diverse.

(A version of this post is at Best of the Blogs.)

You Didn't Have to Be There

2006-08-20T17:51:00.000-05:00

This past week, Pitchfork unveiled its list of the 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s. The writers say that the list is made up of "the 200 songs that most resonate with a generation too young to have experienced the decade firsthand, but old enough to know it had more to offer than '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.'" (Technically, that generation includes me, given that I didn't start listening to the radio until 1970--but I my guess is that many of the Pitchfork folks were born in 1970 or later.) I was going to try listing a few of the tunes that caught my eye as particularly interesting choices, but there are too many, so you'll have to read it yourself. If you don't have time (and you may not, as it's a l-o-o-o-n-g set of clicks), the blog Heartache With Hard Work (whose template you may find familiar) comments on the list as a whole, rightfully noting that the stuff at the top is somewhat predictable. Only somewhat, however. A few of the tracks at the top are surprising enough to make you think twice about how you remember the 1960s.

Also from the music blogs: If you are a Fleetwood Mac fan, get thyself over to the mighty Jefitoblog for some outtakes from Rumours.

Random Rewind: 1986

2006-08-18T15:50:00.000-05:00

I was involved, either as a listener or as a radio guy, with the day-to-day progression of pop music from 1970 until 1986. On the first working day of 1987, I went into elevator music radio. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.) Although I tried to keep up with the pop charts, it got harder--and the pop charts themselves were becoming a lot less interesting to me as times changed in the late 80s and I got older. I worked an adult contemporary format for three years in the early 90s, at the precise moment AC was becoming the blandest format imaginable. Sometime in these years I developed the following Law of Radio: In any market, the station promoting itself as having "the best variety" will in fact be the dullest station in town. Then it was off to classic rock, and eventually out of radio entirely.

Where was I? Oh yeah. This is a roundabout way of saying we're approaching the 20th anniversary of the Top 40 ceasing to matter to me the way it had since I was 10. And so here's a look back at some random selections off the Cash Box chart from this week in 1986.

1. "Papa Don't Preach"/Madonna. (peak) In which an unwed mother wants to keep the baby, and asks for understanding from her father. This was controversial back then. Madonna had shown no signs of wanting to do anything but party since she burst on the scene a couple of years before, but now here she was offending both pro-choicers (for keeping the baby) and pro-lifers (by being an unwed slut). It might still be mentioned as a pro-life anthem today, were it not for the whole unwed-slut thing.

5. "Higher Love"/Steve Winwood. (climbing) Back in the High Life is as good an album as anybody made in the 1980s, although this song hasn't held up all that well after 20 year of continuous airplay. I wouldn't mind hearing "Split Decision" again right now, though.

8. "Dancing on the Ceiling"/Lionel Richie. (climbing) The record that made urban contemporary radio wonder whatever became of their old pal Lionel. "Dancing on the Ceiling" was the whitest record he had made to date (and inspired one of the lamest videos of all time). Of course, we hadn't yet heard "Ballerina Girl," the very thought of which makes me want to pull my arm off and use it to beat myself to death.

15. "Sweet Freedom"/Michael McDonald. (climbing)
16. "Danger Zone"/Kenny Loggins. (falling) It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the Golden Age of Yacht Rock, apparently.

22. "Stuck With You"/Huey Lewis and the News. (climbing) It's interesting to me how Huey Lewis and the News have become, in the last several years, shorthand for lame 80s rock. Yeah, OK, the album Fore! sounds today like the soundtrack for suburban fatherhood, and "Stuck With You," in retrospect, is one the first suburban-dad anthems, but Fore! got AOR play when it was released late in 1986 and contained two Number-One singles. It doesn't matter how he's perceived today, though. Huey gets the last laugh every time the checks come in.

32. "Rumbleseat"/John Cougar Mellencamp. (climbing) On Scarecrow, Mellencamp addressed the rural economic crisis that was destroying towns like the ones he knew in Indiana, at a time when social commentary had been largely absent from the Top 40 for 15 years or more. He seemed to have completed the journey from snotty punk to important artist. Except his snotty side never went away, and he never again recorded an album remotely as valuable or true.

