From the L.A. Weekly:


Sucking in the '70s
How deep is your love?

By KATE SULLIVAN
Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - 7:45 pm

Gibb it up for the brothers. As you’ve heard, the
record industry as we know it is dying. And it’s even
worse than it looked a few months ago. CD sales are
down 20 percent from last year. Based on the inverse
relationship between record sales and gas prices, I
can only conclude America’s oil refineries are
secretly owned by a cabal of record executives
desperate to recover their losses on Guns N’ Roses’
Chinese Democracy.

The major record labels have laid a lot of the blame
on illegal downloading, and they are surely on to
something. I don’t want to argue them on that. I don’t
even want to bash them. (It’s no fun anymore!)

Instead, I want to listen to Casey Kasem’s American
Top 40. You can hear it every weekend on XM Satellite
Radio. They broadcast vintage episodes, without
commercials. It’s a fine way to spend a Saturday
morning.

And for anyone who’s been wondering, What the fudge
has happened to music? the show is also shocking.
Stunning. Sobering and intoxicating at the same time.
If you think pop music is bad today, you will
positively weep blood when you hear what used to pass
for bad.

Consider the episode they played a couple weeks ago —
on March 10, I believe. It was the same episode aired
exactly 29 years ago, in 1978. Just a random week in a
random month, in a year not particularly remembered
for great pop — and an era that was long derided for
supposedly sucking.

Music today should suck so good. To wit (insert
Kasem’s voice here): “On AT 40 this week, here’s the
record that takes the biggest drop. It moves all the
way from No. 11 down to No. 26! It’s Queen, and ‘We
Are the Champions.’”


1978, the year Queen became the champions (Photo by
Christopher Hopper) Real sucky, right? It’s only
Queen. It’s just f------ “We Are the F------
Champions,” falling to No. 26.

The story gets better. The No. 1 soul song during this
random crappy week was called “Flashlight,” by a
quirky li’l group named Parliament. Like I said: No
big deal, right? I mean, it’s only deathless,
trailblazing pop from outer space that would make
possible everyone from Prince to the Red Hot Chili
Peppers to OutKast.

Near “Flashlight” was the highest-debuting single of
the week, “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” by Electric Light
Orchestra — a group whose star has only grown brighter
in the pop constellation over time. (Sex Pistol Steve
Jones even plays songs by the ELO tribute group, LEO,
on his show.)

We’ve been told pop music was so weak in the late
’70s, the kidz had to invent punk rock and hip-hop
just to stay sane. And it’s true.

We’ve been told the pop music of that time was slick,
lightweight, commercial. And it’s true.

Ironic, isn’t it? Some of the fluffiest of the fluff
has proven to be not only enduring, but iconic. And
even if you don’t like it, you can’t deny the beauty
of its craftsmanship. This is pop that was built to
last — and it has.

“Now it’s time for the Bee Gees, with the song they
have kept in the Top 10 for 17 consecutive weeks. And
you know, in the ’60s and ’70s, no other song has done
that. Here they are, finally falling out of the Top 10
to No. 15 this week, with ‘How Deep Is Your Love.’”


You want your funk uncut? I happen to love that
particular song with a tender passion (as do Los Chili
Pepperses, whose guitarist, John Frusciante, performs
an earnest acoustical version of it at their
concerts). And it’s no surprise that “How Deep Is Your
Love” would be spotlighted on a chart from 1978;
obviously, the Gibbs owned the decade. As Kasem
mentions, “For the past three weeks, the soundtrack
toSaturday Night Feverhas been selling a mind-blowing
200,000 copiesa day.” (The same week also featured
Gibb confections “Stayin’ Alive,” “Emotion,” “Night
Fever,” “If I Can’t Have You” and “Love Is Thicker
Than Water.”)

But what’s so impressive about this random week in
1978 is that even the music a gal doesn’t
love-love-love, and that wasn’t selling quite as well,
is pretty cool. “There are 11 foreign acts on American
Top 40 this week, and this one is from Sweden. They’re
at No. 12, moving up two with ‘Name of the Game.’ The
group? Abba.”

