Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 3, 2017 0:56:13 GMT -5
The Half-Time Show for the 1967 Year In Music Review
You know, I never did mention in this thread what I was doing, musically listening-wise, during 1967. I was 13 years old at that time and till then nothing much unusual compared to others of my age. I was the eldest child so I had no big brother/sister to influence me. My mom was a divorced working parent who was into Sinatra and others of that ilk.She never liked rock n'roll
Me, I remember hearing AM pop music but never wondered much about it until the Beatles invaded the U.S. in 1964. Hearing those songs and seeing them on The Ed Sullivan Show opened my eyes that the music performers can be a pretty exciting experience. That was when I really started paying attention to the radio and soon enough spending some of my scarce cash buying a 45 RPM single when I could. I can't say for sure how much they cost back then, I'm guessing 35 cents or so, but with my allowance in 1964 just 50 cents I wasn't going to accumulate a large collection anytime soon. Even doing some odd jobs in the neighborhood for extra money, I still wanted to buy comics, baseball cards, pizza and ice cream etc.
I soon realized I'd save money buying Beatles albums instead of their singles. Those were the only albums I purchased. Otherwise between 1964 and 1965 I accumulated about 30 other singles. Then I stopped buying those and just relied on the radio instead. In NYC in 1964 there were 3 Top 40 AM stations (FM radio came in 1967). WINS had Murray The K as their big DJ but they abandoned that format mid-1965 to become one of the first all-news stations. That left WMCA with the DJs known as The Good Guys and WABC with DJs like Cousin Brucie. If I had to pin a label on them, I'd liken WMCA like Marvel comics at that time and WABC as DC Comics. They basically played the same songs but WABC had that big, corporate feel about them. WABC transmitted 50,000 watts and was one of the most powerful stations on the east coast. Late at night their signal could reach vast amounts of area east of the Mississippi. WMCA gave up the ghost by 1969 and pioneered the all-talk format.
But back to little me. My big music development occurred in the winter of 1967. My grandfather was a huge classical music buff and he had a nice reel-to-reel tape recorder. That winter he bought a new one and bequeathed me with his old player. Suddenly I had the ability to collect songs, fairly cheap and in high fidelity. Now I spent hours with the radio, taping and taping, cursing at how often they repeated the same songs, cursing when taping a song a burst of AM static occurred, cursing when the damn DJ kept talking over a song's introductory notes, cursing for taking a bathroom break and missing a song I desperately waited for. I developed a nice curse word repertoire.
Then came the week between Christmas and New Years 1967. As they did every year, WABC would play the Top 100 songs of the year in descending order. This was my one and only chance, I thought, to really catch up with songs I wanted. It would also mean a butt-numbing marathon at my radio, with no sleep for god knows how long. But I did it and thank god there was no school that week.
Me and my trusty tape recorder were best friends throughout 1968. I learned to recognize every song on the radio within 1 second and know if I already owned it or not. But then came 1969 when I discovered FM radio. My God, the sound was so much better. My God, it was in stereo. My god, the DJs didn't chitter chatter at the beginning or at the end of the songs.
And my God, all those songs I taped from AM radio no longer sounded as good. Had to start the collection all over again. And have my ears opened to a whole bunch of music you wouldn't hear on the AM dial.
I did miss those commercials for Palisades Amusement Park and Denizens, the Men's Clothier on Route 9 in Parsippany NJ. Well, only slightly.
OK, enough of the half-time festivities. On to the 2nd half of 1967 later this week
You know, I never did mention in this thread what I was doing, musically listening-wise, during 1967. I was 13 years old at that time and till then nothing much unusual compared to others of my age. I was the eldest child so I had no big brother/sister to influence me. My mom was a divorced working parent who was into Sinatra and others of that ilk.She never liked rock n'roll
Me, I remember hearing AM pop music but never wondered much about it until the Beatles invaded the U.S. in 1964. Hearing those songs and seeing them on The Ed Sullivan Show opened my eyes that the music performers can be a pretty exciting experience. That was when I really started paying attention to the radio and soon enough spending some of my scarce cash buying a 45 RPM single when I could. I can't say for sure how much they cost back then, I'm guessing 35 cents or so, but with my allowance in 1964 just 50 cents I wasn't going to accumulate a large collection anytime soon. Even doing some odd jobs in the neighborhood for extra money, I still wanted to buy comics, baseball cards, pizza and ice cream etc.
I soon realized I'd save money buying Beatles albums instead of their singles. Those were the only albums I purchased. Otherwise between 1964 and 1965 I accumulated about 30 other singles. Then I stopped buying those and just relied on the radio instead. In NYC in 1964 there were 3 Top 40 AM stations (FM radio came in 1967). WINS had Murray The K as their big DJ but they abandoned that format mid-1965 to become one of the first all-news stations. That left WMCA with the DJs known as The Good Guys and WABC with DJs like Cousin Brucie. If I had to pin a label on them, I'd liken WMCA like Marvel comics at that time and WABC as DC Comics. They basically played the same songs but WABC had that big, corporate feel about them. WABC transmitted 50,000 watts and was one of the most powerful stations on the east coast. Late at night their signal could reach vast amounts of area east of the Mississippi. WMCA gave up the ghost by 1969 and pioneered the all-talk format.
But back to little me. My big music development occurred in the winter of 1967. My grandfather was a huge classical music buff and he had a nice reel-to-reel tape recorder. That winter he bought a new one and bequeathed me with his old player. Suddenly I had the ability to collect songs, fairly cheap and in high fidelity. Now I spent hours with the radio, taping and taping, cursing at how often they repeated the same songs, cursing when taping a song a burst of AM static occurred, cursing when the damn DJ kept talking over a song's introductory notes, cursing for taking a bathroom break and missing a song I desperately waited for. I developed a nice curse word repertoire.
Then came the week between Christmas and New Years 1967. As they did every year, WABC would play the Top 100 songs of the year in descending order. This was my one and only chance, I thought, to really catch up with songs I wanted. It would also mean a butt-numbing marathon at my radio, with no sleep for god knows how long. But I did it and thank god there was no school that week.
Me and my trusty tape recorder were best friends throughout 1968. I learned to recognize every song on the radio within 1 second and know if I already owned it or not. But then came 1969 when I discovered FM radio. My God, the sound was so much better. My God, it was in stereo. My god, the DJs didn't chitter chatter at the beginning or at the end of the songs.
And my God, all those songs I taped from AM radio no longer sounded as good. Had to start the collection all over again. And have my ears opened to a whole bunch of music you wouldn't hear on the AM dial.
I did miss those commercials for Palisades Amusement Park and Denizens, the Men's Clothier on Route 9 in Parsippany NJ. Well, only slightly.
OK, enough of the half-time festivities. On to the 2nd half of 1967 later this week
