JohnJax said:
That's right. Songs we may or may not like are really personal and a reason the old radio dial to today's click of a mouse or a push of a button on our car's steering wheel get quite a work out. When independent thinkers literally all over the country went with their gut and tried something no one else was doing, the impacts felt were far more reaching than in just was experienced at one particular radio station. There were times it literally changed the direction of music itself, created a culture shift and literally gave the people a national music.
While we are waxing nostalgic, that very WABC PD and his team who were the so-called music experts actually voted down the Beatles as something viable just 4 years prior to "MacArthur Park" fame. Now fast-forward to today and transform that decision, even call it that power to say the late Rick Sklar represented a major corporation such as Clear Channel and word was out on the street that he wasn't going with a certain singer or group. Like sheep, many others follow but my friends potentially look at how much could be lost. Luckily for us there wasn't a concentration of power in the few. The Beatles caught on because there were those who took a chance and used their skills that many once had in radio to make that call. Without the Beatles, there would not have been a British Invasion. Regardless of how you may feel of that time and place, I take the position that music on both sides of the Atlantic for a decade was just one incredible creative wave. And yes, MacArthur Park was right up there too along with songs we rarely hear because a value judgement of the powerful deems them unworthy of airplay.
It wouldn't be the first time those in the know position themselves to know better than the public. IMHO, radio is so out of touch. There are exceptions and while I can't listen to everything, I place WCBS-FM up there for at least putting fear aside and occasionally play cuts from artists long considered taboo by the experts - like Barry Manilow or heaven's forbid - even music before that line of demarcation some genius came up with that nothing will ever be heard from again if it was popular before the mid 60's. Today, many of us have our iPods loaded with lots of music variety and no lines of demarcation. The few running things just don't get it and as I keep saying, turn on the radio and while there is always an exception like CBS-FM, most radio is very much out of touch. And despite all the stats that say this or that, radio is a bore and we have the few to thank for that.
Except that, in your response to me, you're misconstruing what I was getting at--which isn't so much a matter of radio being out of touch
now, but that the seeds of that out-of-touchness were in evidence even
then. At least in hindsight. Maybe not at the dawn of the Beatles era; but certainly by the dawn of the "MacArthur Park" era.
It isn't that the music hasn't aged well, or is supposedly "taboo" or "unworthy of airplay";
it's that the Top 40ish radio environment which "made" the music hasn't aged well. Indeed, whether it's as period curios or as "oh wows" or as musical thrift-store chic, such music and artists have actually quasi-transcended said environment--it may be off the entrails of the past, true, but I'd argue that Barry Manilow is actually better off today, market-wise and rep-wise, than 30+ years ago when he was hot on the dial and hot on the charts. Ditto with Neil Diamond; ditto even with (posthumously) Richard Harris.
That's why I raised Pink Floyd by comparison;
that's where the whole "independent gut feeling" thing was
really going, and in a way that more accurately foretells the present--at least, the "post-Rick Sklar" present. You seem to not realize; even then, looking at the big picture, what Rick Sklar represented was the leisure-suited squares on the wrong side of history. By today's standards,
his system wasn't even doing the music it was playing any great favours. It's like looking nostalgically back to the days when food sweeteners contained cancer-causing carcinogens (or maybe further back to the pre-supermarket era when groceries were over-the-counter rather than self-serve).
Look in the mirror--as someone imbued with and within the radio industry, the problem might be with yourself, and you don't realize it. And even when it comes to what passes for the "squaresville" phenomena of today: as Susan Boyle proves, even it doesn't require the Rick Sklar thing anymore to catch fire, and Gawd Bless...
NB: today, at a big-box store, I caught a listen of "Stars On 45". Now if you want somewhat later (1981) proof of the hicksville/squaresville nature of "pop-radio-generated breakthroughs", there it is. Get real: when it's a matter of where the cultural game was
really going, "Stars On 45" was truly proof of senile dementia on a system's part...
