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Music and How You Found It
I’m fairly new here and not sure what the rules are about content. I get that center-right, as this site is advertised, implies politics, but my mind ran contrary to the fate of the Republic. I’m thinking right now about music and how I came upon the stuff I like.
For too long all I heard on the radio was gaga, or googoo. My formative musical years were dull, like most people in high school during the eighties or any other time when a palate was presented to you by someone else. DJs had an iron grip on what we heard. There were good songs, but formulaically so. I had my predictable rebellion where I listened to Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and The Grateful Dead and considered myself cultured in the small sphere in which I inhabited. But I was buffered.
Then I went to camp.
My 12-year-old self, along with a cadre of compatriots, were roused daily by a pre-recorded reveille blasted through a WWI surplus speaker system. The entirety of Monteagle, TN, could hear it and no doubt they hated us for it. But we were kids. Nothing woke us up. So our friendly councilors, armed with a boom box, made sure we got up.
They would play at maximum volume songs I had never heard before. The Violent Femmes’ “Blister In The Sun,” UB40’s version of Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine.” These were get-the-hell-out-of-that-bunk songs played at crummy side table shaking volume. You do not sleep through a Gordon Gano rant.
What struck me was that I had never heard either song before. I thought I was pretty savvy for a pubescent know-nothing, but here was a world of cool sounds that I didn’t even know that I didn’t know about.
I think one of the counselors was named Kevin. Probably Kevin. Anyway, I asked likely Kevin how he found these bands. They weren’t on the radio. Billboard said nothing about them. How did you get hold of this? He told me that when I got back home I needed to find an independent record store and simply ask the clerk what I needed to listen to.
In the mid-eighties, Odyssey Records on 6th Ave. South in Birmingham, AL had the honor of employing a guy who got suspended from Shades Valley High School in December of ’67. At the time, Shades Valley was a catch-all for students around the metroplex. If you were in an unincorporated area, you went to Shades Valley. It got a reputation because if you got kicked out of anywhere in the area, you went to Shades Valley. It didn’t make a lot of CVs. That said, the place has made a U-turn. They have a program within the school that is somehow a separate school that shares the same campus and WaPo ranked them 9th among America’s most challenging high schools.
That guy got suspended because he put the flag at half-mast when he heard that Otis Redding died. You can imagine that when I came in and asked what I should be listening to, per my camp counselors instructions, I left with an Otis Redding’s Greatest Hits album. My listening life has never been the same.
I’m not claiming any esoteric library. Most of what I listen to is pretty accessible by today’s standards, but stuff you would have only known about in the ’80s because some weird kid had a t-shirt.
Otis isn’t the punk or alternative that I listen to more often than not, but I’m now a sucker for Motown and Atlantic Rhythm and Blues. Always will be. That suspendee turned me on to so many other bands — Pixies, R.E.M, Sex Pistols, The Pogues, Linda Ronstadt and Warren Zevon by extension, and so many more. My kids can sing along to most Supremes songs. I got approving looks in the hardware store checkout line when my son sang along to the piped-in “Ziggy Stardust.” On a whitewater trip, my seven-year-old made friends with the river guide because of The Joshua Tree.
I’m all over the place musically, but I can track my tastes back to a 17-or-so-year-old camp counselor and a really nice guy with a mar on his permanent record.
Life is odd.
Published in General
I really like Frank’s Wild Years but I’m not sure if he is a taste that gets acquired. To me he’s like this hobo from the ’40s with crazy stories of pathos and the pathetic. A reviewer once called his characters ‘beautiful losers’.
My first exposure to Waits was his “Small Change” album. Good stuff.
That one is my other favorite. ‘Fi-fi La from gay paree.’
“Jitterbug Boy.” I really like this one.
Hans Theessink, the title track on Baby Wants to Boogie.
The great John Sass on tuba.
Ottmar Liebert — “Barcelona Nights.”
