DJs sharing negative opinions of songs/artists on air or online.

[michael hagerty]

That sure beats the young girl who front announced "Coming up Creedence Clearwater with Revival Green River".

It happened to pros. There's an aircheck of a somewhat distracted Robert W. Morgan during KHJ's "Sneak Preview", saying "That was the Silhouettes with "Herman's Hermit."

Well, it was Herman's Hermits, with "Silhouettes", and it was their third hit and Morgan came down from KEWB in Oakland, so he knew who they were---he just got it sideways while doing the back-announce.

 

[tbolt909]

Exactly. I think I may have been confused by your original comment. My point is the record was Grammy-worthy (at least in the eyes of the NARAS judges), but the award was given to a couple of guys who had nothing to do with it.

Right. That's what led to the discovery of the fraud---after the Grammy had been awarded.

And correctly. Nesmith, Tork and Dolenz could play, but Don Kirshner, the executive in charge of music for the TV show, wanted the best studio musicians in Hollywood. So the first two albums were done that way, using the pros who later became known as "The Wrecking Crew", and some other pros.

If the Milli Vanilli record had been marketed with the guys who actually sang, it may have never become a hit or won the Grammy. They weren't photogenic.

Dolenz was an excellent vocalist and Nesmith could write songs and perform. The Monkees did play live as a band. Many artists have benefited from session musicians on records. That was common...

 

[michael hagerty]

If the Milli Vanilli record had been marketed with the guys who actually sang, it may have never become a hit or won the Grammy. They weren't photogenic.

Which is not a criteria for a Grammy. I know several voting members of the Academy. They focus on the audio. Examples abound, but the first one off the top of my head is Susan Boyle.

Dolenz was an excellent vocalist and Nesmith could write songs and perform. The Monkees did play live as a band. Many artists have benefited from session musicians on records. That was common...

Yeah. The issue was people buying into the image of the band as it was portrayed on TV.

It was the fact that their earliest live performances weren’t up to the standards of the records that started the controversy.

 

[vchimpanzee]

If a DJ were constantly bashing the music they had to play, that's one thing. But a well placed sarcastic comment can be amusing. It's very contextual.

Andy Marriott runs serenade-radio.com and has a two-hour show every weekday. He's always complaining about this and that. One wonders why he would play a song he doesn't like if he's the boss. Still, his attitude is what people like about him.

Not an exact quote, but he started his show one day last week with, "I'm feeling goo today. That won't last."

 

[vchimpanzee]

I remember some station playing Wham "Wake me up before you go" then apologizing, calling it "rubbish" or something to that effect.

But that's the best AC song ever.

 

[vchimpanzee]

He never bashed an artist directly.

Marriott says The Beatles did some good songs, as long as they are not performed by The Beatles.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Here's a list. Tell me if these are "good" or "bad":


Starship-We Built This City

Debbie Boone- You Light Up My Life

Los Del Rio-Macarena

Tony Orlando and Dawn-Tie A Yellow Ribbon

Terry Jacks-Seasons in the Sun

Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson-Say Say Say

Bobby McFerrin-Don't Worry, Be Happy

These are the ones I would consider good. I'm somewhat reluctant to say the Terry Jacks song is good. And "Macarena" and the starship song I had to develop a taste for.

 

[vchimpanzee]

If you scroll through the internet some will say the greatest song is Wichita Lineman.

Great instrumentals, at the very least.

 

[vchimpanzee]

The Monkees were once accused of not playing their own instruments. They did actually become a real band in spite of being created for a TV show. Many of their records are excellent.

One of the few bands playing that kind of music that I actually liked. But it was because of their funny TV series.

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

I'll add "Who Let The Dogs Out" - Baha Men

The rest of that CD was JUNK!!!!!!!

 

[Mike in Destin]

It's interesting how people blame a group or band because of a TV show or bad video. Remember what happened after the Billy Squier "Rock Me Tonight " video? That literally destroyed his career. But what's really ironic is it wasn't his music they disliked. Even the critics liked him. I did too. I can't dislike someone due to a bad video. Squier later said it started out as a rock artist getting ready for a concert, putting on makeup or whatever you do. Somehow it morphed into a preteen "rocking out" playing air guitar in his bedroom. Maybe it was the director's fault. But the point is what it did to his career. He even asked Capitol if they could reshoot the video. They refused. It's really sad. I still like his music. His later albums were good too.

 

[rhead]

Back to the thread's original topic...

Back in the mid 90s, on KHMX (Mix 96.5) in Houston, when they had a show called "70s Saturday Night", a listener called in and requested "Make It With You" by Bread. The show's host, Paul Christy, refused to play the song, and came right out and said he wouldn't play it because he hated it! He then played an audio clip of some people shouting, "WUSS! WUSS! WUSS!" afterward. No Bread song was ever played on "70s Saturday Night" during the show's entire run. Of course, the show focused primarily on disco, though they did play some 70s rock and pop songs. (Surprisingly, when Paul Christy went to KLDE Oldies 107.5 in the early 2000s, I think I did hear "Make It With You" during his shift at least once, but this time he kept his opinion of the song to himself.)

Back in the early 90s, on Satellite Music Networks' "Star Station" adult contemporary format, on their "Saturday Oldies Show", host Bud Buschardt on a couple of occasions gave a listener a hard time when they called in and requested "Disco Duck." One time he asked "Are you sure?", and another time he asked "Why!?!" Nevertheless, he still played the song.

