Old 45s
Vinyl is a big deal again, with vinyl sales at levels unseen since the compact disc swept vinyl records away nearly 30 years ago. I have a lot of friends who have gone back to buying vinyl (although I have not), but they're buying albums. Singles haven't made much of a comeback yet. And before I bought any other format, I bought 45s.
The 45s I play in my earliest memories of vinyl belonged to my father. Like record buyers everywhere, he bought what he liked the most, so his collection featured a lot of polka bands famed throughout the Upper Midwest circa 1950, the year he graduated from high school. But years removed from when they’d been purchased, he passed them on to his kids. I suppose Dad considered his records childish things he had put aside to raise his family, so what did it matter if we enjoyed them?
Some of Dad’s records were on green, blue, or red vinyl, as much fun to hold up to the light as they were to play. I got down close to them as they spun on Dad’s old portable, watching the grooves flow under the needle, all the way to the end. I put my ear close to the speaker to hear them fade down to nothing, and it wasn’t long before I figured out that you could tell whether the music was loud or soft by the look of the grooves.
Dad’s portable seemed like the ultimate smart machine. Imagine knowing when a record was done and it was time to drop the next one to play, without my having to do a thing! And the audio experience provided by the changer was more than merely musical. There was the click of the mechanism and the instant silence that followed as the tonearm lifted off the record, a whap as it swung smartly out of the way, the ka-chunk of the next record dropping, and another whap as the tonearm moved back into place. Then the needle touched the vinyl again, yielding not sound, not yet, but not quite silence either, until it bit the first groove and the next three minutes of music began.
I soon realized that the big console stereo in the living room moved in a much different way than the portable did. The console, with its slimmer, more delicate, slower-moving tonearm, was like an artist, a ballerina maybe, or someone who was slowly and deliberately bringing forth things of beauty. The portable loaded and unloaded records one after the other like a burly driver running a delivery route–which, it occurs to me, is not a bad metaphor for the perceived aesthetic differences between albums and 45s at the time I was noticing the difference.
The Song of the Summer in '76
Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert (later husband and wife) had written John Denver’s 1971 hit “Take Me Home Country Roads.” After performing as Fat City, the Danoffs teamed with another couple, Jon Carroll and Margot Chapman, as the Starland Vocal Band, and released their first record in 1976, “Afternoon Delight.” It was a monster, sufficient to earn them the Best New Artist Grammy for the year—which is not especially weird. Certainly not as weird as the Grammy "Afternoon Delight” got for Best Vocal Arrangement, which was deemed better than Queen's “Bohemian Rhapsody.” On the strength of that Grammy, they landed a limited-run TV variety show on CBS in the summer of 1977. It was aimed at a hip young urban audience, with political commentary and a young comic in the cast named David Letterman.
But the Starland Vocal Band were never built for the long run, not really, not professionally or personally. Bill and Taffy Danoff divorced after the group broke up; so did Jon Carroll and Margot Chapman. And with the rise of disco in the late 70s and danceable new wave acts in the 80s, their gentle acoustic sound was swept away in the same tide that swamped John Denver.
In the summer of 1976, "Afternoon Delight" was pretty hard to escape. It was in the Top 40 from approximately Memorial Day through approximately Labor Day, and spent a couple of weeks at #1 in July. A country version by Johnny Carver made the Top 10 on the country chart. (Listen here. You know you want to.) But the original is still the best, and here's a vintage video from 1976 to prove it.
What Do You Remember?
On a Friday morning not long ago I was filling in for Pat, and I asked the following question on the air: What's the first big historical event you can remember while it was happening? For the next two hours, I played back phone calls and read Facebook posts and e-mails from listeners, and it was fascinating.
The #1 event, the one people mentioned over and over again, was the Challenger explosion in 1986. Many listeners were kids then, and they remember watching the launch on TV in school because the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe, was aboard. (One listener called to say she intended to apply for the program herself but at the last minute didn't submit the forms–and she was glad not to have done so.)
Other memories Magic listeners mentioned as their first big historical memory:
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941)
The coronation of Queen Elizabeth (1952)
The launch of Sputnik, the Soviet satellite (1957)
The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
The assassinations of John F. Kennedy (1963) and Robert Kennedy (1968)
The Apollo 11 landing on the moon (1969)
The murder of John Lennon (1980)
The hostages coming home from Iran (1981)
The shooting of President Reagan (1981)
I'm sure there are others I have forgotten to mention. Bob and I both think we can remember the assassination of JFK, although I was only three years old, and I'm not sure whether I remember what actually happened that weekend, or whether I remember having seen the hours of film we've all watched since then. I definitely remember RFK's shooting, though.
