Raised on the Radio: Casey Kasem’s Countdown (plus bonus EW)

Paul Masson Burgundy. Photo from Wine World.

Consuming:  Went upstate to Lake George for a wedding. Lake George Village is a real throwback–most of the restaurants have the same menus they did in the 50s or before. I’m always happy with a good filet and homemade mashed potatoes, so I was happy with Giovanna’s, especially the lake view, but could have lived without the iceberg lettuce salad and the very soggy vegetables. The free wine we were offered was Paul Masson Hearty Burgundy or Chablis, which made me think of parties my parents hosted in the 1970s. Chris had it, but I paid for two glass of Mondavi Merlot rather than risk the migraine I would have gotten.  The food at the wedding was lovely, catered by Saratoga’s own Lily and the Rose–including one of the best cakes I’ve ever had, topped with strawberries. Perfect for summer by the lake.

Producing: Thanks to Time-Warner suddenly changing all the channels around, I’ve had to reset all my TiVo season passes. That may not seem like a huge deal, but for a media studies scholar it is. Thank goodness it’s summer. We missed Thursday’s Jeopardy!, and only got Friday’s because I set a manual recording. Other than that, and Nurse Jackie, I’ve seen almost no TV since Thursday. I took the Friday New York Times, 3 New Yorkers, my Kindle, along with my laptop, upstate, and didn’t open any of them. We found plenty to do. We soaked up the quiet by the lake to remember next time we’re crammed on a rush hour A Train.

Anticipating: Work meetings and hopefully lots of writing this week. May have to find a new adjunct to teach Women, Girls, and the Media.

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Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum on Entertainment Weekly cover June 20, 2014. Photo from EW.Com

I’m not going to write about Entertainment Weekly every week, but seriously? I don’t care to see a beefcake shot of Jonah Hill, or even Channing Tatum, but so much for “equal time.” The whole article is all “we’re so secure in our masculinity, so let’s make jokes about being a couple” offensive. It’s even more ironic because there’s a sidebar, that I imagine they had to put in way after the article was mostly done, about Jonah Hill’s recent homophobic slur and how great it was that he apologized. This irony seems lost on the editors.

Anyhow, if I wanted to create a Feminist Media Theory 101 lesson, they have sure made it easy for me.

 

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On a road trip, we usually pick a radio station on Sirius and a different one on the way back. I almost never listen to new pop or rock music, unless I hear it on a TV show.

On the way up, we listened to 80s on 8. Since the 80s were my high school and college years, I feel like that’s the music I “came from.” I don’t like all or even most of what they play, but I can sing to it all. Plus the DJs are the original MTV VJs (minus J.J. Jackson, of course).

Sometimes we go for First Wave or Underground Garage instead, which is more of the type of music I listened to in college, on the great WXRT in Chicago. When I got there I was told to listen to that because it was “for really cool people who like to listen to the radio.” I don’t think many people thought I was cool back then, but listen I did and it changed my musical tastes. Much of what I had liked in High School was not “cool” (yes, I did ask the wedding DJ to play “Kiss on My List”, and yes, I was miffed when he never did), but WXRT played a lot of The Police, and The B-52s, and Blondie and Rickie Lee Jones, so that was good for me. Anyhow, the website shows that a lot of the same DJs and shows are there.

But on the way back, we switched to 70s on 7. They were doing a tribute to Casey Kasem, who had died the night before. They said they were playing American Top 40 for all the years of the 70s for 24 hours, but since each countdown was nearly 4 hours, that can’t really be right. We heard about 30 and up of the week of January 30, 1971 and the bottom 10 of an unidentified week in 1972. Anyhow, it took me back to my younger years when I would listen to the Countdown on Sunday afternoons, though a bit later than that. I was only 4.

To bring it back to the normal themes of this blog, one of the good things about most of the Sirius stations is that even though they’ll play sexist heavy metal songs or “Island Girl,” they are really pretty good about making sure there’s a good mix of male and female voices, and on the “decades” stations, genres, so you’ll hear folk, soul, rock, and other genres that gives at least some diversity. But of course, the countdowns were just counting down what songs, given the combination of whatever DJs were playing, people were buying, and payola, were on the Billboard Hot 100 chart that week. This leads to strange serendipity like Judy Collins singing “Amazing Grace”, and then a few songs later “Groove Me” by King Floyd, “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin, and the number one song of the week, “Knock Three Times” by Tony Orlando and Dawn (the wedding DJ wasn’t too cool to play that). I’m sure someone had all of that in their record collection, but it’s hard to imagine what that person was like.

Diana Ross–photo from ClassicMotown.com

Anyhow, only 9 of 40 had women in lead or co-lead voices (I don’t think Dawn counts, does it?). We heard Barbra Streisand doing a Laura Nyro Song, “Stoney End,” (sorry, Laura’s version is way better so that’s the link I’m using), “One Less Bell to Answer” by the 5th Dimension, with Marilyn McCoo in the lead. Diana Ross, who had left the Supremes, had a song, and The Supremes and Four Tops did “River Deep Mountain High”, which I’ve heard more by Ike and Tina Turner. In other words, there were long stretches when we didn’t hear any women. That kind of thing is a big reason I stopped listening to commercial radio (along with no commercials–that’s huge). Don’t get me wrong, many of my favorite musicians are men (we must have been at a rest stop when they played Todd Rundgren), but it just seemed like a stand I had to take.

Anyhow, countdowns are weird because the stuff at the bottom is often the kind of thing that didn’t stand the test of time at all. Just as we got out of the car we heard “Ring the Living Bell” by Melanie (of Brand New Key fame), a song we didn’t feel the need to ever hear again (but here’s a link, if you want to).