Rock Radio JANUARY 1971 Outasight!

♪ Have you ever seen the rain …

Comin’ down on a sunny day ♪* … Just think … we have a whole New Year of grand opportunities waiting to be discovered, if you can see them through the rain. As we learned in 2020, good … even great … can come from extreme adversity. Like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds and its beauty, opportunities are in the eyes of the beholder. Find your sun …

I really need to stop making promises. Tried not to take another day, but life these days is too erratic for promises. Blast from Your Past’s 50 Years Ago this Month is (finally) ready (a day late and a dollar short … literally) to bring you another year of music and mayhem behind the microphone of those wild-and-crazy Rock & Roll Radio DJs. Happy New Year 2021 and let’s flip the switch to ...  

JANUARY 1971 News & Notes …  
For all of my BFYP writings, from books to blogs, the most fun is researching radio station histories.

Not always an easy task, as memories dwindle and ill-kept records on numerous format flips disappear over the years. What’s left can be a skewed timeline that’s as fuzzy as those dice hanging from the rear view mirror of a 1965 Chevy Impala. 
      Case in point is this month’s Featured Radio Survey: KADI/St. Louis. It had so many incarnations that 1971 kind of got lost in the shuffle and sandwiched between its progressive Rock in 1969 and a move down the dial in 1972, from 96.5 (96-FM) to 96.3, where it stayed. But through the decades KADI’s personality eventually morphed into the current WFUN-FM Adult R&B.
      If you ask me, it was just as “fun” back in ’71, with its “Outasight Record Report” boasting, “Under 1 Billion Listeners” on its groovy survey #40.

January 2^nd:  The 1970s continued the ‘60s’ society reformation efforts with a ban on radio and television cigarette advertisements. Ummmm, I don’t see that it has done much to help quash smoking in the past fifty years.

January 21^st:

Every year in January on his birthday, we honor the guy who loved playing wolfman with his nephews long before he became the infamous DJ Wolfman Jack (Robert Weston Smith, 1938-1995). His salacious microphone style and over-the-top personality endeared him to fans and set him on a path to fame and fortune, and all the fun and not-so-fun stuff that comes with it.
      Wolfman’s book title says it all: Have Mercy! Confessions of the Original Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal. The Blast from Your Past book series is dedicated to the DJ who introduced syndicated radio shows and turned his captivating persona into a business brand. Awwwwoooo! You diggin’ the Wolfman Jack Show!

On Your Tinny Transistor Radio 

KADI/St. Louis vacillated between album-oriented Rock, top 40, and progressive formats, throughout 1971. Their surveys reflected the muddled music lineup. Makes ya wonder how the program director kept track of what music to schedule and when!
      While KADI’s January album survey features Creedence Clearwater (*Pendulum), Grateful Dead (American Beauty), Ten Years After (Watt), and John Lennon (Lennon / Ono Band) in the top ten, at Cincinnati’s WSAI, the top 40s format listed none of those artists in the top ten. The Osmonds’ “One Bad Apple” topped WSAI’s hit list, with “Precious Precious” (Jackie Moore) coming in at #10.
      What makes the WSAI survey unique is its top ten songs include two by George Harrison—“Isn’t It a Pity” and “My Sweet Lord” tying at #3—and two by the inimitable Elvis Presley—“There Goes My Everything” and “I Really Don’t Want to Know” doubling up at #4. Nice goin’ guys! ♪ There goes the one of my dreams … ♪ No, no … I’m right here … sigh.

BFYP Featured Radio Survey  
♪ Meet Me in St. Louis!* ♪ at KADI/St. Louis, Missouri, January 8, 1971 to see a brooding Elton John on the cover. He had just enjoyed a great run with “Your Song” and his new Tumbleweed Connection album still held on at #26 of the KADI album survey … 50 Years Ago this Month in Rock & Roll Radio! Where were you that groovy day when your radio played …

Celebrate JANUARY 1971 and … Rock On!  

Blast from Your Past Gifts

Share on Twitter: @BlastFromPastBk

LinDee Rochelle is a writer and editor by trade, and author by way of Rock & Roll. Two books (of three) are published in her Blast from Your Past series, available on Amazon (eBook and print): Book 1 – Rock & Roll Radio DJs: The First Five Years 1954-1959; and Book 2 – Rock & Roll Radio DJs: The Swinging Sixties. Coming soon … The Psychedelic Seventies!

Note: FYI – All links in the BFYP site are personally visited, verified, and vetted. Most are linked to commonly accessed sites of reputable note. Occasionally, since I often feature real people and/or singular sources there may be an unsecured link. As with everything cyber-security, use at your own discretion and risk. No compensation is received for any mentions of businesses, products, or other commercial interests. *All holiday and special event days are found at Brownielocks.com’s calendar site. Enjoy! 