41. "Velcro Fly"/ZZ Top. (climbing) This may be exactly the same record as ZZ Top's other post-Eliminator singles, "Sleeping Bag," "Rough Boy," and "Stages," but you'd need an advanced degree to tell the difference. And you'd have to be a fan to care.

48. "Two of Hearts"/Stacey Q. (climbing) Faceless, vapid, annoying dance pop, notable only because it was involved in a wager between my pal Shark and me. I was working in Macomb, Illinois, at the time; he was on the air in Marquette, Michigan. So when Western Illinois played Northern Michigan in football that fall, we bet on the game. The loser had to go on the winner's show and sing "Two of Hearts." WIU won, so Shark lost. It wasn't his finest radio moment, no.

61. "Secret Separation"/The Fixx. (falling) The Fixx played Macomb at some point during my time there, and they employed one of the more unusual bits of staging I'd ever seen, then or since. The between-shows soundcheck had been going on for a while without a break, and what we thought was a drum technician was beating on the drum kit. Except it was the drummer, and after a couple of minutes, the rest of the band strolled on stage and started to play while the house lights were still up and half the crowd was out in the lobby.

I said it was unusual; I didn't say it was an especially good idea.

Real Oldies

2006-08-17T17:22:00.000-05:00

I've written here before about Larry Lujack, the legendary Chicago DJ who's largely responsible for making me want to be a radio guy. His dominance in Chicago ended in the mid-80s, and 19 years ago this month, WLS bought out the 12-year contract he had signed only three years before. The radio industry was changing, yes, but Lujack was clearly burned out after 20 years at the top in Chicago--to hear him in the later years was almost painful. Unable to work as a condition of the buyout, he lived in the Chicago area for several years afterward, but eventually retired to New Mexico, where he often said he was "dodging rattlesnakes and waiting to die."

In 2000, Chicago's WUBT re-upped him for a weekend show that ran for about seven months. In the fall of 2003, Clear Channel paired him with former WLS jock Tommy Edwards on Real Oldies 1690. (In the 70s and 80, Edwards and Lujack had co-hosted "Animal Stories" on WLS, perhaps the most hilarious use of a simple concept in the history of radio.) As he'd done on WUBT, Lujack provided his bits for the morning show from a studio in his New Mexico home. Tuesday, Real Oldies 1690 ceased to be--Lujack, Edwards, and the rest of the jocks, who included fellow Chicago legends Scotty Brink, Ron Brittain, and Tom Murphy (and the overnight guy, Len O'Kelly, with whom I worked in Davenport, Iowa, in the late 80s), were turfed, and the signal is going to be leased to another station effective tomorrow.

That kind of thing happens in the industry, of course. I couldn't begin to guess the number of format-change-related firings among five guys the likes of Edwards, Lujack, Brink, Brittain, and Murphy, who must have nearly 250 years' experience altogether. But the fact that Real Oldies 1690 lasted nearly three years was a bit of an upset to begin with. The signal was terrible. Most of the jocks were voice-tracking their shows from faraway places. Promotion was nonexistent. And the music, far from being the stuff of classic AM Top 40, was largely 50s and 60s MOR. It's what kids like me who listened to WLS were escaping from--the stuff our parents liked.

Asked for a comment, Lujack was quintessentially Lujack. If you know the voice, you can hear it:

Given the fact that I am still charming, still delightful, and still blessed with the God-given ability to pleasure the listeners in every conceivable way, you would think that some station manager would be eager to throw money at me. But with the idiots running radio stations these days, who knows?

I could have said the same thing myself when I got out of radio the last time.

Lujack is 66 now, and most likely doesn't need to work anymore. But I never expected him to come back the last time, or the time before that. And as I know from my own experience, radio's a funny thing. You miss it, even when you try hard not to, or tell yourself you don't.

(Thanks to Willie for the tip.)

(Further commentary on Real Oldies 1690 is here.)

