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I'm happy that the robot oldies stations haven't put this jam into stress rotation up to this point in history. Nothing ruins an oldie like an oldies station.
These lads say "fuck the second and fourth---we're gonna hammer the first and third too, and maybe even the uh-four!" Even in 7th grade, through the 2.5 in. speaker of my turquoise GE tabletop AM radio, I could tell there was something huge about the sound of this tune. But luckily we had a tube-driven, all-in-one Olympia entertainment console (with 9 in. elliptical satellite speaker!) so I could hear it up close in hi fi after school on the Dex Card show. It's a monster!
Try Too Hard, The Dave Clark Five (1966, 45 rpm single, Epic 10004 [US]*), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.
* I've got the disc squirreled away in my Felix The Cat-type doctor bag with a few dozen other 45s I picked up in thrift stores during the '70s for about a dime apiece.
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Elaborate. How does an oldies station ruin an oldie? Are you meaning a relatively short playlist that gets frequently repeated (what top 10 stations always did when they were newies) or the fact that they just play, like from an iPod without comment, history or context?
ReplyDeleteWhat's worst about robot radio is that things are gathered into tight, theme-based groups and so if you don't frequently change the station you get an overdose of some style or genre.
I don't think radio stations went to "heavy rotation," or "stress rotation," until the '70s. Even when the biggest hits got the most airplay (naturally reinforcing their status as "biggest hits"), they were only in rotation for a matter of weeks---maybe three months, tops. So they went dormant in our minds, by going off the air, about the time we were "getting a little sick of them" and the public stopped buying them.
DeleteYou also point out a related issue: the craft of jockeying discs for broadcast over the air to a mass audience. Sadly, that's a lost art. My hypothesis is that the "business model" of 21st century oldies stations is selling ads around a package of "intellectual property" recorded 30 or 40 years ago, the package consisting of titles that are bundled by IP owners to return the highest profits based on marketing research. Laissez-faire capitalism ruins everything, especially art and the true aims of life.
There's a lot to be said for those oldies tube-driven analog recorders and players.
ReplyDeleteNice!
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I'm trying to figure out if there is any hearable benefit to playing digital media through a tube-driven amplifier. Opinions differ. Tubes can be expensive to maintain, or so I'm told.
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