Talk about a singles chart sprinkled in gold dust.
Even the cheesiest, most annoying artists of the ’70s
were all at their creative peak at the same
coke-addled moment. Parts of the chart literally read
like a “Greatest Hits of ’70s Cheeseballs”
compilation. “On with the countdown, and the tune at
No. 11, by Steely Dan. This is ‘Peg.’” If Steely Dan
ever made a better record than “Peg,” I certainly
never heard it. Ditto Kansas, whose treacly “Dust In
the Wind” has actually gone down as a bit of a pop
classic. Ditto Jackson Browne, on the chart with
“Running on Empty,” and Billy Joel, with “Just the Way
You Are.” And talk about annoying-but-hugely-iconic:
Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” was No. 10.

Rod Stewart’s “You’re in My Heart” (arguably his
finest moment) had just dropped off the Top 40,
replaced that week with “Hot Legs.” Now, “Hot Legs” is
hardly considered a classic — but maybe it should be.
It sounds charming as shit today. And we all know, in
retrospect, Stewart would never be that cool again.
(I’m also told Oasis would have been lost without “Hot
Legs” while writing “Cigarettes & Alcohol.”) Or take
Eric Clapton: His sorta lazy “Lay Down Sally” (No. 5)
has aged shockingly well.

But like a Ginsu knife ad, this show offers more! As
Kasem tells us, the No. 1 country song that week was
Waylon & Willie’s “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up
to Be Cowboys.” And did I mention No. 38 on Casey’s
chart? “Here’s the four-man group from Pasadena,
California, who call themselves Van Halen. They’re
newcomers, it’s their first hit!” (“You Really Got
Me.”)


What's wrong with Kansas? Nothing!! (Photo by Don
Hunstein) I repeat: All this music was the most
commercialized crap the record industry could crank
out. And most of it gets played on radios, stereos,
iPods and jukeboxes every day, bringing pleasure to
millions. But 1978 is even more impressive when you
add to the equation what was happening off the Top 40
chart — in punk, new wave, metal, electronica, folk,
reggae, rap. Pretty amazing, right? It’s difficult to
imagine almost anything from the Top 40 of the past
few years enduring for decades to come; sadly, the
same goes for the indie scene.

So when record labels today blame illegal downloading
for the death of record sales, I gotta raise an
eyebrow. And yet I can’t blame record labels alone for
sagging musical standards.

The late ’70s was the last moment when American radio
was still, by and large, a mom-and-pop industry.
Consultants and corporations were already part of the
radio landscape, of course, but they couldn’t do
nearly as much damage when they were limited to owning
a handful of stations. But just a few years after our
random, crappy-magical Saturday in ’78, Reagan would
usher in the age of radio deregulation, which, in
turn, ushered in the era of consolidation. The quality
of Top 40 music would never be the same. The truth is,
a lot of the artists that made their way onto the Top
40 chart started out on local, boutique stations.
(Just for example, Van Halen debuted on a weirdo show
on KROQ. Thanks, Rodney!)

All these outlets were, to some degree, curated by
music lovers. All of them would eventually be sold to
corporations, who would apply far less rigorous
musical standards — and far more rigorous commercial
standards — to playlists. Corporate owners would also
rely much more heavily on audience testing of music,
which measures listeners’ immediate response to a
song. Not surprisingly, this kind of testing tends to
encourage sounds that are catchy, familiar and
accessible — but by no means enduring.

It’s ironic to me that, today, we’d be listening to
classic FM radio broadcasts on satellite radio. But
what’s even more pathetic is that folks in satellite
radio (some of them the very same people who ruined FM
radio) are now trying to consolidate satellite too,
turning XM and Sirius into the world’s only satellite
radio company.

To them I can only say: Paws off my Casey’s Top 40,
buckos.



© Copyright 2007 LA Weekly, LP


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