Long Time Gone

2006-08-15T18:19:00.000-05:00

Thirty-seven years ago today, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York. Scratch an ex-hippie, and many will wax lyrical about "three days of peace, love, and music" and the magical community that sprang up in the countryside, where people got stoned, played together in the flowers and the mud, danced for hours to unbelievable music, and spontaneously formed the forever indivisible Woodstock Nation. Well, not exactly. While it's probably not true that if you can remember Woodstock, you weren't there--surely one of the snottiest catchphrases the 60s generation ever dreamed up--a lot of what people "remember" about Woodstock isn't true, and some of what they've forgotten is interesting. What follows is by no means a comprehensive list.

Who was on the bill and who wasn't. Thousands of people "remember" Joni Mitchell singing her song "Woodstock" on stage at the festival. It didn't happen. She was booked, but never got to the festival after authorities closed the New York State Thruway to keep the crowd from becoming even more unmanageable. (Crosby Stills Nash and Young perform it in the concert film, but that performance was recorded later.) Other thousands have forgotten that Creedence Clearwater Revival played the festival, following the Grateful Dead and preceding the Who, during the early-morning hours of Sunday. The reason is that CCR's performances are not in the movie; performances by the Band, the Grateful Dead, and Blood Sweat and Tears also didn't make it in. Jimi Hendrix, who was supposed to close the show at midnight Sunday, didn't get on until 9AM Monday, thanks to the famous rainstorm and lengthy sets by earlier acts, including Crosby Stills Nash and Young, who famously admitted to being "scared shitless" by the size of the crowd. Playing the set immediately before Hendrix: Sha-Na-Na, who at that moment of the 1960s had counterculture credibility. Because it was Monday morning, only scattered handfuls of people saw what Hendrix considered a subpar performance. The Doors were booked but canceled at the last moment; John Lennon offered to perform but was turned down by the promoters, who had asked him to bring the Beatles. Led Zeppelin turned down an invitation in favor of a better-paying gig elsewhere.

The free festival. Woodstock wasn't intended to be a free festival, even though it eventually became one, after the logistical nightmare caused by 500,000 people showing up when 60,000 were expected--and thanks to the widespread belief that the festival was in fact going to be free. Three-day tickets cost $18--which was expensive for 1969, equivalent to about $95 in current dollars.

Peace, love, and music. That was the phrase the promoters settled on, but they also intended to make money. Trust-fund baby John Roberts had the initial bankroll; his partners included Yale-educated lawyer Michael Rosenman, record executive Artie Kornfeld, and local businessman Michael Lang. They had the presence of mind to record and film the show for later release. Organizers had tried to prepare for the crowd they expected, but the concept of corporate sponsorship for such events was largely unknown. Vendors were brought on-site, but they were quickly cleaned out by the crowd. So volunteers made PB&J sandwiches by the hundreds, crossed their fingers, and hoped for the best. Roberts ended up bouncing hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks during the festival in the attempt to meet the needs of the throng.

Back to the garden. The significance of Woodstock is a bit overrated, I think. For all the talk of "Woodstock Nation," it's worth noting that the nation was primarily white, middle-class, and East Coast. And for all the talk of Woodstock marking the climax of the 1960s, it's just as much the off-ramp. A little more than three months later, the communal ethos of Woodstock would go horridly sour at Altamont. A year after Woodstock, the antiwar movement that was as much the generation's glue as the music suffered a fatal blow at Sterling Hall. From there, it became a duel between Woodstock veterans who claimed that if you remembered it you weren't there and an ever-growing number of people who claimed to have been there but really weren't. Succeeding anniversary shows were little more than cynical attempts to exploit a younger generation's desire to have their own Woodstock experience. The last one, Woodstock '99, dissolved in a disastrous riot, and likely marked the last time anybody would try to emulate the original, or would want to.

Bob Spitz's Barefoot in Babylon is the best history of the festival, although it's out of print. The Woodstock 69 website has some interesting stories and memorabilia also.

I Think I've Only Got Five of Them

2006-08-14T18:05:00.000-05:00

The Recording Industry Association of America recently published an updated list of the all-time top-selling albums. Here's the new Top 10, in reverse order, including the number of copies sold.

