The “Good Old Days”

The Radio.Biz Music Blog – Entry #7

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” — Andy Bernard in The Office finale, 2013 (played by Ed Helms)

I know that I’m already entering the “old man yells at cloud” phase of my life. I’m constantly looking back fondly on the way things “used to be” and feeling nostalgic.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I can certainly appreciate some of today’s technology, but there’s a big part of me that feels like I was extremely lucky to have been born when I was. Maybe I really did live through the “good old days?”

Let me explain…

I was born in 1968. The Beatles were still together. Hendrix was still alive. Janis Joplin was still alive. Jim Morrison was still alive. Woodstock wasn’t even in the planning stages yet.

It was a good time to be born—and to be a kid.

I grew up in the ’70s and had a typical middle-class, suburban upbringing. We listened to AM radio to hear the Top 40 hits of the day. For my parents, it was 1480 WHBC in Canton, Ohio. I remember hearing DJ Bob Krahling, your “Special K,” and I remember listening to my dad singing along with the songs on the radio.

As far as listening to the music that we really wanted to hear, we had to go to a store and buy it.

I recently heard a comedian say something to the effect of, “There are people here in this room who have never had to purchase music.” Then he said, “Even sadder, there are some people in here who don’t even know what it means to purchase an album of music. They just subscribe to a service, and they can hear any song they want!”

It makes me a little sad.

I remember, as a kid, going to Kmart with my mom, and she would let me pick out a few 45 RPM records. I would look for songs I had been hearing on the radio that I really liked.

I had “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire. I had “When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman” by Dr. Hook. And I had “Pop Muzik” by “M.” Just to name a few.

As the 1970s ended and we entered the 1980s, things started to change. And early in this new decade, in 1981, I became a teenager.

But something else happened in 1981 that was even more significant than me becoming a teenager…

MTV hit the television “airwaves.”

Back in 1975, my parents built the house I grew up in. It was a new neighborhood, and as they were building the houses, they also wired the neighborhood for cable.

So, I had cable TV in the late ’70s. We got WGN out of Chicago and WOR out of New York, along with the “Superstation” TBS out of Atlanta.

As cool as that was, nothing had prepared me for the life-changing moment of getting MTV fairly soon after it debuted in August of 1981. In fact, I’m pretty sure we had MTV on our cable system before we went back to school in September of that year.

I was going into eighth grade. Just one year away from high school.

And MTV was just about all anyone was talking about.

I remember racing home off the school bus, finishing my homework as quickly as possible, and watching MTV for the rest of the night. Then, the next morning in homeroom, we’d talk about the videos we had seen the night before.

This started affecting my music buying as well.

I wasn’t buying pop-hit 45s anymore. I was buying LPs!

I got the Stones’ Tattoo You. I bought The Police’s Ghost in the Machine. I got the J. Geils Band’s Freeze-Frame.

My go-to spot to buy records was Quonset Hut. It was located on Cleveland Avenue in Canton. There were T-shirts and stuff on the first floor, and then you walked downstairs to the records.

At some point, they added another store next door that sold “paraphernalia,” used records, buttons, posters, and patches.

There was another place farther down on Cleveland Avenue called Kosmic Blues Records. It was just a small, one-room building painted blue. They had strange hours. We assumed it was just a front for drugs because they were never open.

But I did find some cool records there from time to time.

It was around this time that I started going to concerts.

Technically, my first was Kenny Loggins, with Patrick Simmons of The Doobie Brothers opening. But I only went to that show because my cousin Sharon got tickets and I went with her. It was September 4, 1982. I had just started my freshman year of high school. 

The first show I actually wanted to go to was Men at Work, with INXS as the opening act. It was at the same venue as Kenny Loggins, Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, on August 25, 1983.

That was a great and memorable show.

Colin Hay has always been a great frontman. And he’s funny. One thing I remember vividly was him saying, “It smells like someone is mowing the lawn.”

I was a pretty naive, soon-to-be sophomore in high school, but I knew he was talking about weed. 🙂

Another big part of the ’80s was making mixtapes—or just recording your albums onto cassette so you could listen to them on the go.

I got a nice Pioneer stereo system from my parents for Christmas of my sophomore year in high school, and I started buying blank cassettes.

A LOT of blank cassettes.

TDK was my brand of choice. Maybe Maxell if they were on sale.

I recorded all of my albums so I could listen to them in my boombox and, eventually, in my car.

My first car was a 1982 Chevy Citation hatchback. I called it the “Shit-tation.”

It had a vertical radio.

Yes, you read that correctly.

It was a VERTICAL radio.

We had to special-order a new one with a cassette deck because I had to listen to my music in the car. I couldn’t ONLY listen to the radio! 😉

I had a box that held about 30 cassettes, and I would strategically choose and pack those cassettes before getting in the car.

I was the only one of my friends who had his own car, so I was the one who drove most places.

As we entered the ’90s, CDs were all the rage.

My wife, Lori, and I were late adopters. She had U2’s Rattle and Hum on CD, which she had received as a gift, but we didn’t even have a CD player.

I bought her one for Christmas in 1990 when we were living in Los Angeles. It was a JVC. I started buying other JVC gear for my stereo after that, when I retired the Pioneer system I had used through high school and college.

And then we started buying CDs.

I remember when it really hit me that the times they were a-changin’.

Todd Rundgren’s 2nd Wind album was released in January of 1991. Lori and I were still living in L.A., and we were going to drive up to Ventura to see Todd on that tour in the spring.

I went to the record store to buy the album, and it was only available on CD and cassette!

I couldn’t buy it on LP!

I couldn’t record my record onto cassette for in-car listening!

I had to record it from CD to cassette—which actually sounded much better, if I’m being honest.

The CD era had begun for me.

Now I was going to record stores and looking through the bins of CDs for new bands and “cut-out” deals.

That’s how I discovered The Tragically Hip. I was in a record store in Long Beach. Spring of 1991. The Hip’s album Road Apples had just been released in February. Somehow a used, cut-out, promo copy of the CD was at this record store. They had CD listening stations set up throughout the store. I remember seeing the cover of the CD. I thought to myself, “The Tragically Hip? That’s a cool band name.” And the cover was pretty cool as well.

I went to one of the listening stations and just listed to the first few seconds of the first 3 songs and I was hooked. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Flash forward to today, and the instantaneous nature of consuming music just doesn’t have the same romantic feeling.

I’m also a bit of a hunter and gatherer, so I enjoy going to a record store and trying to find something that I really want in my collection.

It just feels wrong to be able to get virtually any recorded music at any moment, and even get it FOR FREE—as long as I listen to commercials between songs.

Wait.

Isn’t that what radio has been doing since 1920?

I guess I just feel that if you truly love a musical artist, it feels right to say, “I have all their albums!” Not, “I’ve streamed them 5,000 times!”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to step outside to yell at a cloud.