I'm grateful to everybody who called, Facebooked, or e-mailed with memories. You made the show interesting. I was just the guy who happened to be there.
The Bicentennial
Forty years ago this weekend, July 4, 1976, was the celebration of the American Bicentennial. The national blowout for America's 200th birthday had been brewing for a couple of years. A government commission began planning for it in 1973. The U.S. Mint issued commemorative quarters, half-dollars, and dollar coins starting in 1975. But the most amazing thing about it was the way everybody who made anything wanted to capitalize on Bicentennial fever. Bicentennial-themed stuff was on sale in every store, some of it tasteful and some of it not.
On the day itself, which was a Sunday, the TV networks went all out, covering Bicentennial events from coast to coast all day long. President Gerald Ford visited Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and then traveled to New York City for Operation Sail, with hundreds of boats and ships sailing in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Jimmy Carter, the apparent Democratic nominee for president in that fall's election, was still governor of Georgia, and he spent the day dedicating a small-town post office in his home state.
My family and I went to some sort of all-day picnic/family reunion. I don't remember anything about it beyond the usual family picnic memories, running around outside with the cousins, eating way too much of everything, and having to go home before everyone else because my father had cows to milk. That night, we went to our usual fireworks-viewing spot in Monroe, on the grounds of what is now the Monroe Senior Center. (It used to be the Green County Normal School, a teacher's college, where my mother went after high school.) At some point in the 70s, they had planted some trees on the side of the park where we watched the fireworks, and we were reminded every year to be careful of the little trees and not to knock them down.
They're all 30 feet high now. Forty years will do that.
Nights in Freeport
In 1980, I spent the summer as a nighttime rock 'n' roll DJ in Freeport, Illinois. It was a pretty sweet gig for a 20-year-old college kid. I was on the air Sunday through Friday nights from six to midnight, so I had Saturday nights to party with my friends at home. I was paid the princely sum of $135 a week, but I was living at home, so my only expenses were gasoline and beer.
The studios were located on the 12th floor of a bank building, one of the tallest buildings for miles around. We watched the fireworks from three northern Illinois towns on the Fourth of July, but my favorite story involving the building comes from the night that the morning DJ, a college friend, had nothing better to do than to come up and hang out with me. He was a maniac air-guitarist, and after he put on an extremely acrobatic performance, the phone rang. “Hey,” the listener said. “When are you gonna do that again?” Well, the whole streetside wall was glass, after all.
In addition to being a sweet gig for a rock-and-radio obsessed college kid who didn’t need very much money, it was also one of the most agreeable jobs I ever would ever have. The office was already closed by the time I got to work, and I had the place to myself. Just me, and a black-and-white TV set in the newsroom in case there was a baseball game on TV.
I got to interview Ray Sawyer and Dennis Locorriere from Dr. Hook that summer, as part of the publicity for their appearance at one of the county fairs. (I still have the tape, but I don't have anything to play it on, and even if I didn't, I’m afraid to listen to it.) At the end of the summer, I did a week of shows from another local county fair, just before school started again. At the time, I didn’t really consider quitting school and keeping the job, although in the years since I have wondered how it might have turned out if I had.
When I think about that summer now, I don’t necessarily remember being on the air right away. What I remember first is turning the transmitter off at midnight, being down in the parking lot by 12:05, and heading for home. In my mind’s eye, I can still drive Illinois highway 26 through that steamy Midwestern summer, across the state line and back to the house I had grown up in. (In the fall to come, I’d move to an off-campus apartment at college and never again live full-time at home.) Many were the nights I’d stay up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and wake up at noon to start another day–another day in the life of a rock 'n' roll DJ, the only life I’d ever seriously wanted to have.
Shy People on the Radio
In my last blog post, I mentioned the phenomenon of shy people who go into radio anyway. It happens more often than you think.
(There's a difference between shyness and being afraid to go on the air. None of us is especially nervous about the latter, at least not after doing it for a while. We're sometimes asked, "Aren't you worried about talking to all those people?" But we don't visualize the listeners as a giant crowd. It's two people in an office over here, one person in a car over there, and so on. So while there may be thousands listening at any moment, we're not really conscious of that number.)