T9. Rumours/Fleetwood Mac. (19 million) Almost every track is pretty crispy from 30 years of continuous airplay, but if you want to know what the 70s sounded like, you still need this.

T9. "The White Album"/Beatles. (19 million) It's a mild surprise that this album ranks as low as it does, given that it's on the short list of music that will always be cool to every new generation. (The other stuff on that list is a post for another time.)

T7. Come on Over/Shania Twain. (20 million) If country is where mainstream rock went to die (more on that below), this is the precise plot where it's buried. Calling this country is mostly a marketing term, thanks largely to Twain's husband and producer, Mutt Lange, who shaped the sound of Foreigner and AC/DC's Back in Black. The polish on Shania's records is out of the old Foreigner bottle.

T7. Double Live/Garth Brooks. (20 million) Industry observers think that many of the albums on this list will hold their high positions forever, as the splintering of the pop market makes mega-million-sellers less likely. If that's true, future generations will wonder who Garth Brooks was--he's less relevant now than anybody else on this list.

T5. Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2/Billy Joel. (21 million) This is the one on the list that surprised me the most. It's a good package, but if you spent your money The Stranger and An Innocent Man, you'd have most of it--and better filler.

T5. Back in Black/AC-DC. (21 million) I wrote about AC/DC earlier this summer. You can read it again if you want to.

T3. The Wall/Pink Floyd (23 million) Since I know you're wondering, Dark Side of the Moon has sold 15 million and ranks outside the Top 10, alongside other 15-million sellers including Born in the USA by Springsteen, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, and Guns 'n' Roses' Appetite for Destruction. Like most two-disc albums do, The Wall seems padded to me in a way that DSOTM doesn't.

T3. "Four Symbols"/Led Zeppelin. (23 million) In the last couple of months, I have met people aged 25 and aged 9 who think that Zeppelin is the ultimate in cool--and this is as cool as they got.

2. Thriller/Michael Jackson. (27 million) This spawned something like seven Top-10 hits, which was unprecedented then and unlikely to be repeated now. But which ones are still getting airplay now, and on what formats? I wonder.

1. Their Greatest Hits: 1971-1975/Eagles. (29 million) A widely published Denver Post story on the RIAA's new list included a couple of knowledgeable music commentators greeting this with disbelief and outrage, but Don Henley has the simple explanation: "Well-crafted, well-played songs with memorable melodies and decent lyrics." Its success is all the more astounding when you realize it doesn't include anything from Hotel California and The Long Run. All that stuff is on Greatest Hits Volume II, which has sold 11 million to date.

Recommended Reading: I'm a little behind on this, but last week, the AP's entertainment writer, David Bauder, who is probably about my age, decided it was time to get back to his Top 40 roots, so he downloaded the current Top 40 from iTunes and listened to all of them. His conclusions: The dominant subject matter of the Top 40--boy meets girl--hasn't changed since back in the day; the ratio of good songs to bad songs is about the same, too; female vocalists don't have to ask for "Respect," like Aretha did 40 years ago--they assume, as they rightly should, that they're entitled to it; most rap is dull; and "Country is where mainstream rock went to die."

The Fever

2006-08-12T11:32:00.000-05:00

I was out of town for a couple of days this past week and missed my usual Friday feature, which will return next week, and I've got other stuff I have to attend to today, so I'll let other people handle your music-blogging needs.

Get thyself over to Got the Fever, a brand-new blog that's going to be terrific. Kevin's inaugural post features Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. If you know them, you know that they're a traveling party that starts whenever you hit the "play" button. If you don't know them, well, that's why you need to visit Got the Fever, which is named for one of SSJ's best tunes.

I was pleased to see that London Lee at The Number One Songs in Heaven shares my opinion that the Four Seasons did some of their best work in the mid 1970s, and that he mentions the great "Silver Star," which followed "Who Loves You" and "December 1963" into the Top 40 in the summer of 1976. But apart from the Seasons, Frankie Valli was also enjoying some of his greatest solo success at approximately the same time. In the late summer of 1975, Valli took "Swearin' to God" into the Top 10--and The Number One Songs in Heaven has the extra-long dancefloor version posted right now.

