.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Music Memories + Songs

Thursday, March 24, 2005

New artists not allowed multiple releases

And they 98% succeeded in that.

And so they had hits in a way that nobody else
before -- or since, except Madonna when she
broke into stardom and she was allowed to do
it only one time -- did.

Nobody could tell which side of their singles
was the A side and which the B side.

Both sides were great!

Both sides got played on radio stations.

Also, kids kept buying their 45s even after
they were not being featured on the radio.

It was not unusual in 1964-1965 for The
Beatles to have three-four out of the Top 10
Hits.

Often they'd have Number 1, Number 3 and Number
6 or something liked that. Many number 1s.

And even crazier, they'd have two to three of
the Top 5 Hit Albums. Number 1, Number 3 and
Number 5.

Kids kept buying their first American album
on Capitol Records, Meet The Beatles, long
after they had released many other albums.

And why not? Unlike other groups who had a lot
of filler and cover songs on their albums,
nearly every track of a Beatles album was fun
to listen to.

Today, groups takes years to complete one
album/CD.

Even if a group would want to have more than one
single out at a time, the recording companies
want to concentrate on driving sales of just
one record.

The only other star really allowed to have double
hits was Madonna, who hit big with both "Material
Girl" and "Like a Virgin" in the early 80s.

Now, the industry is just too serious. Too much
money is at stake. Recording session time is
expensive.

Promotional budgets are high. You don't risk
confusing radio stations or customers by
asking them to play/buy more than one CD at a time.

So it's impossible for any one group or star to
dominate the charts the way The Beatles did.

Budget Travel Books

Beatles gave terrific record value

When it came to making hit records, The Beatles
had another advantage that stars today cannot
hope to match. Although it's true that part of
their greatness is that they did it even though
nobody else could.

See, back then, the dominant music format was
the 45 rpm record. It had one song on one side
-- the A side, which was the good song designed
to be the hit played by the radio station.

The other side was called the B side and it was
a throw away filler that nobody was expected to
listen to more than once.

At least, I'd listen to them once -- and then
never again. I'm sure many kids never even
listened to the B sides at all.

The other format was the 33 RPM album, which
contained about 5 songs on each side. Usually,
an album by a group contained 1 or 2 hit songs,
and the other were all filler B side type
songs.

So since albums cost more than singles but
often still had only one or two hits on them,
they were not a good value for the money.

The Beatles changed this in a HUGE way.

And they did it to please us fans, because
they were fans too. I recall hearing a radio
interview with one Beatle (can't remember which
one), who said, essentially,

"We remember what it was like to be working
blokes and spend all our money on a record
only to have most of it wasted. I bought one
album that was supposed to be by Little
Richard. It had two songs by him, and the rest
by somebody else.

"So we decided to make all our music good."

Travel to Munich

Beatles transformed the music industry

So KXOK was playing The Beatles, The Kinks, The
Hollies, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Beach
Boys, Jan and Dean, Leslie Gore, Chad and Jeremy,
Petula Clark, The Kingsmen ("Louie Louie"),
Herman and the Hermits, Freddie and the Dreamers
(a forgotten British Invasion group who I liked),
The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones -- it was a golden
age and we didn't know it.

I'm glad nobody told me at the time that I was
going to be listening to that stuff for the
rest of my life :)

Being young, I assumed that I'd be listening
to new hits like that week after week for the
rest of my life.

Yet 1964 to through the early 70s were a
period like no other in music and like no
other ever will be or can be, no matter how
talented the musicians involved.

See, as I've been stressing, rock and roll was
very low on the musical totem pole in 1964. The
industry itself was much smaller than now.

The Beatles and all the other groups that
followed into the early 70s boosted the industry
in size and scope to a huge degree. Both
financially and socially.

And inevitably a formerly nonexistent degree of
market segmentation ocurred. Hard rock grew into
heavy metal and thrash etc. Country music is
now more popular than ever. Rap, etc.

They're a huge number of local radio stations
playing pop music of various kinds.

So nobody can ever do to the industry what The
Beatles did, for the simple reason that The
Beatles have already done it. Made rock
evolution take a huge quantum leap in both
quality and quantity and variety.

Megastars and hits still come along and will
continue to - but they can't transform the
industry as The Beatles did.

From old as assumed bad to old as assumed good

Actually, I was still backward. Although I was of
course aware of them, I still didn't feel at all
compelled to listen to them, until sometime in
the fall of 1964.

I don't remember what brought about the change,
but sometimes about September or October 1964 I
started listening to KXOK too. For me, that was
the real beginning.

They played all kinds of teenaged music, white
and black. In 1964, a few of the older American
artists were hanging around, but they were fading
away. Most of the hits were either British
Invasion or Motown.

The most successful male group of all time -- The
Beatles. And the most successful female group of
all time -- The Supremes.

Both groups cranking out hit after hit in those
years.

