I consider myself lucky (at least in some ways) that I came of age during the time period when I…read moredid; specifically, my childhood years, late 60s, early to mid 70s. It makes me sound like the old fogey that I am (I have a clear memory of my father stopping in his tracks as I listened to a Rolling Stones song on the record player in the family living room when I was a kid, and saying with genuine perplexity, "How can you listen to that crap?" I thought, "Wow, Dad really is an old fogey." Hate to say it, but I guess I'm him now...), but...movies were better, books were better, music was better, and...at least in my memory of it...so was radio. My parents, children of the Depression, didn't buy me a lot of records, so I didn't have a great deal of access to all the "sounds" that were out there. I grew up listening primarily to AM-radio.
Was it a perfect medium? Hardly. It was a business, and its interests were commercial. You weren't going to hear the Velvet Underground or the Stooges or the Fugs on AM radio. But within the limited framework of that commercial sensibility, there was an extraordinary amount of variety and range. I was familiar with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but it was on the radio that I first encountered Jefferson Airplane, Motown, Neil Young, the Byrds, Smokey Robinson, the Animals, Roberta Flack, Steppenwolf, Simon & Garfunkel, Melanie (recently deceased; RIP), the Moody Blues. Was there more "pop" than "poetry?" For sure. But the pop of that era...compared to what passes for "pop" nowadays...was especially memorable, and it lives on in my psyche. The Cowsills. Paul Revere and the Raiders. The Monkees. Carole King. Neil Diamond. Carly Simon. I didn't hear Hendrix on the radio, but I did hear Janis Joplin. You weren't going to hear a lot of Dylan, but Jim Croce was a reasonably diverting, pleasantly atmospheric alternative. I even heard Love's "Little Red Book" for the first time on AM radio (Burt Bacharach wrote the song and he hated their version of it, but their version is absolutely wonderful).
When I was about 9 or 10, I fell off my bike and suffered a minor concussion (no helmets required back then). In bed, my parents had a portable radio turned on low set up on my night table beside where I lay, and I came back to consciousness as Neil Diamond sang "Sweet Caroline." Obviously, that iconic pop hit has a special resonance for me to this day.
Radio of that type is long, long gone (as is music of that type, or so it seems). But WMTR, a local AM radio station in the Morris County area, recalls it to mind better than anything else I've heard. Their "specialty" is music of the 50s, 60s, and 70s (it was the 70s when things started going really, really bad in terms of music and movies and books, but that's the subject for another diatribe in another review...). Their DJs are pleasant, and they know enough to keep the annoying banter that other radio DJs can't seem to resist to a minimum. I usually tune out when music of the 50s gets played (before my time, and...while I respect it...it's not really my cup of tea), but the music of the 60s and early 70s can be an immediate time machine back to the more innocent days of my childhood, even when they're playing something that annoyed the hell out of me back then, but makes me nostalgic when I hear it now ("Disco Lady," "Billy, Don't Be A Hero," etc.). Just when I'm getting sick of hearing "hits" like "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Ol' Oak Tree" or "Seasons in the Sun," they'll play a spiritually restorative "classic" by the Kinks or the Stones.
Yeah, you've maybe heard that "classic" a million times before in your lifetime, but not lately and not on the radio (on FM "classic" radio stations as they exist now...and there are not many of them left...you're more likely to hear Foreigner or Billy Joel than you are to hear the Kinks or the Rolling Stones).
Given I don't have a CD player or tape deck in my car anymore, WMTR is often the best alternative. It makes the long drive back and forth to work, or shopping, or wherever, at least a little bit more palatable and pleasant.
Recommended.