One of the most famous radio DJs in Chicago history was Bob Collins, who started in Milwaukee during the 60s but spent many years at Chicago's WGN, first as the afternoon guy and later on the morning show, before he died in 2000. On the air, he was the most friendly and outgoing person you'd ever want to listen to. He had a wisecracking way of making people feel at ease. (If somebody called his show and sounded nervous, he'd say, "Don't be nervous. For you it's a phone call, for me it's my whole career.") He had a famous cackling laugh, and his show was a riot every day. At some point in the 1980s, he was invited to be Grand Marshall of the Cheese Days Parade in Monroe, my home town. I didn't get to meet him, but people who did were surprised at how quiet, how self-effacing he was, almost to the point of shyness. In private, he didn't have the outsized personality he had on the air.
It makes sense, I guess. It's hard for a performer of any sort to be "on" all the time. While we strive to be as "real" as possible on the air, we're all a little different when we're off. Some of us (and when I say "some of us," I mean radio DJs in general and not just the Magic crew) are quieter than you'd imagine. Some of us are more serious than you'd imagine. Some of us have interests that would surprise you. For example, I can tell you more than you'd ever want to know about soul-jazz organ players from the 1960s, but it's not a topic that comes up when I'm on Magic.
Some of us like being recognized in public, and some of us do not. And that's a topic for yet another future blog post.
The Rhythm of the Day
The rhythm of our days is defined more by television than we realize, I think. For many Midwesterners, the 10:00 local news marks the end of the evening and time to go to bed, so you get in your eight hours before rising at 6 for another day. Do East Coasters—who have to rise at 6 in their own time zone—think of the 11:00 news the same way, or are they checking out during the last hour of primetime? I spent two weeks on the East Coast last fall, and I never got used to the idea that primetime is an hour later out there.
Television used to define the rhythm of our days in other ways. During the week, the TV stations marched in step, with a different program every 30 or 60 minutes. Saturdays were not entirely like that. Game of the Week started at 1:00 and got over sometime between 3 and 4, and it would be left to the local affiliates to pick up afterward. Channel 15 would occasionally start an episode of Star Trek right after the game and show it without commercials so it would end at 4:00. Sometimes they would bust out an episode of Twilight Zone as a time-filler, and it was always a treat to stumble upon it, unlisted in TV Guide.
Late at night, TV stations stopped bowing to the tyranny of the half-hour. They'd start a movie at 11:40 or 12:20, as if to say, "it's late, we're off the clock, who cares." Late-night TV looked different, too. There were not nearly as many local buys of regional and national commercials as there are now. Most of the ads you saw late at night were for local businesses, produced by local stations. You'd see a lot of public service announcements, too, often on grainy film scratched from repeated use, or slightly out of focus.
I liked to watch the TV stations sign off, play the National Anthem, maybe put up color bars, or just go to static. At that point, there was nothing left to watch, and you might as well go to bed. Fall asleep with the light of the unblinking screen until the early news, Sunrise Semester, or some noisy cartoon restarts the rhythm for yet another day.
Concerts on the Calendar
(Pictured: Aretha Franklin onstage; credit: Joseph Sohm, Shutterstock.com)
My wife and I have no children and few expensive vices, and we don't live extravagantly. Nevertheless, we try to keep the fun budget in balance. We don't go to every concert or every show we'd like to attend, because tickets cost a lot. But this summer is going to be a challenge. Last week, two concerts were announced, and we'd like to go to both of them.
Aretha Franklin is playing the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee on June 3, and while I'm not somebody who owns every record Aretha ever made, she's Aretha Franklin, for cryin' out loud, and a guy should see the Queen of Soul when he's got the chance.
On July 18, Steely Dan and Steve Winwood, who are touring together this summer, will play the BMO Harris Pavilion on the Summerfest grounds in Milwaukee. I thought, when they weren't announced on the Summerfest bill itself, that I was safe–but no. Steely Dan is my favorite band. I've seen them three times, and one show with Donald Fagen's side project, the Dukes of September, which features Michael McDonald, Boz Scaggs, and the Steely Dan band. I'd rank Steve Winwood among my favorite artists, too–we saw him in the spring of 2015.
So we're doing arithmetic right now to figure out if we can go to both shows, and if not, which one. My wife's Steely Dan fanaticism is nothing like mine, so I suspect she probably doesn't need to see them again. (And to be honest, I am not sure I need to hear "Hey Nineteen" again, but if they announced they were playing an entire album start to finish, as they did not some of their shows last year, I'd love that.) But Winwood blew us away and I think we'd both like to see him again. If the weather is good, the BMO Harris Pavilion is a great venue for a show, too.
And Aretha Franklin is the Queen of Soul.
Decisions, decisions.