With a friendly voice
A companion, unobtrusive
Plays that song that's so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood
Off on your way
Hit the open road
There is magic at your fingers
For the spirit ever lingers
Undemanding contact
In your happy solitude"
Rush-"The Spirit of Radio"
Ahh...the smell of grooved black vinyl. The scratch of a needle on a record. The hiss of the tape recorder. The crackle of your favorite station coming up on the dial and having it tuned in just right. The frustration when your CD skips and you have to buy a new one.
This was all part of the musical listening experience when I was growing up. It was fun, it was communal, it was community. Friends borrowed other friends records, tapes, and CDs. They took them home and dubbed them onto Maxell cassettes or ripped them onto their computers. If you had a hot album that you wanted your friends to hear, you brought it over and played it on the huge stereo system, because your parents usually had a pretty bitchin' stereo in their living room.
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| Face it. The 70's had cooler stereos. |
If you had to take a ride in the car, unless you had a tape deck or a CD player, you would listen to one of the many radio stations on your dial. There was a taste for everyone: rock stations, pop stations, country stations, adult contemporary, urban contemporary, oldies, classic rock, whatever you wanted was there waiting for you on the airwaves. Also, if it was the weekend, and you wanted to know who was burning up the charts, you listened to Casey Kasem or Rick Dees count them down for you all the way to Number 1.
The memories I have. The musical dreams I had were born on those lonely and lazy Saturday nights listening to the countdown on the radio. While dancing to Linda Ronstadt in my playpen planted the seed, it was people like Casey Kasem and Dick Clark who made me want to be a rock musician with their stories of how the artists worked hard on the way to the top. Those DJs were true pioneers in every sense with their home spun stories as well as spinning the hit parade.
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| Every week, Casey counted them down for you |
Hell, I go as far to say that if you did not grow up hearing Casey Kasem or Dick Clark on the radio at least once, I weep for you. You were deprived of the joys of hearing their on-air talents bringing you the best music. Who knows how many young musicians and performers were inspired by Kasem saying "keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars"? Heaven knows it rubbed off on me a little bit.
We grew up with legends. All the current generation gets is Ryan Seacrest.
I believe in the days of hot airwaves and records and tapes, it was easier to be successful as a musician, but it was harder to get your material out there to the masses....I hear you all saying "what is he on about?" Follow me...
Yes, it might have been harder work, but success was easier to attain and the odds were more in your favor. Think about it. There was no digital recording back then. Wanted to record a home demo? 4-track mixer was all you could use, or a mic hooked up to your tape deck. You had to have a lot more money and a lot more patience to make a recording back then. So, your odds for success, if you could get to that level, were slightly better.
Now, while I love YouTube and internet radio for making a whole cornucopia of amazing music available to people all over the world with no frequency limitations, it does mean that your art, while it has a better chance of being heard and available, more easily gets lost in the shuffle and melts into the background. More exposure has unintentionally led to more anonymity. Releasing a recording might be a million times easier than in 1980 or even 1990 or 2000, but as you jockey for position among other hopefuls also releasing the fruits of their labor, the chances of success drop like a boulder from the skies. Yes, recording is and always will be hard and demanding work, but doing a session in a modern studio with modern software is a world easier than working with reel to reel tape. That's a give-in.
So, the odds of getting your music out is very much in your favor and that is awesome. As an artist myself I am eternally grateful for the opportunities it has given us. Yet, if you want to be a big rock star and drive around in a new Bentley and have a huge house, don't get your hopes up. Stardom is much harder to achieve in the modern day.
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| Don't count on chilling on a private jet like Led Zep, those days are gone. |
So...then, less opportunity to be heard, but a slightly easier time to get noticed for at least 15 minutes of fame. Now, more opportunity to be heard and to record and to release your work to millions, but to achieve stardom is nigh on impossible.
In the 1970's (I confess I missed all this! I was born in '76), there were rock concerts on TV networks almost every week, and what a way for young artists to get their name out there! Be it Don Kirschner's Rock Concert, The Midnight Special, The King Biscuit Flower Hour, or The Old Grey Whistle Test, rock and roll bands were on the stage for you, coming through your TV screen, and many of them were young and hungry. Musical variety shows could be hokey, but you had top name talent and up and comers on the same stage every week on your TV screen.
What do we have now? American Idol? The Voice? That's good if you are a soloist, but if you are a band, you are shit out of luck.
What needs to be done to help the rock community get noticed by the mainstream again? I haven't a clue. All I know is something needs to be done to help not only the internet music community become more vibrant and more accessible to the people, but a revival is also needed on radio and television. We can't just leave those two mediums behind. We need a Midnight Special or an Old Grey Whistle Test for a new generation. We need a new Casey Kasem to help inspire us all to keep reaching for the stars. We need heroes to look up to, like what many of us had growing up. Frankly, I look on the charts nowadays and don't see many inspirational artists. Who finds Justin Bieber inspirational? Sure, there are talents and bright spots, but they are hidden among an assembly-line glut of pop artists. Us fans with discriminating tastes for more sophisticated and heavier forms of rock music are being pushed aside in favor of the flavor of the minute.
Thank God for the internet music community.
The internet music community is an absolute good. It is life for the artists who are struggling to get noticed when traditional mediums are ignoring them. It needs to become a powerful force like the airwaves and the TV used to be. We need a lot of new technology and a little bit of old-fashioned thinking. I could see an internet version of a show like Don Kirschner's Rock Concert being a wonderful thing, or internet TV shows in the vein of American Bandstand...it could be a wonderful thing that could expose new and hungry rockers to millions around the world.
One thing does not change though: We as musicians have to stick together. We need to be a brotherhood. We need to build up other artists around us and not hold them down. Our art form is dying. Gibson guitars filed for bankruptcy. Guitar Center might shut down. Clubs are closing. Do we rally and do all we can to reverse the trend, or do we fiddle like Nero as the art of music burns away around us?
I love music too damn much to let it die. We can't let it die. Let's fight to keep it alive, so future generations have stars to reach for. I want to see our children be able to have big dreams to make true like the big dreams I used to have listening to Casey's countdown. I want them to have the same starry-eyed wonder.
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