...radio was like what you see in this movie.
i'm watching it now (on pause...) and haven't seen it for twenty years. man, the nostalgia. FM radio today is what AM radio was then...a vast wasteland of dreck and shallow noise. FM radio then (when this movie was released) was in the twilight of the "salad days..." when a DJ would play an album side...
god i miss those days.
I too am nostalgic for those days and I wasn't even born when the movie was made!
shareBoy do I remember! I'd crank the bass up on a little radio and put my ear close. When I could, I would record the nonstop music on cassette tape. In the early 70's (as a preteen) I would record "Diamond Girl," Seals and Crofts, Loggins and Messina, Doobie Bros.... Everything was super smooth and cool sounding, like the deep, slow, masculine voice between songs. I thought the piano bit of "Layla" was my very own dreamed up song when I first heard it! It must have burrowed into my brain in an early morning alarm on my clock radio.
Or the hot (imagined) late night female DJ.
"Slack Time" when they played a whole album.
Not worrying about how long a song was.
No edited versions of "Do you Feel like we do?" or "Theme from Shaft."
King Biscuit Flower Hour concerts.
"non hit" Pink Floyd songs!
Not telling you every 5 minutes that there was going to be 10 songs in a row. (There is a REASON THEY They think that is a big deal now.)
Hey GUESS WHAT RADIO LAND, I am going to play as many songs in a row without talking, commercial interuption as I want.
FM radio surely cannot last much longer.
King Biscuit Flower Hour! Wow! I hadn't thought about that for a l-o-o-n-n-g time. Thanks for the memory :)
"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois
I have a musician friend who lived in San Franciso back then who always had (and still has) the newest and best stereo equipment of the day (he inherited something like 1 million dollars -- 1970's dollars -- from a childless Aunt, so he could afford the best) and he has tons of reel-to-reel tape recordings of those great radio programs. Really takes you back; the programs and music sound like they were recorded yesterday :)
"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois
and don't forget doug kershners rock concert
shareNational Lampoon Radio Hour ran right after King Biscuit Flour Hour up here (I think on KQRS, which is STILL playing the same 1970s playlist).
They also had "Friday (or Saturday) Night Sixpack" where they played not just one album or album side, but six albums in a row in their entirety. I guess you just cued up your reel to reel deck and recorded it all.
Free bumper stickers at all your favorite head shops.
Of course the down side was the 'end' of the 70s arena rock era in the 1980s when the stations stuck to the same 1970s playlist and ignored the great then-new bands like the Clash, the Sex Pistols and the many local bands that managed to break through (Replacements, Husker Du, Soul Asylum) nationally.
WSRD-101 FM (The Wizard) in Youngstown, Ohio, played new albums on Friday (or Saturday) nights in their entirity. It was nice of them to pause long enough after Side One to allow you to turn your cassette tape over in time to record Side Two.
WSRD also had their "Four-O-Clock-High" program where they would play a number of songs of a certain genre for 30 nimutes. I still have my collections of car songs, Who songs, Kinks songs, and others.
Gotta love the old days!!!
Can't agree more with the original post. In the late 70s, very early 80s, I listened to M105 and WMMS both out of Cleveland. So true about the album sides, as I remember the thrill when a DJ would say, here's Side 1 of J. Geils Sanctuary. FM radio, in that form, died 20 years (or more) ago. *beep* playlists with no deep cuts (to listen to FM radio, you'd think the Stones recorded all of 10 songs). But, man, those late 70s days, they were great.
shareThere were a few progressive AM stations back then, but they were few and far between. In it's almost last gasping breath a few AM stations started sounding like early FM did...LP sides...freeform (non)format...some with stereo sound (for the five people who had the right type of radio), but by then (the early '90s) it was too late.
Massive corporations such as Clear Channel put radio on life support. MP3 players, iPods, and the 'net are putting the nails in it's coffin.
"Holy Bananas, it's a girl's leg!"
While I'm the first to admit that nostalgia lends a certain golden glow to those days, what you're saying is still so true. Listening to a great FM station was almost like having a secret world that each person shared with the DJs; but at the same time, you knew that there were so many others who felt the same way. A good DJ could create an ongoing ambience that opened & expanded the imagination, taking us to some other, better place for hours ...
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