Most of the time when I have the radio on, I listen to news (more importantly around here: traffic) or, lately, baseball. But when I do listen to music, I prefer oldies. I think it's because there are few oldies that I don't like, whereas in the later classic rock and mix formats, I'm bound to hear a song that will have me lunging for the controls trying to turn something off before it gets stuck in my brain.
When I say oldies, I mean mid-1950's to early '70's. AM music.
The Washington area oldies station dropped the "oldies" name several months ago, and bumped their timeframe. They quit playing anything from the '50's, and occasionally I'd hear a song that came out when I was in high school, a good 10 to 15 years beyond anything I want to consider an oldie. But I could deal with that, until the giant media company that owned them sacked a bunch of the disc jockeys, including two I particularly liked.
So I vowed never to listen to them again. I found an oldies station up in Frederick that was a bit staticy in Rockville, but they played some great stuff.
A month or two ago the middle-sized media company that owns them switched formats, and now they sound like a K-Tel collection of Monster Rock Hits. (If you need to hear some Supertramp, they play Breakfast in America at least once a day.) Which is fine, but not what I wanted to listen to.
My favorite fired DJ's ended up at the oldies station in Bawl'mer. It hurt me to do it, especially when they were hyping opening day at Camden Yards, but I sucked it up and started listening to them. The music was ok and I could hear Goldy and Johnny Dark.
Tonight we went out to run some errands. It really didn't strike me as odd when the music coming out of Victor's car radio was some '80's-pop-syth-crap, because Victor actually listens to that garbage, until he said "ABC is pretty modern for the oldies station." He pushed the button set for the oldies station...the frequency was right, the music was wrong.
Sure enough, the bastards at the giant media company switched the formats (and canned the talent...my DJ's are out of jobs again. Radio must be one hell of a business.)
Kinda funny, really, that in 1956 there were people who didn't want Chuck Berry and Bill Haley on the radio. It looks like they're getting their wish...fifty years later.
I don't really want to subscribe to satellite radio, but it may be the only way I can hear Elvis.
*Queen should never be played on an Oldies station, not even Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Posted by Nic at May 4, 2005 09:33 PM