little steven’s weekly Billboard column
The greatest, most important, most successful oldies station in history,
WCBS-FM, is back in New York and that should be cause for a big
celebration.
So why am I not exactly thrilled?
After all,
wasn't I the wise-ass that compared replacing the New York institution
of WCBS-FM with the "Jack" format the equivalent of replacing the
Statue of Liberty with a blow-up doll?
Well, yeah, but I also said
at the time that even though it was one of the world's worst business
decisions in history (aside from breaking every music freaks' heart it
was billing over $30 million at the time) the oldies format had gotten
into serious disrepair due to one tragic decision that spread like
wildfire through the format.
They replaced the 50's with the 70's because they "wanted to reach a younger demographic" and they thought that was the answer.
The trouble with that answer deserves a list:
1. The 50's and 60's produced the most extraordinary, most fun, and
most important Rock and Roll music that will ever be made and those two
decades will forever be considered America's Pop music renaissance.
2. Making half of our renaissance inaccessible to the general public should be a criminal act.
3. Replacing Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley, with
the Carpenters, the Spinners, and Disco and thinking you'll appeal to a
younger audience is a conclusion made by lazy, mindless, spineless,
tasteless bureaucrats who have forgotten that no successful radio
format has ever been created by the public in the form of a marketing
survey, but were created by creators, visionaries, and men with an
emotional investment that then find and created an audience.
4.
Good salesman in all fields have become harder and harder to find, and
you can throw in marketing and promotion guys too, and that's because
they're not being taught how to do their job which starts with the
motivation of an infusion of positive energy from the
Visionary/Creator/Boss who doesn't exist because the world is now run
by talentless beancounters.
So when I hear "The Best of the 60's,
70's , and 80's" you must forgive me for not being overly enthusiastic.
The implication of "we're back" suggests "oldies are back " and that
doesn't seem to be what they have in mind.
I've got nothing
whatsoever against the Spinners, Duran Duran, Disco, or any of that
other 70's or 80's mindless, emotionless, meaningless crap. It just
belongs in a top forty type format, not oldies.
Oldies are history.
History is sacred. Doo-Wop is oldies, therefore Doo-Wop is sacred, and
any so-called oldies format without Doo-Wop is a fraud.
So don't
tell us WCBS is back, implying it's back the way we remember it, we
being the demographic that you decided meant nothing when you blew it
up and now you're praying are still there.
Don't imply it's the same content that made it a nationally influential powerhouse. An economic juggernaut.
Be honest and say it's back the way it was 2 years ago when you drove
the final nail into the coffin of the amazing format you invented and
then assassinated.
Still a moneymaker but musically irrelevant.
See you on the radio.
Little Steven Van Zandt
-He couldn't be more right. How can you have oldies without the 50's?!?
