By Jeff Orvis
This is one of those times with a
couple of ideas merge into one column. Strange how my mind works
sometimes, but here goes:
This past weekend, many of my Facebook
friends were celebrating graduations from high school, college and
some post graduate work. Congratulations to one and all. Then on
Sunday night, the Billboard Awards were on TV, celebrating the best
of current music.
I am quite familiar with Billboard
magazine. It's the Bible for the music industry from producers and
artists to radio stations. We read it regularly around the college
radio stations where I worked many years ago, during the era of
records and reel-to-reel tape. Younger readers may want to ask your
parents, or grandparents, for an explanation.
So I watched the Billboard show with
what I hoped would be an open mind. I remember when my parents and
grandparents were my current age, they had little use for the music I
listened to. That hippie music wasn't for them. But I wanted to watch
the show with more of an open mind. But please, no rap and easy on
the hard-core country.
The show was a true visual
spectacular. Flashing lights, limber dancers and pyrotechnics were
the norm. Alas, memorable music was not. There were several
performers I had heard before. The special appearance by Michael
Jackson was a nice touch. It reminded me of the time when Natalie
Cole sang a duet with her deceased father on another show.
So special effects were a good reason
to watch the show. But I can honestly say I can't remember any of the
songs performed less than 18 hours ago. I realize we live in a
fast-paced society, but I miss some of the songs that we listened to
back when we had KSTT Radio in Davenport or WLS, “the Rock of
Chicago.”
Those production numbers we saw on
Sunday night don't come cheap. Yet most of the money made by the
performers, other than in their live concerts, is from downloaded
tunes. The music is downloaded from a computer to a tiny device that
listeners can then plug tiny earphones into and listen. They aren't
downloading the lights or fireworks or dancers or fancy costumes.
So what does all this have to do with
graduation, you may ask. As I read all the notes of congratulations
this weekend, it brought back some neat memories of my own high
school graduation. So I did a search and came up with a list of top
tunes back in the dark ages of 1971. Yes, I'm that old, you can do
the math.
Maybe it's due to the proliferation of
oldies radio stations, but it seems that most of the artists on that
list had much more longevity than today's hot artists. George
Harrison, the former Beatle, led the list with the top hit, “My
Sweet Lord,” for the first three weeks of the year. Tony Orlando
and Dawn had the next three weeks with “Knock Three Times” and
then the Osmonds were tops for the following five weeks with “One
Bad Apple.” Hey, I didn't say every one of the songs had deep
meaning, but most of them were easy to sing in the shower or in the
car.
This month back in 1971, we were
listening to Three Dog Night's “Joy to the World.” Other artists
who had top hits that year are well known even today, including Rod
Stewart, Paul and the late Linda McCartney, the late Janis Joplin,
Carole King, James Taylor and the Rolling Stones. Now, how many of
the singers we heard Sunday night will still be performing 40 years
from now?
There were some very talented
performers on the Billboard show that night. But unfortunately, we
live in a disposable world. We buy new computer printers when the ink
cartridges run dry, we replace our laptops with tablets, our tube TVs
with flat screens and on and on.
I guess that's why I long for the good
old days and why I cherish every one of my Chicago records, those
big, flat things you play at 33 rpm on something called a turntable.
Ask your grandparents.
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