Re(2): Who's Drew Posted on October 10, 2023 at 06:19:09 AM by Oldies but goodies
Thanks Drew, I enjoyed your assessment of radio during those years of the music groups you mentioned. Too bad you didn't break into radio itself and get it out of your system. It really wasn't a good way to get into music tho, same songs, day after day until you were so sick of em, your turned downt he studio monitor!
To me, radio was like collecting records or movies but now with the internet and music at our fingertips, there's no reason to listen to ota (over the air) radio. Youtube changed all that, as did the satrad broadcast signals where now you can listen to your changing niche tastes without buying a bunch of music. We aint kids anymore with little experience, the more decades we've been listening to music, the more diversified are the familiar songs that take us back to the people and places where we've been.
Thats why I like oldies ... when I was a teen and had only listened for a couple years of pop music, top40 was fine. But get a few decades of listening, well ya go from a single jukebox full of 45s to hundreds. Maybe thousands. I'm a collector... aside from digitizing all the CD's I had and the ones I checked out at the public library, and a few friends who wanted to trade, well I have so much I could run an oldies station of any format. Course with only 2 ears, I still listen to a relatively short playlist but the variety spans 7 decades since I enjoyed my parents period music of the 40s as well.
Now to me, its totally about the music, not the jocks or the commercials obviously. and youtube/the voice have made me video oriented now, seeing the singers I'd only heard years before. I was shocked to discover the Righteous Brothers were white and Bob Dylan totally looked like a nerd! To really get off on the music, everything's on YouTube which is free. Sometimes an artist or record company will force YouTube to stop playing some cuts. Streisand's music is pretty much down, but the Beatles, best of Elvis, Jacksons and so many others now dead, let their stuff be publicly shared. I have quite a bit on my website but every once in awhile some of them are pulled off so you get a 404 computer error, file not found or notice of copyright exercise forcing YouTube to take certain songs down. I delete those links. Very few though. My kids listened to your music or went thru a ska phase. (They did agree with me that Disco sucked, except for the BeeGees and a few cool groups!) For me, in the 70s, alt music was kinda called underground FM-Santana, Laura Nyro, and before that black artists like Nina Simone, Ben E King and what you'd hear if you went over to 18th & Vine, those were never on WHB. I personally heard Johnny Dolan the PD at Whb in 1976 say the "Beatles ruined rock and roll." I was standin right in front of him! Imagine that! He was a war baby, not a boomer like me. Well while many of today's young people can still lipsinc boomer oldies from the late 60s-50 years ago, we boomers did NOT listen to war baby bobbysox music that was even popular ten years before we were in high school. IF they remember Great Balls of Fire, it wasn't from the radio, it was from TopGun! It was considered square, tho audiophyles might have been into jazz or blues, or certain subcategories of Depression country music or Swing. We just didn't listen to Al Martino, Dean Martin, Sinatra or Rosemary Clooney at all who were popular before we hit junior high. And of course our parents broke out into hives when they heard White Rabbit or Iron Butterfly...WHB didn't play those either! If Dolan didn't roll with the Beatles, he'd never have liked the Lazer. All of us have been lucky to have grown up listening to the last century of music. But for me, it's never been about radio itself, it was about that music that was played on the radio. And most songs remind me of where I was when I first heard them. I'm not sure why you romanticize the medium itself, since you weren't a career studio jock. I only was for abt 5 years so most of my listening was either as a listener or a newsman across the glass waiting for my turn to read my newscopy. Thanks for sharing, younger dude! I'll keep watching for your commentaries... you tell more on here abt radio than the handful of veterans who are still alive do...but those few left have personal issues with other posters. Maybe their braincells got scrambled by the RF emanating from years working in the stations right under the 10,000 watt sticks! Replies:
Re(3): Who's Drew - By Here in Arizona October 10, 2023 at 04:03:50 PM