Started with Spike, I think. I mean, I stuck with him through Goodbye Cruel World, so I wasn’t a fair-weather fan. And Spike had “Veronica,” which was just infuriating; it so effortlessly melodic it made the other pieces seem obtuse and contrary. No pop hooks for you!
You spoke for me concisely. The first album was jangly aggro stuff with bare production, but when Nick Lowe got a hold of him it was almost a different band. And the output! Criminey! An outtake album as good as the others!
But, yes, Punch the Clock – hey, who asked for Elvis with a brass section? No one! Still has some quality stuff, though; some of the melodies are as good as anything he did elsewhere.
The first three albums are exceptional – by the time they hit their prime, Difford and Tilbrook were the Lennon & McCartney of New Wave.
Okay… I grew up on Long Island, with my formative years in the first half of the 70’s.
This was a very special time where the listening audience was learning about music theory at the same time that the popular music was getting more sophisticated. Like the way The Beatles’ music became more sophisticated as they learned more about how music works.
And I was so blessed to have WNEW-FM on tap during their very best years. Best damn station ever. Free-form, mostly progressive rock format, stoned DJ’s, with excellent taste, playing whatever the hell they wanted. And they didn’t disappoint.
No need for TV, I could just sit in a big chair and listen to this station all night and enjoy thoroughly amazing music.
The WNEW-FM Wikipedia page provides a pretty good description.
And there’s lots of memorabilia on the WNEW-FM NY Radio Archive page.
Alison Steele, “The Nightbird”, was the best. (Think of her as the Marianne Williamson of DJs.) Her evening show started out with a poem, and explored a truly interesting range of music.
Example:
Oh, I’m reminded that @gumbymark covered the magic of WNEW-FM before:
AM to FM
Possibly one of the best features of the information revolution is the “If you like X, perhaps you would like Hoagy Carmichael.”
Hoagy Carmichael? You mean the guy who did a guest spot on the Flintstones in the episode where Fred writes a popular song. (Yes, I actually saw this when it was originally televised and I have the Flintstone jelly jars to prove it.)
Hoagy Carmichael, who wrote Stardust. A song I’ve heard pieces of a hundred times, mostly in small bites as background music to let the audience know it’s the forties. Odd, because it was written in the 20s.
Hoagy Carmichael was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the author of the longest title of a published song. (He might still be for all I know.)
I readily admit to little interest in music after 1990, but my appreciation for acts like Paul Whiteman has grown.
Youtube is pretty good. That’s where I found Marc Broussard, and where I could track down old performances by Horace Silver and relatively new performances by Ahmad Jamal. There is a live 1966 performance by Brubeck’s group with a comment that made me laugh: “Only Dave Brubeck could get a bunch of guys together, that all look like middle aged accountants, and make it look good. I pity modern hipsters who go to such effort and still cannot achieve this level of ice cold cool.”
And where else would I learn that Steely Dan took the opening phrase of Rikki Don’t Lose That Number from a Silver composition.
Not to mention a group called What Are You Listening To.
I first discovered Zappa, and a lot of other decidedly non-mainstream artists, via the Doctor Demento syndicated radio show.
Noooo metal did NOT go into poofy-hair phase. Whatever that crap was certainly wasn’t metal.
slayer, exodus, overkill et al were metal, the other stuff??? Ugh. I’d rather listen to Cher than that crap.
(Disclosure: the first Motley Crue album was bad ass though)
I never got the Garth Brooks thing. Never did anything for me at all… different strokes I guess but of all the country artists to love, folks fawn over that guy.
weird
Best 3 UK bands of all time:
1. Black Sabbath
2. Led Zeppelin
3. The Who
really not open for discussion as it’s science. And you don’t want to be a denier do you?
Once upon a time there was a small, independent radio station in Cincinnati. The management found some difficulty broadcasting to the whole market because of all the hills in the area, so they moved the station to Oxford, Ohio, where Miami University is. From that location, the signal could reach south to the entire Cincy area, and it also went the other direction to my hometown.
