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.