Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass........ There's a 'situation' with radio that allows me to feel a certain bit of vindication in a personal way. In this blog I've spent a notable amount of words foretelling the pitfalls of our behaviour as a society and a country, all based on history, logic, and right and wrong. Simple though that may be, those factors will tell who you are, what's going to happen in business, political, and personal futures. With radio, I had a particularly personal experience with that media that was frustrating. I spent many years of my life in the music business and like so many others I just had a deep attraction to everything about it and chose to chase it. My field was country music, and I recorded 51 times, and wrote 42 songs that found their way to the publishers house and vinyl (that's a term not used anymore that means you put a song on a 45 RPM single or a 33RPM Album). My first 'real' record was in 1968. The local radio station aired it and I thought I was a star. I already had some years on the stage and this music 'thing' was really in my ear. After the acquaintance of a few real live stars, my trip was unavoidable. In the 70's I began recording in a serious way, and became concerned with the quality of the product I was creating, making sure it was as good as it could get. Of course, paramount to dreams coming true, is recognition of your efforts, which is where radio came in. As I recorded, I tried to get radio stations to play my material. I had some success, but not many ever gave my material the same introductory coverage they gave the big label artists, good or bad. I always sold enough records at shows off stage, out of 'the trunk' etc. to bail my sessions out, but could never crack the radio community. Mail out records for airplay would be trash canned without review, and visits on the road to program directors, station mangers, would either be shut off at the front desk, or be told your mix wasn't right, subject matter wasn't current, tempo was wrong, or that their listening audience simply wouldn't tolerate listening to anything other than a major artist and would turn the dial if they heard anything but that. That wasn't the way the music industry evolved and I knew that many who appreciated my music across the nation requested my material to be played from their local stations, and I got royatly checks through the years that said my songs were played some, but never by a major market urban powerful station. Of course, at those stations, most of the time management recieved a hefty 'consultants fee' or had some other perk provided by a major label which guaranteed NOBODYS material other than major label artists would get a spin on their turn tables. Trends are powerful in America and soon the rural station that used to play whatever sounded good to them were simply taking their play lists from the big stations and presuming thats what was hot and successful and let it go at that. After we had the 20 song play lists that were just repeated again and again 24 hours a day with a couple of deletions and replaced by, you guessed it, new recordings performed much of the time by the same artists that were just deleted last week, time brought the deletion of the local DJ and they were replaced by a taped show from L.A, or Houston and played in stations across the country who had no one at the mike. This is a glaring example of 'less is more' and is the fodder that is always destructive to consumers in the end, no matter what the product or service may be. Now radio finds itself in a world in which no one is listening, revenues are in a dive, their stock is falling, and the industry is in a crises mode. The audience who could only choose regular radio for their listening enjoyment has bolted from the clutches of that world and taken up with Sirius or pay radio of some kind that they can choose what they listen to, or download their listening pleasure on to an ipod and go their way free of the confines of the historically strong national radio network. It was predictable, and I said so many years ago, it was deserved, the wealth of talent across this nation generally went unnoticed by this media, and it should have not been so, and now they're in the dump, and who cares. I don't. Technology has provided such an array of listening choices that are not including the exclusive wishes of the powerbrokers, and the all powerful 20 song playlist is history. The artist smart enough to take advantage of the avenues available to them now could have great success without the stranglehold of those who are now on the chopping block. I have this strange feeling of vindication and though time and circumstance won't permit it, I wish I could do it all over again on a more level playing field. Kiss my ass radio.... you deserve this.............