Good entry, JohnBckWLD. As I stated earlier, I’m not from NYC and didn’t really start listening to rock and roll radio until around 1978, so I found your first-hand experiences with FM radio in the 60’s and early 70’s interesting.
Where I lived (Spokane, WA), the big AOR FM station in town did allow for some free-form radio until about 1981. Of course, this was not a major market like New York or L.A., so radio formatting trends were rather late reaching here. Also (and this was a subject touched on in the OP when Astorian said he was more likely to hear Stevie Wonder than ELP on FM radio), I seem to recall that, in addition to ignoring anything that smacked of punk rock, playlists on most AOR stations in the late 70’s and early 80’s got “whitened up” quite a bit. In the late 70’s, I remember hearing the AOR station where I lived play cuts from people like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Otis Redding, Gil Scott-Heron, Jimi Hendrix and Sly & the Family Stone mixed in with the expected cuts by the Stones, Doors, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Yes, Black Sabbath, Eagles, Aerosmith, etc. However, within a few years, just about the only black artist you would hear on an AOR FM station would be Jimi Hendrix (and he was long dead by that time). Was this the case with other “free-form/AOR” FM stations in larger cities or was Spokane just unique?
Thanks, however - it’s second-hand (From playlists I’ve read & old airchecks I’ve listened to on cassette).
*[Hijack]My interest in FM radio started in the early 80’s and reached its peak in 1984. That was the year (in mid-June) that I showed up half-drunk with a friend at the old WNEW-FM studios on 42nd & 3rd @ 2AM & conned the overnight janitor to let us in. We sat in with Dan Carlyse & Mark McEwen up in the 3rd floor studios for a couple hours drinking tall neck Schaefers. The latter even allowed me to bump some God-awful Huey Lewis and spin/introduce Sweet Leaf to the masses.[/Hijack]
Critics have always hated prog. I’ll never forget being, oh, seventeen (late-'70s), and wondering into a book store and seeing “The Rolling Stone Encyclopediea of Rock”.
I couldn’t wait to look up my favorite bands, Yes, Rush, and KC. Well I found out straight away that the music I loved enough to be home learning on the guitar and bass was simply terrible. It was pompous and bombastic, and it had way too many chords in it. Turned out it was wrong to attempt to transcend what had been defined as the ‘correct’ form that rock n roll should take. Apparantly it was ok for the Beatles, but they got a free pass. Hehe, I knew right then that critics wouldn’t be defining my tastes.
I like what Jeff Buckley said about music critics (paraphrased) “They write about something they know nothing about, I mean, if they wanna come get on stage with me and cut heads, lets jam, otherwise…” and this from a guy who the critics loved (hey you can’t be wrong All the time). As the OP originally stated though, you can’t argue taste.
