WKFY

[Mark Connelly]

In '72 I was listening to Yes, Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span, Strawbs, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Led Zeppelin, Fairport Convention, Who, etc.  Maxanne Sartori on WBCN and Donna Halper on WCAS were my main radio conduits to the tunes.  The stuff you listed, typical of WRKO then, was only of tangential / peripheral interest.  Largely a "snooze", case in point Billy Paul "Me and Mrs. Jones" or anything by the Osmonds: automatic push of car radio button in search of anything with a hot guitar.

This taste profile was not at all unusual among my EE class associates at Northeastern U. then.

Of course I did not grow up during the Big Band era but, through DJ's like Bill Marlowe and Tony Cennamo in Boston and several on WNEW (1130) NY, I became a fan of Goodman, Dorsey, Miller, Sinatra, etc. as another quality choice in my musical "palette".  Classical fits in sometimes too and that was certainly before my time.  I did not have to be forced to enjoy older music by my parents.  It just sounded like good stuff, along with western swing, small-combo jazz (Monk, Mingus, Miles, Parker, Coltrane, Brubeck), blues, bluegrass, pre '60s country, doo-wop, and a number of other bodies of musical work that predated when I first started seriously following top 40 on WMEX, WCOP, WBZ, and WHIL circa 1960 at age 10-11.  

Apparently the thinking is that if you started listening in a given year, you are completely oblivious to material from the previous year or earlier.  And how is it that more than a few current / recent college students actually enjoy performers such as Tony Bennett?  Or that Bob Wills and Marty Robbins are part of the music mix in Tex-Mex bars / BBQ joints mostly occupied by people under 40?  The good stuff is durable, well known across age groups, and belongs on the radio beyond Sirius/XM.

Radio exec's follow what I would call "too vanilla" programming concepts.  Dull and predictable with few jaw-dropping surprise cuts.  Slaves to Billboard which didn't even accurately follow what was on the air in Boston.  Is WKFY going to give me three of my all-time faves from 1961 - "You Don't Know" (Helen Shapiro), "Temptation" (Everly Bros.), "Turn On Your Love Light" (Bobby Blue Bland)?  Kind of thinking not since they weren't that big on Billboard even if they did power my 6th/7th grade world.

At least WJIB's Bob Bittner pulls a few left-field goodies out of the bag, admittedly within the generally non-rock concept he's following.

Mark Connelly
South Yarmouth, MA

-----Original Message-----
From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@bimajority.org>
To: Mark Connelly <markwa1ion@aol.com>
Cc: boston-radio-interest <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Tue, Aug 20, 2013 8:17 pm
Subject: Re: WKFY


<<On Tue, 20 Aug 2013 13:11:25 -0400 (EDT), Mark Connelly <markwa1ion@aol.com> 
said:

> On one hand, it is not "WJIB South" since I have noted no Big Band /
> '40s crooners and only token '50s / early '60s top 40
> representation.  So on that end, it doesn't fulfill that part of my
> radio diet.

> It is highly dominated by light-rock / pop from the '70s up to maybe
> 5 years ago.  During that period, my tastes were predominantly
> harder rock with a good amount of Celtic and British folk-rock
> stirred in.

With respect, I don't think that your taste is particularly
representative.  (Neither is mine, but in different ways.)

Someone who is 65 today was born in 1948.  That means they were a
teenager for the first British Invasion, and probably started a family
in the 1970s.  (Maybe as early as '66, not likely much later than
'83.)  They never listened to Big Bands or '40s crooners, except when
forced to by their parents.

I had a look in Whitburn for the week I was born (in 1972).  My
parents would have heard on the radio then: The Stylistics, Johnny
Nash, America ("Ventura Highway" was a big hit that month), Gilbert
O'Sullivan, The Temptations ("Papa Was a Rollin' Stone"), Albert
Hammond, Al Green, Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes, Helen Reddy ("I Am
Woman"), and Billy Paul.  Also in that month, you had Carly Simon,
Curtis Mayfield, Donna Fargo, Loggins & Messina, The Spinners, Seals &
Crofts, and Lobo.  If you take two decades of that, filter out all the
stuff by people who are little remembered now or that doesn't test
well....

-GAWollman