The Stepfather of Soul has the strange history of Isaac Hayes' performances at Wattstax--and other oddities surrounding this famous soul music showcase, which is available on DVD, and is must viewing for anybody who digs 70s soul.

And that oughta hold you for a while.

Cruising and Streaming

2006-08-10T16:50:00.000-05:00

Monday night, for the first time in years, I hosted a radio station event. The Lake (93.1/106.7) does a series of sunset cruises on Madison's lakes--a listener and three friends get the ride on a top-of-the-line powerboat plus a wine-and-cigar tasting and some fabulous views of Madison, all hosted by a station personality. This time, said personality was me. (If the winners were disappointed at being hosted by the weekend guy who's only been at the station a couple of months, they didn't show it.)

That we don't do traditional contests is part of The Lake's identity. We have a Listener Advisory Panel people sign up for online, then we draw names from the list of members to award prizes. In the past, the station has run promotions allowing panel members to build up points, which they could use to bid on various perks, from cruises to concert tickets to station swag. So there's no "be caller number 11"--and I have to say I don't miss it.

On the way to the event (at the wheel of the station van, no less), I tried to remember the last time I did a public appearance on behalf of a radio station. In 1995, the AC station at which I worked part-time went to classic rock. They fired the full-timers, but kept the part-timers--and I was tapped to do a car-dealer remote that had been sold before the format change. (It may have been the very first remote under the station's new identity.) There was no remote broadcast on Monday--I just had to be Your Cordial Host, which meant I could drink as much wine as propriety would allow. The guy from the boat dealership said to me at one point, "I'll bet this makes up for all those times you had to broadcast from a steaming-hot parking lot." Well, not all of them, because there were a lot of them--but yeah, it was better than most.

However: The truly big news from The Lake is that the station is now streaming online. Visit the station's website and go from there. I'll be on the air from 3 to 7PM this Saturday and 7 to 10PM this Sunday. (All times U.S. Central.) So please . . . fill out those diaries correctly.

Still Classic After All These Years

2006-08-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

A reader who found his way here via a Google search sent me an e-mail recently. He had been looking for information on the WLS year-end countdowns, and wondered if there are any Internet radio stations playing the hits from those days in that style. Well, the single best site on the Net for Classic Top 40 is still Reelradio. They've been on a subscription-only basis since February, but a mere $12 a year will get you access to a wide variety of airchecks from the 50s to the 80s. Normally, an aircheck is jock-talk only, but more and more Reelradio airchecks include all the music, commercials, and newscasts, so you can hear the shows just as they were heard back in the day.

If you're looking for free sites, there are a couple of good ones at Live365.com, streaming free of charge 24 hours a day. Oldies Generation programs playlists from various classic-era Top 40 stations such as WLS, WCFL, WABC, WQAM, WRKO, and so on. For example, as I'm writing this, they're playing music heard on WABC during the week of March 8, 1961 (the set started with Lawrence Welk's "Calcutta," but also included Elvis, the Shirelles, and others). The program also include occasional jingles, news bits, comedy bits, and station promos, although not airchecks as such. But if you're looking for the music from back in the day, Oldies Generation has it.

Many young Top 40 geeks spent hours recording their favorite stations off the air. I did a bit of it myself, but the few tapes I made are long gone. At WLS Airchecks, they live. This station programs a collection of actual WLS recordings from the 60s to the 80s. The audio quality isn't always great--but I am guessing what we're hearing are ancient cassettes. The airchecks include the music, the jocks, the commercials, and occasionally the newscasts. If you want to know why I fell in love with Top 40, this station gives you the chance to find out, in real time.

You'll need to download the Live365 player to hear these stations, and if you register (which costs nothing), you can customize your player with presets for your favorite stations. Be sure to browse the station listings--if you can't find something you like, you're not trying hard enough. Some stations require a subscription fee, but the vast majority do not.

Coming later this week: My return to radio cranks up another notch.