More recently, on WRTH (103.3 Earth FM) in upstate South Carolina, morning host Bill Love expressed his displeasure with "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, particularly the "Word to your mother" line near the end of the song, I think he said he thought it was disrespectful.

 

[michael hagerty]

Back to the thread's original topic...

Back in the mid 90s, on KHMX (Mix 96.5) in Houston, when they had a show called "70s Saturday Night", a listener called in and requested "Make It With You" by Bread. The show's host, Paul Christy, refused to play the song, and came right out and said he wouldn't play it because he hated it! He then played an audio clip of some people shouting, "WUSS! WUSS! WUSS!" afterward. No Bread song was ever played on "70s Saturday Night" during the show's entire run.

Paul, as Eric Chase in San Francisco (KFRC) and Los Angeles (KIQQ, KFI) always liked to be as “edgy” as he could.

(Surprisingly, when Paul Christy went to KLDE Oldies 107.5 in the early 2000s, I think I did hear "Make It With You" during his shift at least once, but this time he kept his opinion of the song to himself.)

That’s not a surprise. That’s a PD who gave Paul absolutely zero choice in whether to play a record or not. By the early 2000s, most major-market oldies stations had the music selected in advance and loaded in the system for specific playback times. He could no more dump a song than he could a commercial break.

 

[radiofan2023]

The rest of that CD was JUNK!!!!!!!

What did you expect?

 

[davideduardo]

Oh, I very much agree with Michael Hagerty on this one. One of the things that we humans tend to do is make friends with other humans whose thinking (as well as looks and other factors) are very similar to our own. The result is that when it comes to opinions about good or bad songs, good or bad radio stations (or nearly anything else for that matter), our friends will (mostly) stand behind us and will (mostly) stand behind them. And we will say, "See? Everybody agrees with us or if they don't, they are in such a minority that they don't count." The problem is that we may well be wrong in relying only on our inner circle of friends to validate whether songs are good or bad as perceived by the public as a whole. Polling data done scientifically will give a better result than what you and/or your inner circle think.

You are touching on a very good point.

However, radio people are not good sources for music evaluation. Before I did my first music test around 1985 or 1986, I gave my own scores to the first hundred songs in the station library. On a scale of 1 to 100, I was off by more than 20 points on over half. And I loved a number of real stiffs. I had asked a couple of station staffers to do the same, and they were also off by comparable amounts.

This testing was part of a restructuring of an FM that was last among all FMs in a top 20 market. Badly last, in fact. In the process of a few months, we tested, reduced the playlist from nearly 1500 songs to around 500 and the currents from over 60 to less than 30, including "new releases". Next book: absolute and total #1, about 50% over the #2 station.

We continued to research and take vast care with currents. For the 25 years I was involved, we were #1 and always double the next station.

 

[radiofan2023]

However, radio people are not good sources for music evaluation. Before I did my first music test around 1985 or 1986, I gave my own scores to the first hundred songs in the station library. On a scale of 1 to 100, I was off by more than 20 points on over half. And I loved a number of real stiffs. I had asked a couple of station staffers to do the same, and they were also off by comparable amounts.

Do you remember which songs you liked that were stiffs?

 

[davideduardo]

That’s not a surprise. That’s a PD who gave Paul absolutely zero choice in whether to play a record or not. By the early 2000s, most major-market oldies stations had the music selected in advance and loaded in the system for specific playback times. He could no more dump a song than he could a commercial break.

And even before that we did music logs using early computers. Around 1981 I put one music software app into an early PC. It was written in dBase from Ashton Tate. DJs had to follow the log. One that did not, on the second occurrence, was let go. That was 44 years ago.

I learned dBase myself, and was able to add to the program to even do things like a song chart based on plays that we ran in a local paper's entertainment supplement. The program was bought by what became RCS and we know how that turned out!

 

[davideduardo]

Do you remember which songs you liked that were stiffs?

The station's format was all salsa, but going back nearly 40 years I really can't remember.

I do remember that a lot of the jazz influence New York salsa artist songs that had long jams in them (called "descargas" in Spanish) did poorly, but I had learned that before when I launched WZNT in the same market; we edited nearly every song!

 

[davideduardo]

If the Milli Vanilli record had been marketed with the guys who actually sang, it may have never become a hit or won the Grammy. They weren't photogenic.

An awful (I use the word in all of its meanings and nuances) lot of disco music had non-photogenic artists. In fact, many had no artists at all and were "c'mon over" gatherings of musicians and singers who laid down tracks; the "hit" came from the mixing.

Dolenz was an excellent vocalist and Nesmith could write songs and perform. The Monkees did play live as a band. Many artists have benefited from session musicians on records. That was common...

Anyone who does not realize this should read the various articles online about LA's "Wreaking Crew".

 

[davideduardo]

Marriott says The Beatles did some good songs, as long as they are not performed by The Beatles.

During the decade I actually programmed and syndicated Beautiful Music, I found that there were more Beatles songs that were "a good fit" (my opinion as the programmer) than from any other mid-60's to late 70's artist. Part was due to the huge number of songs that got redone in such versions, and part was that they were actually good songs.

Even covers of very good ballads done first by Manilow and The Carpenters and even the ballad Motown ones did not fit as well into Beautiful Music. Those of us who have heard the Beatles songs done by a real symphony orchestra can see how that might be true.