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

 

 

Rock Radio MAY 1970 Righteous & Outasight!

Expressive Creativity Comes with Personal Freedom 

The 1970s erupted in decadence, personal freedoms, and expressive creativity. Oh wait … let me rephrase that … it reminded us of all those expressions. We’ve enjoyed them in various degrees of inanity and insanity, every decade since the inception of our country.

Truth be told, much of those movements resurfaced in the late 1960s, but we embraced and honed their definitions in the ‘70s. Enjoying a modern-day Renaissance of sorts, art permeated every aspect of life, from ornate and “mod” fabrics, to elaborate scrollwork jewelry, even adorning the music charts of our Rock and Roll radio stations …

50 Years Ago this Month ~ MAY 1970 

Let’s face it, the major market stations and neophyte wannabes played the same songs, over, and over, and over … but in all fairness, we did request them. Our voices gave structure to the order of songs’ appearance in any given week and various geographical radio markets, reflected in Radio music charts.

The point being, we could drive across the country and still hear the same songs. So why choose one station over another in our local areas?

From coast-to-coast In May 1970, stations took 1960s’ pop art, added a little elaborate Art Nouveau, and leaned heavy into the psychedelia, to adorn their surveys and grab our attention. Many were quite unique in creative designs, if not in their top 40 tunes.

Traditional scrollwork blended with swirls and curlicues that flowed into celestial details, punctuated with “Outasight” and “Righteous” exclamations. And often, they inserted “let’s-see-if-they’re-really-reading-this” text into the art, with amusing or outlandish statements like, “Under 1 billion listeners.”

The stations’ artistic music charts reflected life around us in carnival mirror images. We were treated to ornate artistry reminiscent of the past like—KOL/ Seattle, Washington, May 29, 1970—while others capitalized on the ‘70s popularity of futuristic space travel, astronomy and astrology like—KADI/St. Louis, Missouri, May 6, 1970.

Establishing an identity with art was not a priority for others, though. Take the plain-Jane chart for KSLY/San Luis Obispo, California’s “Famous Fourteen” list, May 1, 1970. It got the job done, listing the top 30 tunes, without all the hoopla.

On Your Tinny Transistor Radio ~ MAY 1970 (radio/music & DJs)       

With the songs all the same, it took outstanding musicality to grab our attention with a tune. Calling all memories! What songs stood out for us in this spring month, oh so long ago? While your reminiscences bubble to the surface, let me ask if you recall …

“Everything is Beautiful” by Ray Stevens … apparently we thought so (and still do). This upbeat, truly righteous tune hit several stations’ top 20 about the same time, as it climbed into the top 10 for a nice run. It marked Stevens as a serious songwriter, after a run of novelty songs. Did you hear him a year earlier in the top 10, without a serious bone in his body, belting out, ♪ Gitarzan he’s a gitar man ♪ in a thin disguise defining the music industry’s “jungle”?

Two of this month’s showcased surveys carried “Cecilia” in the top 10. Seattle’s KOL only got it up to #29 by the end of the month. Simon & Garfunkel outdid themselves again, with another hit song from their much-touted Bridge Over Troubled Water album. Rumor has it, the title pays tribute to the Catholic patron saint of music … but Simon reportedly wrote the lyrics with a deceitful paramour in mind … two very conflicting concepts. ♪ Celia, you’re breaking my heart … ♪

Ya know what can make one vintage music survey more collectable than another? Misprints & misspellings. For instance, two of the three survey charts for the above radio stations gave “Cecilia” the common name spelling of “Cecelia.” Only KOL spelled it properly for the patron saint.

Featured Radio Survey: KADI/St. Louis, Missouri, wins the coveted Featured Radio Survey spot for this month. It’s colorful, fun, and truly “Déjà Vu” (C.S.N.&Y., aka, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), as the song tops the chart.  … 50 Years Ago this Month in Rock & Roll Radio! Where were you that groovy day when your radio played … ♪ We have all been here before ♪

Celebrate MAY 1970 and … Rock On!  

Blast from Your Past Gifts

Share on Twitter: @BlastFromPastBk

LinDee Rochelle is a writer and editor by trade, and author by way of Rock & Roll. She has published two books (of three) in her Blast from Your Past series, available on Amazon (eBook and print): Book 1 – Rock & Roll Radio DJs: The First Five Years 1954-1959; and Book 2 – Rock & Roll Radio DJs: The Swinging Sixties. Coming soon … The Psychedelic Seventies!

Note: FYI – All links in the BFYP site are personally visited, verified, and vetted. Most are linked to commonly accessed sites of reputable note. However, as with everything cyber-security, use at your own discretion. 

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