Ah...remember the 70's? Thumbing through National Lampoon, the famous cover of the dog with revolver at it's ear, while listening to the AOR FM station of one's choice. I was reading John Mellencamp's blog over at the HuffPo and got caught in just how different the music scene is today
In 1974 one could catch the National Lampoon Radio Hour on a local college low watt for free. It is amazing that with the unfettered access of the Internet we ahould have a well spring of music and humor like never seen since..well ever. Let's look at the "HOT" lineups at ITunes.., Amy Winehouse,Flo Rida(which sounds alot like the Alpo character from "Tropic Thunder"), Lil' Wayne, Kelli Clarkson, Miley Cyrus and YouTube groin injury takes. Now I am not disputing the musical merit of these artists or the endless hilarity of the unintentional groin injuries....O.K I am mocking the musical merits of these "musicians". I know many will say the good new stuff is out there if I just mine for it on the Internet. I work 50-80 hours a week and don't have a ton of time to listen, do the Leonard Nimoy, and search for the artists worth listening to. I know this stuff is not on the radio. ClearChannel, et al., owns that now as Mr. Mellencamp vaguely refers to in his blog, and such corporations keep the formula simple, "the counting of the number shall be forty and forty shall the counting of the number be", to paraphrase Monty Python. I know there's many of you saying that I am just being stubborn about today's tunes. Compare if you will Brittany Spears newest "I Want to F You" song with...ummm..let's see..anything from the late 60's or 70's. Even the worst tune you can think of. Mellencamp even offers one up, "Monster Mash" has more merit than anything in the Spears catalogue.
And now....what is the answer? Even John Mellencamp is not totally specific in his blog. But I will offer a bit of advice that would help the entire society.. end the reign of ClearChannel and its brethren. Limit station, television station, and newspaper ownership rules. Trust the market right? Even in backward Oklahoma City,OK in 1975, you could listen to at four stations that would offer you a range of choices that today would boggle the mind. What Mellencamp is longing for is a time where stations sought to afford access to music and not crunch 25 songs into two hour sections of broadcast time. What else is the reason for "classic rock" stations? In 1975, despite a mountain of material, there were no classic rock stations. Why? Because we have allowed, along with the dumbing down of our entire society, the corporations to spoonfeed us what the populace wants according to their cost analysis.
I can now think back to a time when at the turn of a knob I could listen to, in a matter of 30 minutes and for free, at least on the FM airwaves, Al Stewart, Warren Zevon, Iggy Pop, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, CSNandY, and a young John Belushi doing satire. This without buying a 300-1000 dollar computer. I know the technology is there for us to make a revolution in this area and I don't want to seem like a cultural luddite, but I would like to see a rediscovery of the potential I know is out there and happening now, but due to many of the reasons in John Mellencap's blog is not available to us at the turn of a dial. Let us 'touch' that dial. Remember the importance of radio in the 1930's. May you some day hear the 2010 equivalent to Pink Floyd's "One of These Days" on the radio.