Thursday, April 28, 2005

Classic Rot

I believe it was in 1987 or maybe it was 1986, but I got a phone call one night inviting me to participate in a radio station survey. This wasn’t just some telemarketing scam, I was invited to attend this survey session to be held at a very nice Nashville hotel and I would get a free supper plus, I believe, thirty-five dollars. All they wanted were my opinions and since I had plenty I knew I was perfect. I didn’t know how they would take it if I told them what Nashville needed was a good punk rock radio station, but that was what I was planning to say if they asked me.

I got to the hotel, a Marriot, just in time to pick up the free grub. Then I was led into a huge banquet hall with probably 300-500 more people. Soon a skinny lady took the podium and gave us the lowdown on what was about to happen. My bullshit detector went off immediately when she opened her mouth. She wasn’t from the South, unless it was the south side of Chicago. Why did a local radio station need somebody from Chicago telling them what to do? She explained that the station, 104.5, was thinking about changing their format to an all new and revolutionary one. My hopes went up briefly, but she dragged me down quick. The radio station wanted to switch from Top 40 to a “classic rock” format.

“Classic rock” had not been done in Nashville yet and I’m pretty sure it was fairly new across the country. I muttered something like, “great, just what Nashville needs, another lame oldies station” and the lady must have heard me because she then went into this long spiel about how “classic rock” was different from the oldies format, because the station would play new material from artists deemed classic. A classic station would play Jimi Hendrix, but also play U2. Then we began the survey.

We took some sharpened No. 2 pencils and started filling in little circles just like on a college entrance exam. The evil demographers would play snippets of songs and then we had to say how well we liked them. It was the standard not much, liked it, loved it kind of garbage. I’ll have to admit that I liked a lot of the songs, but I canned it all. Why? Because I could see this format choking the life out of rock and roll radio. The station might have been Top 40 which lives or dies by how decent pop music is at the time, but I was sure there would be other decent rock and roll stations changing to the vile “classic rock” formula. How could a new band break into such a time frozen format?

I had been fortunate enough to have a pretty good rock station, 103 KDF, during the early ‘80’s that would play Psychedelic Furs and then a few minutes later play some Ozzy Osbourne, plus there was always a steady diet of classic AOR radio there. Of course, I had an excellent college radio station too; 91 Rock out of Vanderbilt which was incredible until just the last ten years or so when they went segment crazy. There’s so many specialty shows on it, you never know when to tune in to something you might like. That’s a whole other story though.

I get done with the survey and get in the line to get my money. Somebody in the line makes the mistake of asking me what I thought of the format. “Isn’t it great?” they asked me. It was on then. I started getting totally belligerent about how crap like “classic rock” would kill rock and roll and how new bands wouldn’t get a chance. Some over sized lady in front of me brought up the fact that U2 would get played and they were new; a typical idiot fan who didn’t know anything pre-dated The Joshua Tree album. So I had to go into the history of U2 telling her the whole discography and how they wouldn’t have gotten beyond the Boy album if “classic rock” had been around then. I was brutal and mean, but I did surprise myself that I didn’t call her fat and stupid. I took my money which now felt rather filthy and I probably spent it on punk rock records that I found out about through listening to 91 Rock.

104.5 made the change becoming “104.5 The Fox”, despite all my penciling in that I hated everything. I was traveling around soon after when I discovered there were “Fox” stations all around. 104.5 wasn’t even a local Nashville station. It was just part of some evil corporate scheme to make aging baby boomers feel aglow with nostalgia for their youth in hopes they would then buy some of the crap advertised. In those days of pre-internet saturation and pre-satellite radio it often made for some sad radio listening hearing the same old crap over and over again. I might not have been there for the fall of Rome, but I can say I was there for the fall of rock and roll radio.

This post was inspired in part by bmarkey over at Big Green House. Feel free to drop in, just don't forget to wipe your feet.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We just had those carpets cleaned. Actually, leave your shoes outside the door, wouldya?

As for radio: it sucks. That satellite radio deal is lookin' better by the day. How do demographers look themselves in the eye every morning when they shave/apply makeup/both?

Anonymous said...

If it is possible for a Classic Rock station to do it the right way, then the one that we have here in the Upstate of SC is that station. They have some of the features that I enjoyed about KDF back in the day. Most specifically their Sunday programming is pretty interesting. They let a listener program the station for an hour on Sunday nights. Usually you get something pretty interesting and definitely songs that you don't hear everyday. It is still classic rock, but I think that if I sent in my 20 songs or whatever then I could get on eventually. They also have a local music and new tunes show and a "deep tracks" program that one week was full of J. Geils and Southside Johnny live stuff. You don't hear American pub rock on most classic rock stations much anymore.

I think that the trick here is that it is locally owned and programmed. It goes without saying that you get the standard stuff during the day and can be boring at times, but at least it is better than the other commercial stations in the market. Oh well, the halcyon days of cool college/interesting rock are past us. In fact, it might be true that the days of rock radio are behind us. I get Sirius radio at home and that is okay (better than okay considering the current state of things), but I don't find one station as interesting as KDF was in about 1984. Maybe hindsight is 20/20, but I remember it as being pretty diverse (new wave-y by day, metal-y by night).

Anonymous said...

We have 3 'Classic Rock' stations here in San Antonio and 1 'new' rock station that plays the unlistenable sludgefest that has become modern rock and roll on the airwaves. The classic rock stations are hugely popular and it kind of mystifies me. I like the music very well but the fact that people call in by the hundreds making requests for Freebird and Highway to Hell is a puzzler. How many times do you have to listen to Cat Scratch Fever to be satisfied?
Those tunes have served me well in the past but they are tiresome 24 hours a day. We have a college station that (like Wally's) has gone segment crazy with the Reggae Room hour, Texas Homebrew, Best of the Beatles, etc...
The station I find myself listening to all the time is a college Jazz station. I know my wife thinks I'm turning gay or something, but whenever I listen to that station I hear nothing but songs that are new to me. It's interesting to be able to pick out the differences between a Stan Getz song and a John Coltrane tune.
Anyway, whenever get the itch to hear 'Comfortably Numb' I know I won't have to wait long.