There was a touch of sarcasm there. Not many successful Top 40 PDs blow off #1 records and "they got the geography wrong" would have made for an interesting quote in R&R.
Gotcha. Broad and varied career.
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Song you wondered how they they ever got played on Top 40 radio
- Thread starter secondchoice
- Start date
There was a touch of sarcasm there. Not many successful Top 40 PDs blow off #1 records and "they got the geography wrong" would have made for an interesting quote in R&R.
Gotcha. Broad and varied career.
Sacrificing maintenance as part of general budget cuts, I can see. But it had always been my assumption that the acres of ivy along so many of our freeways got removed as a result of drought considerations. Whenever the public is under severe water rationing and finds itself sitting in gridlock every workday, watching sprinklers spewing gallons of water all over decorative roadside beautification, there can be resentment. (I can still remember seeing the sprinklers actively watering that stuff in my area as late as the early 1990s.)
Doing some additional research, it appears it was a one-two punch---neglect during the early 80s and a drought on the heels of that.
The good(ish) news is that English Ivy is a fairly hardy plant, only requiring water once a week outside the rainy season. Most of what didn't get done during that phase was manpower-related---weeding and trimming.
But then came our six-year drought (1986-92) and there are news reports (buried in archives that I'd have to pay to access) that after the mid-point of that drought Caltrans was taking increasing heat for what watering was being done (statewide, it did add up), the criticism came to a boil around '91-'92 and the ivy was removed. So your memory of the sprinklers would be correct.
Why stop at geography? You could have a field day going after songs with bad grammar...
Most of them involve the use of the word "ain't" followed by at least one double negative. The best example is from "A Horse With No Name:"
"In the desert, you can remember your name, 'cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."
This is an old Stan Freberg routine.
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Meredith Brooks "Bitch" from 1997 a number 2 hit. The word bitch has been all but removed from the radio. To my knowledge the only large company stations which do not bleep out bitch are Audacy. Ironically, the afternoon soaps use the word bitch all the time and, by definition, are in the afternoon.
Jason Derulo "Talk Dirty" from 2013. The end of the song has a woman with a stereotypical Asian accent saying "What? I no understand". Most stations simply removed that ending. Again, Audacy played it. There are other lyrics in that song which ALL stations had to remove (ie another word for cats).
Jason Derulo "Talk Dirty" from 2013. The end of the song has a woman with a stereotypical Asian accent saying "What? I no understand". Most stations simply removed that ending. Again, Audacy played it. There are other lyrics in that song which ALL stations had to remove (ie another word for cats).
I'm really surprised to hear about that, given that the barrier was pretty well shattered in 1971 by the Stones, 1974 by Elton John, 1975 by Neil Sedaka (with Elton John) and 1976 by Hall and Oates.
Potentially offensive stereotypes are now a lot more carefully considered.
Yeah. And that genuinely surprises me. It’s a much more common, much less taboo word than it was 50-ish years ago when the Stones, Elton, Sedaka and Hall & Oates broke the barrier.
Still don't know why everyone was upset over female dogs?🙂
I thought it was just Dearborn
The only two hit songs that I can think of that used that phrase it were edited. Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" bleeped it and the Charlie Daniels' Band's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia offered a radio edit where the phrase "son of a gun" was substituted.
The only time I've ever heard the phrase used by talent was Phil Hendrie, when he was at WIOD in Miami.
Phil recorded his own voice softly saying "you son of a bitch", and played it underneath his show without comment, waiting for the inevitable caller that he could then do this to:
The Phil Hendrie Show - Best of 1996 : Phil Hendrie : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Phil Hendrie Show - Best of 1996
archive.org
The only two hit songs that I can think of that used that phrase it were edited. Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" bleeped it and the Charlie Daniels' Band's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia offered a radio edit where the phrase "son of a gun" was substituted.
The only time I've ever heard the phrase used by talent was Phil Hendrie, when he was at WIOD in Miami.
Phil recorded his own voice softly saying "you son of a bitch", and played it underneath his show without comment, waiting for the inevitable caller that he could then do this to:
The Phil Hendrie Show - Best of 1996 : Phil Hendrie : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Phil Hendrie Show - Best of 1996archive.org
"Stranger In Town" by Toto used that phrase. The only station I remember editing it was WPFB-FM.
It only made #30. Resistance to the lyrics may have been part of that. Also, the music video was in black and white, which might have hampered it in those days.
And, looking at its peak week in R&R, and the songs above it, it really wasn't likely to do much better:
I was still a CHR P1 in those days (KLUC, Las Vegas, and, spending a lot of time in L.A., KIIS-FM and KKHR).
"Stranger in Town" is the only song on that list that I didn't instantly recall. I had to go watch the video just now.
KIIS played it, but it stalled out at #31. I can't find a KKHR or KLUC survey for the weeks where the record was active.
It wasn’t a chart hit, but KROQ and possibly other stations used to play this song:The only two hit songs that I can think of that used that phrase it were edited. Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" bleeped it and the Charlie Daniels' Band's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia offered a radio edit where the phrase "son of a gun" was substituted.
The only time I've ever heard the phrase used by talent was Phil Hendrie, when he was at WIOD in Miami.
Phil recorded his own voice softly saying "you son of a bitch", and played it underneath his show without comment, waiting for the inevitable caller that he could then do this to:
The Phil Hendrie Show - Best of 1996 : Phil Hendrie : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Phil Hendrie Show - Best of 1996archive.org
And if we wanted to talk new wave and AOR stations, we'd have a loooooong list....but the topic is:
Song you wondered how they ever got played on Top 40 radio
(and yeah, I know what I said about KROQ before, but that was 1981/82, not 1988)
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
"Son of a gun" is the original version. If you listen closely to the album version you can clearly hear where they punched in the SOB line from a different recording.
I had never heard that story nor the clear punch-in on the album. The story I'd read, in an interview with Charlie, was that SOB was the original as they recorded the album, but they realized they likely had a hit single on their hands, so they re-recorded that one line for the single release (not just a radio version, but the commercially-sold single).
"Ferndale" just wouldn't have been the same