I don't know the numbers. I suppose it's possible
The Spice Girls had more hits than The Supremes,
but I can't think of any other female group that
could even come close to them.

Actually, the first song that I really liked
back then, I'm embarrassed to admit now, was
"Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and The Playboys,
a tragic love/death song that seems silly now.

I got a transistor radio and kept it glued to
my ear. So I heard the great songs of that
era as they were issued. I heard the songs from
the past played -- yes, even back then, as
Oldies but Goodies.

It strikes me that back then, non-current songs
were regarded as less valuable than modern
songs. That's why they were apologized for --
in other words, yes, they're old, but they're
still good.

Now, nobody says that. They're Golden Oldies
and assumed to be better than modern music,
which is unfortunately all too often true.


travel to Germany

They made us feel good

One more event set up the impact that The Beatles
had on my generation. Though, it's funny, we
don't often associate the two. When I first read
the following, I was shocked to realize it was
true.

But February 9, 1964 was just short of 90 days
after November 23, 1963 -- the assassination of
President John F Kennedy.

The traditional period of mourning is 90 days.
So when The Beatles came, we were through with
mourning and ready for the great gift they
brought.

Simply, the appeal of The Beatles was, they made
us feel good.

Still do.

So good, that almost my entire generation went
apeshit over them.


travel to Rome

Pre-1964 attitudes

I'm not prepared to say that any of that was some
sort of "Establishment" plot to squash the revolution
that was rock and roll. Two of them chose their own
downfalls. Many others were drafted besides Elvis,
and he could have chosen a better manager than
Colonel Tom Parker. Little Richard returned to
preaching as the Holy Spirit moved him, so far
as I know. And I doubt the CIA sabotaged the plane
carrying the 3 surviving stars. They might still
be alive if Buddy Holly had been content to
stay on that bus with the Crickets, no matter
how cold it was.

So the period 1958 to 1963 is often considered
a barren time for rock and roll, though there
was a fair amount of fun pop.

Still, it was music for teenagers, and nobody else
paid much attention to it.

As far the way people lived in 1964, it was
amazingly different in many ways than now.
And I have mixed feelings about it.

I don't consider myself a prude, but in 1964
the vast majority of people did not have babies
unless they were married. And exceptions were
shamed.

Although Diana Ross and the Supremes singing,
"Love Child" was a calculated way of being
"relevant" and "socially conscious" -- it
reflected a real and dominant feeling. Society
DID look down upon "love children." That is,
those "born out of wedlock." What a quaint
phrase that is to type on a computer.

And it may amaze some of you, but that was nearly
as true among blacks as whites.

Of course, people of all races did screw
around, but there was always the danger and risk
of pregnancy. It WAS a shameful thing for unmarried
girls to get pregnant. If they did, the boys were
supposed to marry them.

All that's now considered old-fashioned and mean,
but now we've got tons of children who have no idea
of even who their fathers are.

It was a time when married couples in situation
comedies on TV slept in twin beds.

Yet, I don't consider myself a moralist. So I
better stop this track of thinking.

Let's just say that society as a whole, prior to
1964, was a lot more "uptight" than it is now.


travel to Italy

Early Rock n Roll

Bill Haley and the Comets were, I believe,
considered another country swing group. I'm not
sure who actually wrote or created "Rock Around
the Clock."

I know Alan Freed is given credit for giving the
first rock and roll concert in like 1952 -- though
I believe it closed down after just 1 song,
because that caused a riot.

But unless I'm mistaken, the actual artists
must have been still developing the genre,
since the true founders came after "Rock
Around the Clock."

They're 4 -- Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry
Lee Lewis and Little Richard.

That's my opinion, anyway. Buddy Holly was
important of course but came a little bit
after those guys.

The general story is that they and others
created a revolution from about 1955 to 1958
that society could not handle.

So Elvis had to be drafted. While the in the
army he met and started dating a colonel's 14
year old daughter named Priscilla. His career
went in many phases after that, all great music,
but it's a valid argument that little of his
music was important rock and roll, after that.

Chuck Berry was convicted of violating the Mann
Act, which makes it a federal crime for a man
to travel across a state line with a woman not
his wife, for immoral purposes. That's the kind
of laws that they had in those quaint days. And
they could be enforced. He was caught with a
14 year old American Indian prostitute. He
spent a year in jail.

So his career was side-tracked until 1964,
when he finally had another hit and then
was resurrected by the popularity of new
stars such as The Beatles, who all gave him
credit in interviews.

Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13 year old cousin.
He eventually became a country star.

I'm not much sure about Little Richard. On the
surface he still appears a totally flaming
homosexual and in the 1950s would have been even
more outrageous. Yet his career has always
veered between singing rock and roll and
being a minister.

Buddy Holly died in a plane crash along with
Richie Valens and the Big Bopper -- the first
"day the music died" in that song.


travel to Madrid