> "Oldies" is a demographic nightmare. I am 22 and I
> recognize the format's connotations are not pretty. I see
> old people in rocking chairs. They are eating prunes and
> suffering from kidney stones.
...and I see you've gotten a pretty good lambasting for an inaccurante stereotype.
Don't feel bad. In a wacky kind of way, I suffer from people inaccurately stereotyping *me* based solely on my age.
You see, at age 47, I fit pretty neatly into what seems to pass for the "Oldies" demo these days.
Truth be told, though, while I was brought up with the music, and genuinely liked it at one time, I've greatly burned out on it.
It isn't at all that the music is bad! I have nothing whatsoever against the music that the folks on this board love.
However, Top-40 Radio and I parted ways in 1973 because I could no longer relate to the music. (Surviving David Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, and the Jackson Five had already left me a bit queasy.) At that time, I discovered a Miles Davis album in my high school's library, and became a die-hard jazz/big band fan. (Got to meet Stan Kenton twice, and Buddy Rich and Maynard Ferguson once each.)
When I got my first radio gig in 1977, of course, "oldies" was part of the overall format (known then as "AOR".."All Over The Road," as so many small-market AM's did back then). So, I guess I had some catching up to do!
Anyway, by my calculations, I've played The Beatles' "Michelle" no fewer than 5,000 times over the course of my radio life. The song is great, but the number of repititions has apparently numbed me...I can't even *hear* the song any more!
That's why I got into Standards radio in 1999, where I've been ever since. This is a vast, great library that I had formerly scorned as "square." But, not only am I discovering something I apparently missed, it offers me relief from multiple-thousand plays of worn-out songs.
Because I'm so anxious to hear *anything* different these days, I've even started taking to classical music. My new favorite CD is Lucia Micarelli's debut.
The point is, my age seems to disenfranchise me. It is automatically assumed that "Oldies" is the "soundtrack of my life," when nothing could be further from the truth. My favorite radio station in high school was one in Madison, WI, where they skillfully mixed Emmylou Harris, Leo Kottke, Pink Floyd, Starcastle, and any number of other disparate styles into one seamless tapestry...unlike "Jack."
Could it be that there are more people like me who are just plain burning out on the "Oldies" format as it stands now, and are looking elsewhere for fulfillment these days?
If so, then maybe the name "Oldies" isn't the real problem here.
I truly mean no offense whatsoever to the fine folks and fine music on this board, and I'm not trying to start a fight. I'm only trying to say why any attempt to pigeonhole me and figure that I'll buy a certain product simply because I'm 47 and therefore "must have tickets to the new Stones tour" will ultimately fail.
(I remember commenting to an ad agency friend of mine how grating one of their jingles was that they had written for a local client. I'll never forget the response: "We sat a group of people your age down, and they told us that this is the music style 'you' like." And, because she couldn't accept that *I didn't* like it, that turned out to be the end of the discussion.)
Not trying to make the discussion murkier, I'm hoping this at least adds some perspective.
I certainly hope "Oldies" as this group seems to like it never dies as a format, but a reinvention of the format seems inevitable.
Regards,
Ken Clark
