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Harvey_Dogg
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I need to thank you for opening this thread because I have found that Carly Simon has recorded some interesting music in the 21st Century. I am now at an anti-format radio station and I will put her on the air.
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Carly Simon is classic rock?
- Thread starter vchimpanzee
- Start date
A part of it was that they were dependent on outside songwriters (Nilsson, Laura Nyro, Randy Newman, Paul Williams, Hoyt Axton, Dave Loggins, Leo Sayer). There are no original Three Dog Night songs---just covers of other artists.
They also didn't have much of an image (apart from L.A., where KHJ---and more importantly KHJ-TV and its live daily music shows---latched onto them in '68).
A friend of mine once described them as a "slightly heavier version of the Grass Roots".
Care to share the call letters and market of the station in the 70s where you were the MD?
We've established, through the R&R and Walrus archives, that Carly got regular, consistent and significant airplay on every one of the albums she released in the 1970s on FM rock stations nationwide. That doesn't mean every station, of course, but there are screenshots in the pages preceding documenting play on bigs like KLOS, KMET and dozens of others.
No surprise that she wouldn't have gotten 90s classic rock play---the core artists of the format were different by that point from those of FM rock radio in the 1970s (again, if you scroll back, you'll find an interview with Lee Abrams from 1979 about his plans to retire what he called "fringe pop" artists like Linda Ronstadt and Billy Joel to "concentrate on the heavy rockers".
And yes---some of us here grew up on the great FM rock stations (in my case on the West Coast---KPPC, KNAC, KMET, KLOS, KWST, KROQ (before the "Rock of the 80s" era and during), KPRI, KGB-FM, KSAN, KSFX and KZAP, among others).
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"Classic Rock" is based pretty much on the Abrams Superstars concept of the 70's. It even includes a lot of music from that era.
So, if we are talking about current classic rock stations, we need to look at the original hits on the stations that played them as currents. That is why I posted 150 issues of Walrus! from the 70's and early 80's on Wednesday evening. That shows what the individual stations were playing... and it includes Carly Simon.
As Michael just said, today's classic rock has eliminated some of the "less rocky" songs that AOR stations played consistently in the 70's.
I programmed the highest AQH persons classic rock station in the Western Hemisphere a while back. One of the things that was very important was to recognize what listeners considered to be the songs they wanted us to play from the 70's and 80's, not what we thought was a "purist" view of the format.
Anecdotal evidence: I remember hearing her at WCOZ Boston before John Sebastian took it "kick ass rock and roll." Also on WOUR Utica, which was the de facto AOR station for Syracuse during my years at SU. "Legend in His Own Time," especially, got quite a few spins.
And again, we've established regular, consistent and significant airplay on every Carly Simon album of the 1970s on FM rock radio. It's not open to debate. We have the tapes, we have the archives of R&R and Walrus.
It happened.
To go back to the post that kicked this whole thing off: Carly Simon was mentioned on a game show as a "classic rock" artist.
To a normal FM rock radio station listener of the 1970s, who doesn't think or speak in format descriptions ("Classic Rock" as a format dates to the mid-80s) or track when Lee Abrams changed the list of core artists, is that reasonable? If he or she heard Carly on those stations at that time, then yes, that's reasonable for that normal person to think. It's not a panel of radio people being asked about what's been played on Classic Rock stations since 1985.
And let's remember---most FM rock listeners didn't spend a lot (or any) time checking out Top 40 stations on AM (it's that whole "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm?" thing). So they're not going to hear Carly Simon coming out of or going into the Carpenters or the Osmonds.
Part of how this thread got to...426 posts (I really picked the wrong week to stop using the Lord's name in vain) is that people approached this backwards, with the assumption that hit singles, Top 40 and Adult Contemporary airplay in the 70s somehow meant that FM rock stations would have immediately abandoned an artist.
No. Case in point---yesterday, I was listening to an aircheck of Jimmy Rabbitt on KMET in April of 1975. He plays the album version of Marshall Tucker Band's "This Ol' Cowboy" and says "They've cut it down for AM radio, and that's okay, 'cause that'll make 'em stars. And that ain't a bad thing."
And we have also established that many of those artists, Carly included, were FM rock station artists who crossed over to Top 40 and AC, not vice-versa.
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Three Dog Night (or whatever's been left of it, has been touring for decades in smaller venues.
Down from seven members to six, but two (Danny Hutton and Michael Alsup) are originals:
Pretty serious touring schedule:
My mother once told me that she saw a documentary about Three Dog Night(probably on PBS)that said they were threatened by the mob and that's why their career came crashing down! It's not like my mother would make this up!
Wasn't it three, Chuck, Danny and Cory?
"This Ol' Cowboy" was sent to Top 40? Great track, and I wore out the grooves on that album in my dorm room many a night, but I don't recall ever hearing any version of it on Top 40. The MTB's best known single, "Heard It in a Love Song," was absolutely butchered in order to receive Top 40 play, though. Thanks for bringing up a bad memory, lol.
Your mom didn't make it up, but it also wasn't true. Someone in the band said it---piggybacking off the buzz on books about the recording industry like Frederick Dannen's "Hit Men" and Tommy James' "Me, the Mob and the Music". Their allegation was that they ticked off the mob (but never really said how) and that the mob made sure their records didn't get promoted anymore.
Nonsense. ABC's promo guys never let up trying to get new Three Dog Night product on the air. And if they were calling me, they sure as hell were calling more important PDs at bigger stations (which covers most PDs and most stations).
The act was tired, the times were changing and their chart numbers had been hit-and-miss since '71 (going from four top tens in a row to alternating between top ten and lower parts of the top 20 every other record through '74).
Sending it and getting it played are two different things. "This Ol' Cowboy" was the first Marshall Tucker Single to chart on the Hot 100, but it wasn't in any sense a hit, peaking at #78.
500 posts, here we come!
It was those three, but they hired four guys to play instruments---Joe Schermie on bass, Floyd Sneed on drums, Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards and Michael Alsup on guitar.
The "One" and "Suitable For Framing" album covers show Chuck, Danny and Cory, but all seven appear on the rear cover on "Suitable".
The next album, "It Ain't Easy", pictured Chuck, Danny and Cory on both front and back covers, but it opened out to show all seven inside.
"Naturally" and "Harmony" show all seven members on the front of the album.
Its funny to note that at my senior prom, way back when, we were given the choice (by vote) of live musical entertainment: it was between Three Dog Night or Bobby Sherman(!) Most of us guys assumed it would be Three Dog Night---wrong! It wound up being Bobby Sherman who walked the floor with his guitar and flirted with just about every female he saw. We were thrilled...
I still don't understand how "Julie Do Ya Love Me" wasn't a staple of drunken karaoke nights in the 90s...
With all due respect for the talents of Mr. Sherman (we all have to make a living) but my prom night would have been much more fun if could have gotten The Three Stooges! Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk!
Yep, 500 posts of more 'geezer talk'. Must be some sort of record, but I kind of doubt it.
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