Record Collector

2006-08-06T18:01:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I read an article in which the author suggested that mega-bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders, while they're sometimes accused of driving independent booksellers out of business, provide an important service by bringing a vast selection of books to places that probably never had such a thing before. Electronics retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City provide a similarly vast selection of CDs to places that couldn't support an independent CD store. But even the mega-retailers have limits--last fall, I tried unsuccessfully to find the new edition of Elton John's Captain Fantastic at several megastores in the Twin Cities, and megastores' coverage of independent labels and local acts is always going to be hit and miss. So: if your taste is more than one standard deviation from that of the masses, you'll always find yourself in need of a good local independent record store.

Over at Soul Sides this afternoon, Oliver Wang pays tribute to Groove Merchant in San Francisco, "aka the greatest record store in the world." I'm not sure I've ever loved a record store like Wang loves Groove Merchant, but I've known some good ones in my day. In Madison, the Exclusive Company is the most reliable. They have quite literally everything, old and new, rock, jazz, country, classical--if they don't have it, you don't need it. When we lived in Iowa City, I did much of my music shopping at Record Collector, which is still the best used CD store I know. It's a regular stop whenever I get back there. (The best used shops in Madison today are Frugal Muse and Half-Price Books, although CD Exchange on State Street is excellent too, particularly for jazz.) During our years in the Quad Cities, Co-op Records was the best place for serious record shoppers, although there were good used shops, too. When we lived in Macomb, Illinois, the place would have felt like the outpost on the edge of the earth that it is had it not been for Victrola, which carried both new and used records, and was a solid customer of my radio station to boot. I went to college in Platteville, Wisconsin, which did not, as I recall, have the kind of great record store one normally associates with college towns, although the university book store and the mega-grocer stocked a few albums. You were better off going to Dubuque or Madison. Late and lamented Madison music stores from those days include Discount Records downtown and Victor Music at one of the malls.

In my hometown, Monroe, we had an actual record store worthy of the name for a while, in the new mall that opened with great fanfare in 1977 and never achieved more than 60 percent capacity--and the record store, whose name escapes me, was one of the first tenants to come and go. Before and after that brief interlude, however, we were left with the selection at Value Village and Gibson's Discount Store, which was usually pretty spotty. I have written before of buying my first 45s at S&0 TV, which was a fairly typical store of its kind in the 1960s and 70s. It sold mostly TVs (and serviced them in the back), but stocked audio equipment and records, too.

The music-shopping world has transformed dramatically since I laid down my first 95 cents at S&0 TV, and the change is still going on. Because so many people buy music where they can, at major retailers like Walmart and Best Buy, and because so many people are downloading music now, bypassing brick-and-mortar stores altogether, the concept of a great record store may disappear entirely one day. But that day is not yet.

Top 5: Reading Music

2006-08-04T08:30:00.000-05:00

This week's Top 5 is intended to call your attention to the best music reads I've come across this week, in no particular order. And here we go.

Two of the best posts I've read online this week have to do with important, but not necessarily well-known, figures in country music. First up, at the inestimable Living in Stereo, David Cantwell republishes an obituary he wrote last year for Sammi Smith, who would be turning 63 this weekend. The post, titled "Girl Hero: Sammi Smith", features several tracks, including Sammi's 1971 crossover standard, "Help Me Make it Through the Night." It's a more important record than you might imagine. Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren, in their 2003 book Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles, put it at Number One. People who know only the in-your-face mixture of beat and attitude that passes for country music today, or who dismiss all country music as "twang," know little if anything about the quiet, powerful sort of country Sammi Smith did so well. That style never dominated the charts back in the day, but at least it crept through now and then. Cantwell provides a generous helping of Sammi's best that you should sample in its entirety. If you can keep from getting goosebumps on "Help Me Make It," or fail to be moved by "Today I Started Loving You Again," you're a harder case than I.

The other country-themed post is by Tony Tost at Moistworks. He writes about three very different country songs, all written by the same interesting and controversial singer/songwriter: David Allan Coe.

