By Ralph Greco, Jr.
OK, I’ll admit it here and now — with very few exceptions do I purchase, listen to, or enjoy new music artists. I hear the term “alternative” and immediately ask: “Alternative to what!?” I watch newer bands on VH1 and it’s all I can do to stifle deep guffaws. Rap passed me by, the Grammys have held no currency with me since the Milli Vanilli debacle, and there’s simply too much talk on FM radio for my tastes (plus, who in their right mind can listen to the pre-programmed pabulum that is Jack radio?). I am stuck in a self-induced, Irwin Allen time-tunnel, forever locked in the 70s, reveling in my musical retardation. Like the proverbial mosquito stuck in amber, I live suspended in my ancient animation, knowing full well I will not — nor do I ever wish to — change.
Of course, some hope eked its way into my self-imposed stagnation with the advent of digital technology. Singles became a viable market again with iTunes all the rage. Record companies seemed to be a’scrambling to try and keep artists from releasing, marketing, and promoting themselves. Satellite radio was born. Now with the just-announced merger between Sirus and XM, I feel pay radio might even be better then what I have been experiencing with just XM (and it’s been pretty damn good). But again, I find myself wondering about options and what we had way back when (yes, in the 70s) when radio was a creative medium all its own.
I believe I am (or at least was) the classic ‘classic rock’ radio listener. I can say with no fear of contradiction that the format imploded, ate its own tail, destroyed itself across our free, Earth-bound radio waves. On what I hope will soon become an outmoded form of entertainment, terrestrial radio screwed-the-pooch, exhausted me and many other “dinosaur-rock” listeners by severely limiting our diets across our “classic rock radio stations” (hereafter referred to as “CRRS”). Despite the wonders of digital technology, could XM become as popular as it has if there was a viable alternative? Would iTunes have ever gotten the stronghold it has if CDs weren’t priced at the exorbitant amount they are? It is, and always will be, a question of what is out there. I’ll paraphrase Chris Rock here: “A listener is only as faithful as his options.”
The criticism that all that was (is) played on the various “CRRS” stations are (were) the same songs is a justified one. This policy ‘format’ as it is called in radio parlance was so stagnant and banal that it killed New York City’s premier FM rock radio station, turning beloved WNEW to first all-talk radio, then to a station that has no format. (Yeah I know, I might not “know Jack.” but I don’t like it either!)
American radio (actually the same can be said for all American bred media) is now such a sullied thing that one ‘regular’ New York FM station has made an agreement with the Opie and Anthony program to broadcast the first four hours of the show, then let them walk over to their XM studio (and they actually broadcast the ‘walk-over’ every morning) and present the rest of their program over satellite! True, the same company that owns the FM station owns XM, but still…is terrestrial radio this desperate they’ll take whatever they can from ol’ O&A?
I’m not so stupid as to not understand the process. Program directors are concerned with attracting and keeping as many listeners as possible. This in turn ‘attracts’ advertisers to popular radio stations and its potential of rapt listeners. But to attract listeners, these radio stations must play hits (how a song becomes a hit is a whole other nasty essay folks) and hits are featured, despite the type of music played. From alternative to country, from Latin radio to rap, it is assumed by the folks spinning the discs (OK, nobody spin discs anymore, but you know what I mean!) that the most popular tunes of the day will attract more listeners. This, of course, dispels the possibility that an audience may yearn for the new, the untried; that a good many listeners might like to hear that ‘other’ track on that popular CD or enjoy the time-honored tradition of the disc jock actually programming the music, delivering on-air off-the-cuff patter, and making a show his or her own.
Nah, the kids won’t like this, so why do it? They are so used to Jack anyway.
This ‘bottom-line’ shouldn’t exist on “CRRS”…it’s classic rock! We are a captive audience; none of us’ll be getting out of our rocking chairs to change the station! Hell, FM was first presented as the alternative to what was being broadcast on AM. Now, satellite is the alternative and it is only because of its cornucopia of stations and the fact that listeners really have, like Richard Geer in An Officer And A Gentleman, “nowhere else to go!” While I adore “Aqualung,” I would argue that there are ten other songs that populate the album it’s from just as worthy of radio play. Add this logic to all those other classic rock albums and you see that by only playing a select bunch of songs “CRRS” buried themselves.
In the end, it wasn’t the big bad old advertisers who did WNEW in or the evil program directors at the stations that have been duped into more ‘current’ formats. It is us, me, the listeners who complained and complained for years but never sent a letter, made a call or even switched a dial. So to the skies my little droogs, to the skies! It’s out there and now we have to pay for it.
