More proof I'm old

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Besides being married with a child… it has finally sunk in that pop music has passed me by.

When I was in high school, I followed the pop music world with interest. In college, and later as part-time work, I was a DJ.

I knew the records - the unbeatable ones. Twenty number one songs by The Beatles. Fifteen consecutive weeks at number one by The Beatles (three songs back-to-back in 1964).

Ten weeks at number one was the uncrackable time for a single to stay at the top of the charts: “Sincerely”, the McGuire Sisters, “Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White,” Perez Prado, “Singing The Blues,” Guy Mitchell, and “You Light Up My Life,” Debby Boone. And I was tracking the charts when Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” made it into that club in November of my senior year.

I collected every single number one song on vinyl, starting from an arbitrary point in the middle of 1955 (“Rock Around the Clock”, which began the rock era) to the then-current hits.

Of course, interests wane. And 'though I kept half an ear on Kasey Kasem’s show every week, by the late 1980s I stopped buying the new number ones. Gone were the days of 45 singles; you generally had to buy the whole CD to get the song. And more often than not, I just didn’t like the music. “Could’ve Been,” by Tiffany was the last one I bought.

So now we fast-forward to the present. A crying baby keeps me up nights, and I decide I’ll start putting my old CDs and records into MP3 format.

And having done so… I think the cool thing to do would be to bring my collection up to date. After all - I have everything from 1955 to 1988. How tough can adding thirteen years be?

Thirteen weeks at number one for Boyz II Men’s “Endo of the Road”? Fourteen weeks that same year (1992) for Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”??? What the hell?

  1. Twenty weeks at number one for two successive Boyz II Men hits: fourteen for “I’ll Make Love To You” and six for “On Bended Knee.” The Beatles impenetrable record shattered - and I never knew it happened.

SIXTEEN WEEKS at number one for Mariah Carey’s joint venture with Boyz II Men: “One Sweet Day.” So far as I can tell, that’s the new record.

And here’s the really frightening part: except for “I Will Always Love You” - I didn’t know any of these damn songs. And when I heard them… I didn’t like them. At all.

This is it. I’m at the point where I’m utterly worthless with respect to popular music.

I am old.

  • Rick
2

No, just clinging to some of the last vestiges of taste left in the modern world.

Despite having one of the finest sets of pipes in the industry, the drivel that Witless Houston spews forth is quite simply, unbearable.

Try to remember that nearly everyone in the USA now owns a radio and the market is much more vast than it ever used to be. Combine that with the simultaneous decline in both quality and taste and you get the seemingly impressive numbers that in reality only indicate massive consumption. This has little or nothing to do with true artistic excellence, merely the miracle of mass marketing.

3

Lennon has been gone over 20 years.

John Mellencamp just turned 50.

Aerosmith’s “Dream On” is almost 30.

Bands like U2, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, have been going strong for over 20 years. Remember when they were just starting out?

<sigh>

4

Zenster:

I think that’s what the old people were saying back when we were listening to the Beatles and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Face it. We’re old.

5

I was chatting about music with the young man who is next to me on the lab bench and suddenly realized that I got my first tattoo before he was born.

Old. I’m old.

6

Join the club.

Wanna borrow my bifocals?

7

I saw U2 in 1980, in DC, at a venue that didn’t seat 1,000.

I remember when they were now, along with Depeche Mode, The Cure, Tears for Fears… and some bands that didn’t really survive this long… OMD, Ultravox, Simple Minds, Modern English… I remember going on road trips to see them.

Not too sound like a whiny idiot here… but when the hell did it happen? When did I become one of them - the old folks that don’t get it?

Sheesh.

  • Rick
8

You’ll know life really passed you by when you see your favorite acts being pushed on late night TV.

9

Heh. I’d stopped paying attention long before that, you whippersnapper.

One serious “influence” on the trend to which you allude is the ownership of over 90% of the major market radio stations by exactly two companies. (And I think that if you limit the poll to pop and rock, it is closer to 99.9%) Those companies direct their stations to play what the über-management thinks will bring in the best numbers on the ratings each month. No one is allowed to deviate from the centrally mandated playlist, so if 'N Synch looks like it is about to have a hit, all the stations (that are not devoted to the blandest mix of 60s and 70s hits) will have to play that tune x times a day. Once that song hits number 1, they are not allowed to reduce its play time, so it tends to stay up.

I hear of rebellious folks who talk of starting truly independent radio stations, but I’m not sure that they’ll really succeed. They’re still going to have only one voice in any large market, and so they will still be swamped by the big companies.

10

Wow, Bricker, your collection of classic singles is damn impressive. Supposedly, Joel Whitburn has a copy of every hit single that made the pop charts, that might be the all time most impressive record collection. I too was an avid reader of music charts information from Billboard in my high school days, though I didn’t have the income to buy all the records I wanted (and they still had vinyl records in those days.)

I bought Joel Whitburn’s Guide to Top 40 Hits, 1955-82
in junior high and proceeded to read Billboard every day,
creating subsequent year editions in Whitburn’s tabular
format in my own notebook. I did this up through 1988,
then went off to college and lost total track of pop music thereafter. I missed out on Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey’s recordbreaking, it came as a total surprise to me when I read your above post. Despite my age (31) my favorite era of music is the 50’s and 60’s, something I’ve had to live vicariously through oldies radio, and napster.

Despite the impressive recent performance of Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men, and Mariah Carey, I’m sure they haven’t broken the record of sheer number of #1 hits, 20. Possibly not the record of 6 #1 hits in one year. Anyway, none of these singers made young listeners (particularly the screaming girl fans) go nearly as ape as the Beatles did, IMHO. Paul is not dead, and neither is the Beatles’ music.

11

I wish I could better remember the Rolling Stone Album Guide’s entry for Whitney, but, ahem:

“Whitney Houston has a voice capable of moving soul and powerful expression, but she uses it to perpetrate some of the blandest pap in popular music. It’s as if Andrew Whyeth decided there was more money in drawing cartoons.”

Anyway, I’m close.