The station was WOXY, more famously known as 97X, the Future of Rock-n-Roll. Much of what they played is probably remembered as more mainstream today, but it wasn’t then. Rolling Stone had it’s chart for “College Albums” and that was pretty much what you heard. It was eclectic and sometimes obscure, but driven by people that loved the music. At my wedding, I presented the groomsmen with a 97X mix, all songs and bands I heard regularly there, from The Cult to The Sugar Cubes; The Ramones to World Party; The Church to The Sundays (hah!). Two of them grew up in the area so they appreciated it.
It’s influence on me was simple: listen to what you like, go in any direction. By the time I was a regular listener, I’d learned piano, saxophone, had voice lessons and was just getting started with the guitar. I love music, but grew up in a house that didn’t really value it much. In the end that was a good thing because it led to exploration, and probably to valuing a lot of music for what it was, not comparing it to something. All that musical wandering brought me around to this inescapable conclusion: Led Zeppelin rules. Just a fact, folks.
I forgot World Party existed. They were fun.
Some might recognize the backup vocalist here.
https://youtu.be/JaYcJQej5Uw
Afternoon Chris,
WEBN was also a small FM station, starting in 1967, with a progressive rock show called “jelly pudding”. Its first station was located on Price Hill called Price’s Mountain, listeners could walk up to the station and see the DJ’s. This was a transition time from AM to FM and FM was still very small and gave the broadcasters great freedom. They played the bigger names Jefferson Airplane, Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, but they also played Earth Opera, Mother Earth, The Insect Trust, Sons of Champlin, and Zappa and other groups who I had never heard of. Like many freak FM stations of the time they played long cuts, the 10 minute song The Fool on Quicksilvers first (I think) album. They interviewed John Mayall and when commenting on how fast his guitar playing was on one of the songs, Mayall said he couldn’t play that fast and sped it up in the recording. When the White album was mailed to their station they played each song one after the other sequentially on all four sides. Perhaps you remember Tree Frog Beer, doesn’t taste like much but gets you there faster, one of their fake advertisers.
I remember WEBN, particularly that they used to advertise on TV (maybe just on WXIX?). It was always “programmed” into the car stereo, along with WTUE (“The Rock-n-Roll Legend”) out of Dayton.
Yes, but in keeping with the topic, some might enjoy hearing how you found them. Any specific stories?
I’ll give you my introduction to the music of #2. Sophomore year in high school (1974), I joined the radio club, WSJH, who broadcast a very low power signal rock station to the cafeteria and maybe parts of the local neighborhood. This exposed me to the musical preferences of some of my classmates. I remember hearing Stairway to Heaven played on a high quality manual turntable more than once. Another song I came to enjoy after being introduced to it in like manner was Elton John’s Funeral for a Friend, which begins with atmospheric graveyard music. I fondly remember every time I have played this tune since then the amplifier needles moving full range when the majestic Farfisa organ makes its entrance. That tune has memories for me mostly because of the introduction. The same is true of STH.
To add on to this, I got hear this music as well as other progressive rock for the first time many different bands 1973-74 on a Philadelphia FM album rock station that played all kinds of rock, including Southern rock and fusion jazz, WYSP 94 FM.
There are lots of kid-friendly things to do in Rapid City. But maybe we will see you at a (yet to be planned) Meetup sometime.
I didn’t mean to imply that there were non kid friendly stuff elsewhere. Sorry if it came about that way. It’s just that we have a ski trip (which we just did and I am awful at it), a visiting relatives trip, a beach trip, and then a trip to check out Mayan ruins that has me more excited than it should. We don’t get much time off, but when we do it is targeted and scheduled.
I’d love to attend a meetup. Ya’ll seem great. I’m just recently booked.
You should post where the meetups are. Someone who can’t make it might send a bottle of champagne or something.
Keep track here:
http://ricochet.com/groups/ricochet-meetup/