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Sucking in the '70s
How deep is your love?
By KATE SULLIVAN
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.?? Real sucky, right? It?s only Queen. It?s just fucking ?We Are the Fucking 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.??
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.?)
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.