One thing that's clear to a rock fan on the cusp of geezerhood--the kids just don't seem to be having much fun these days. The hottest bands right now all seem either dark and brooding or aggressively pissed off. Thom Jurek (who is not necessarily on the cusp of geezerhood himself--I have no idea) traces the rise and fall of hedonistic, good-time rock and roll, from the 1950s to its 80s resurgence and its 90s disappearance, in "Is Rock & Roll Really Dying? A Case Against Dourist Rockism". It's at Allmusic.com.

AK, who runs Soul Shower, is in the midst of relocating from Wisconsin to Indiana, so his latest post is one that's been up since last week--but it's a good one. It's a guest post by a reader writing about "a mournful longing for the only person who could ever make us feel whole," as expressed in two familiar soul records by Gladys Knight and the Pips and the Chi-Lites.

The Onion has recently expanded its "AV Club" section with some new features. Amelie Gillette's "The Hater" is one of my new favorite sources for snark, but also worth reading is "The Inventory," which features a music-and-movies list of some sort each week. This week's list is "14 Classic Tom Petty Opening Lines," a unique way to appreciate a guy whose reputation grows with every new record he makes.

Bonus Read: At Take Em as They Come, there's a post that has nothing to do with music, but go and read it anyway. Danny Alexander writes about the ghosts in his house this summer, and in his life more broadly. Damn, I wish I could write like that.

The Melted Snowbird, and Other Mismatched Road Tales

2006-08-03T16:00:00.000-05:00

Thirty-two years ago tonight, on August 3, 1974, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band opened for another artist for the very last time. The artist: Anne Murray. The bill, at the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park, was originally supposed to be headlined by Boz Scaggs. Brewer and Shipley were supposed to go on first, then Murray, then Scaggs. When Boz pulled out, the promoters replaced him with Springsteen. Murray's people objected, saying she was a bigger star and should go on last. This was true--in the summer of '74, she was at the crest of the biggest year of her career to date, so Springsteen was moved to the second slot. This left Murray in the position of having to follow Springsteen--whom most of the 5,000 people in attendance had come to see in the first place. (A few more details can be found here.)

I have been wanting to write about weird concert bills since Shark mentioned in the comments the other day that he once saw the Charlie Daniels Band opening for Heart. That's not as weird as Springsteen opening for Anne Murray--which has to be right up there with Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees. In 1969, the Staple Singers once opened for the Doors. In 1970, Miles Davis opened a few shows for the Steve Miller Band, which is not as odd as it seems when you realize that Miles was seriously electric by that point. In 1972, Stevie Wonder opened some shows for the Rolling Stones, which was a pretty bold move at the time (and in fact, Wonder got booed at some of the dates). That same year, country-rock pioneers the Flying Burrito Brothers were on the same bill with Sly and the Family Stone in Chicago, although Sly didn't show. In 1973, Earth Wind and Fire opened for Uriah Heep.

At some point in the mid 70s, Billy Joel opened for Jethro Tull. The Joel/Tull pairing is instructive. When a performer is trying to make a name for himself, a slot on the bill with an established artist is an excellent way to reach a wider audience with money to spend on records. (That's how Hendrix ended up touring with the Monkees.) So 10 years ago, Radiohead opened for Alanis Morrisette. In the early 80s, Stevie Ray Vaughan opened for Huey Lewis and the News. It's how a three-way bill of Boston, Southside Johnny, and Starcastle toured the East Coast in 1977. It's not always clear at the time that a pairing is a poor one--and in fact, circa 1975, Billy Joel and Jethro Tull wouldn't have seemed especially odd, not like it does now. Neither would Charlie Daniels and Heart in 1977. Or the 1974 pairing of ZZ Top and Deep Purple.

The strangest bill I ever saw myself was in 1980, when Betty Wright opened for Bob Marley and the Wailers here in Madison. Wright was an R&B singer (biggest hit: "Clean Up Woman" in 1972), but her disco-inflected act didn't go down well with the Marley fans. At one point, a guy near me stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Cut out this disco shit and let's hear some reggae!"

And now, predictably enough, it's your turn. Please contribute any strange concert bills you've attended or heard of by clicking "Comments."