Run-DMSteve

Let’s give a big Run-DMSteve welcome to today’s contestants:

Golden Oldies: Radio programming.
Golden retrievers: Dogs.

Are you ready to rumble?

Golden Oldies
In 1966 my parents gave me my own radio, with a primitive earbud. They were sick of listening to my music on the family radio, which sat on the kitchen counter beside the bread box. Looking back, I can understand what Mom and Dad were up against. My musical sensibilities at the age of 11 were the equivalent of Lady Gaga and the Jonas Brothers. Who wants to listen to Herman’s Hermits and the tragic story of Mrs. Brown and her lovely daughter?

When I was 11, I certainly did, and when I got to see Herman’s Hermits in concert for a friend’s birthday I was thrilled. But before my 5th-grade colleagues and I could sing along to “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am,” we had to survive the opening act: The Who. (They weren’t famous yet, at least not on this side of the Atlantic.) What followed was, by the standards of that era, full-blown insane flying carnage. Fun!

Wherever you are today, Mrs. M., I’d like to thank you for not taking us home early, though I plainly remember your shock, particularly when the audience was hit by drum sticks and guitar shrapnel.

As the 1960s continued, The Beatles and The Who became more experimental and The Rolling Stones more savage. Other bands followed. Radio stations sprang up to play this music (the first “alternative” outlets). In the early 1970s I noticed that there were other stations, usually on the AM side, that were still playing Herman’s Hermits and similar bands. They didn’t seem aware of Sgt. Pepper’s or Tommy or Beggar’s Banquet. Their playlists stopped in the mid-’60s, and they included songs from a decade I knew nothing about: the 1950s, which in my mind meant crooners (Frank Sinatra) and cool jazz cats (John Coltrane).

As we moved into the 1980s and I learned more about the history of pop music I realized that Golden Oldies radio wasn’t just something I listened to when I didn’t like what was playing on the other stations. Golden Oldies was cultural propaganda, like Fonzi and Happy Days. All of the ’50s music these stations played was white-washed white pop. The only black artists I remember hearing* were Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Bo Diddley – and by the time we moved into the ’90s, Bo Diddley had disappeared and the other three were restricted to a song or two each.

What about all the other black R&B artists? What about rockabilly? What kind of country is this where we have to learn about our heritage from Led Zeppelin?

Today, in 2011, even that remnant of the 1950s is gone. The Golden Oldies songbook begins in the early ’60s with The Beach Boys and The Beatles. Jan & Dean and The Everly Brothers have vanished. Golden Oldies extends into the early 1980s now, and though blacks and women have been allowed into the club (no soul, no Golden Oldies), this format continues to perpetuate atrocities. Where else are you going to hear Chicago, The Dooby Brothers, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Bread? Excuse me while I rinse my brain out.

* Not counting doo-wop. I’m not sure that doo-wop is music.

Golden retrievers
Golden retrievers love chasing tennis balls. They love standing around chewing tennis balls. They love you. They love whatever you’re doing. They would never ever rewrite musical history or suppress music created and performed by women, minorities, or gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered individuals. They wouldn’t make me listen to Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park.” And if I secretly played “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daugher,” they wouldn’t tell.

Winner: Golden retrievers. W00T! (And w00f!)