Re(8): Be good to your Chief Engineer Posted on June 18, 2021 at 03:57:21 PM by just sayin
I think you're makin up stuff to validate the mistakes in your previous posts.
I stand by my post but I gave away my thick Encyclopedia of Rock by Lillian Roxin, written in the early 70s that detailed the changes in rocks since the 50s.
Top 40 was a phrase to describe hight rotation pop music until the radio industry renamed it 'pop rock' or just 'pop.'
The point of it was the consultants said take 2 or 3 dozen songs and run em into the ground because dumb teens like it familiar, even if not particularly artistic. Your comments about Clark and Kasem owning the Top 40 radio format is off base. It was local RADIO that coined the name and format, not the national guys who played syndication for years after radio started it.
Again, the Beatles, Cream and the drug themed music was an offshoot of top 40, just as the metals were yet another derivative, and ska and more and more so that top 40, now called 'classic/greatest hits' pretty much stated the way it was. And local stations around the country, renamed from the long-used 'oldies' moniker... sounded as old as we 'boomers' were becoming. But those formats still appealed to the largest boomer generation as we grew older.
Oldies radio was still stuck where it was, playing only male oriented, high energy dance hall hits--and ignoring the ballads of the period, commonly called 'chick music.'
THEY were very big because to be honest, it was the girls who controlled the radio buttons when they were in the car. Boys liked the BoxTops, girls liked the love songs, Manilow being the biggest favorite if not the young boybands. The only interjection I'd offer was after the civil rights rebellion in abt 65, white kids discovered Motown---
I remember so well between 68 and 71, the battle overseas was the Vietcong out in the boonies, but in the barracks,the battle was over who played their stereos the loudest, the blacks with their Motown or the whites, with their drug infested, anti-war music. I know, I was there, and was on American Forces radio at the time. But I still ran at Top-40 format, and a requestline. So I knew their tastes, they talked to me every night, and there was no program director to tell me which of the 40 stateside hits I had to play every shift. But we did get Billboard every week, so we weren't out of touch.
I loved the industry, just not the consultants telling jocks to move the music and play the records they were given, in the rotation designed for better ratings. Radio was great fun til the corporations consolidated em and they all used the same consultants! Replies: