Casey Kasem AT40 Memories

Casey Kasem's American Top 40 is played on an oldies station here every Sunday. I don't know what time it starts, but it's on when we leave for church about 8:15, and it's on when we leave church at noon. So that's multiple episodes every Sunday.

 

I remember as a sixth-grader how deeply contemptuous I was of Paul McCartney’s “It’s Coming Up” having replaced “Funkytown” as the No. 1 song.

 

Batman did it better, but this does have Vin Scully/stripper vibes.

 

I remember sitting at my bookshelf stereo with the "REC" button on pause to record my favorite songs.

 

Since I listened almost religiously to the radio during the Top 40 era of the 1970s, then worked for a decade in the industry, there aren't a lot of songs that I don't recognize. However, I'm always amazed at some of the really obscure stuff that bubbled up into the high 30s during a time when I thought I had heard every tune possible.

One of the interesting things about radio back then was the influence of music directors on the unique sound and feel of their station. The one time my class visited KFRC in San Francisco, which was Radio & Records' No. 1 station over a three-year period about that time, I grilled the MD about how he selected the music, how he set up his "hit clock" and some other stuff that left the other kids in the class shaking their heads.

He mixed in national releases with a lot of local and regional hits, so we got more Tower of Power, CCR and Doobies than perhaps a station on the East Coast. And vice versa, stuff that was popular in Boston, Chicago or New York might not have even made a dent in the Bay Area unless it was a breakout hit.

For example, "White Bird" by It's a Beautiful Day was in medium rotation on KFRC years after its release, because it was such a big local hit.

The song that really caught my attention a couple of weeks ago was "Softly Whispering I Love You" by the English Congregation. It probably was on the chart for maybe two weeks but I remember it playing on KFRC for more than that.

But a lot of dreck is thankfully missing from my brain cells as well.

And yeah, Classic Rock and Oldies has really skewed how popular the music might have been when it was originally released. Some stuff has aged very well. But a lot has not.

And it's fun hearing Kasey introduce "a new group" that's now in the Hall of Fame.

 

I went through a few months where I listened to Left Coast '70s on SomaFM almost exclusively. I've since leaned away from it, mainly because their playlist numbers about 100 songs played on loop. But I did discover some really good songs that never charted high, like Andrew Gold's "Never Let Her Go" or Jay Ferguson's "Too Late to Save Your Heart."

 

It's amazing how few songs are in rotation at some of these stations. Just listening to River 97.1 the past few days while the guys are repairing the roof, I'm guessing the playlist is something around 750-800 songs, which means the chances of hearing the same song is probably 2-3 days, although it probably will show up in another daypart instead.

And that's covering basically everything on the rock side from 1970-1990. Even SiriusXM's decade channels play a fraction of the total songs released because they don't think their audience wants to listen to something unfamiliar.

You mentioned two artists who had 1 1/2 hits and then programmers moved on. Jay Ferguson's debut album was really good, as was Gary Wright's. But if the A&R people didn't push harder, some good stuff went unplayed.

That was the whole idea behind AOR in the first place, finding deep tracks that weren't played to death on Top 40. Now Classic Rock is just a regurgitation of the same familiar bands, over and over. Just today, I've heard multiple Steve Millers, The Who, Skynyrd, Foreigner and Stones. Yawn.

 

This thread is reading like a scene from Reservoir Dogs.

 

We used to sell at swap meets on Sundays from the mid 70's to mid 80s and I would listen to Casey every week. I remember Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" being number 1 for what seemed like six months.

It was probably the first time I heard a lot of bands before they got widespread radio play on KIIS-FM, KLOS or KMET in LA.

 

“Why do I have to be Me. Pink??”

 

Then there were “Telephone Man” and Junie Mae”

 

Sound off with your local radio station as a kid: Mine WPGC in Washington.