It's about time to put the oldies station on written warning. Yesterday I heard something that was far more troubling than that Billy Joel song from 1983. When I started my car the radio came on and it was set to FM instead of AM for once and I heard Killer Queen. Now, the problem with the current oldies format is that I can no longer automatically tell which station I am listening to.
My number one preset button is the classic rock station and the oldies station so I can flip back and forth with ease. In the old days, if I heard the Eagles I knew it was the classic rock station I was hearing. Now there is so much crossover I wait until the end of the song to figure it out. Killer Queen ended and the disc jockey did something unforgivable. He said that was Queen, "from their second album." Say what now?
As long as I have known about Queen, Killer Queen has been found on Sheer Heart Attack and that is, and always has been, their third album. That extra annoyed me because one of the reasons I listen to the radio is to learn stuff. Even though I think many (most) of my local stations suck eggs, I still listen in the hopes of hearing something new. Now I know that the Saturday afternoon oldies disc jockey cannot be trusted. Next thing you know, he'll be telling me that Ringo Starr wrote Yesterday.
Annoying as that was, I still sat through the commercial break and was rewarded with some Buddy Holly followed by the Supremes. See? Every time I try to leave the oldies station they reel me back in. That might actually be a good thing because I never knew how many tragic songs had been released in the seventies until recently.
Once upon a time me and Joejung were devoted to the oldies station, and one day we noticed that most of our favorite songs were teen tragedy tunes and then we decided that we were jerks. It couldn't be helped though, any time we were in the car and got to hear Tell Laura I Love Her it was suddenly the best drive ever. Last Kiss, Teen Angel, and The Leader Of The Pack were other favorites but Tell Laura I Love Her was the top of my tragedy hit parade.
We were sort of feeling bad about loving the tragic songs and then one day Joejung went to the record store and gleefully called me shortly after. He had just purchased a used LP from the late sixties or early seventies and it was called something like Top Teen Tragedy Songs of the 1960s. We weren't alone! So many people enjoyed tragic pop songs that a collection of them had been released. (CDs in a similar vein are available to this day too.)
It never occurred to me that the tragedy spilled into the seventies but I should have known better. Ian Faith wasn't just making stuff up when he said that death sells. Lately I've been noticing that thanks to a whole string of songs from the seventies that I sort of knew but had never paid attention to before. It all started the first time I heard Honey by Bobby Goldsboro.
I was aware of Honey but had never heard it, which makes no sense because with all the easy listening I have from the seventies, you know it's gotta be in my collection somewhere. Either I didn't care or I didn't listen for comprehension but now I have to dig through the records to see if I have that crummy song. Not that I want to listen to Honey, it's terrible.
However, Honey has now made me aware of that AM mellow gold tragic sound and it's a good thing I was prepared because I recently heard Rocky for the first time. It traces the lonely childhood of a boy who finds a lovely lady and they get a house and have a baby and she dies. It's got a terribly catchy chorus and would be depressing if it wasn't so seventies. It sounds like the dude read Love Story (or saw the movie) and then rushed home to write that song. I guess the market was ready for a musical equivalent of Love Story.
Yesterday I was thinking about Honey and Rocky and wondered if they were isolated incidents of tragedy. Then I remembered that time me and Linda Lou went nuts and started buying records. In those first exciting months of digging through LPs she introduced me to many songs from her youth that I did not remember. Suddenly we were at my house listening to Billy, Don't Be A Hero and Run Joey Run.
LL is my aunt, and only ten years older than me. When I was little, the biggest thrill in the world was getting to hang out with LL. When she was a young teen I sometimes got to listen to records with her (in her room like a big girl) and that is where I first heard the Bay City Rollers. That is also where I first saw a poster of the Rolling Stones and heard of The Who. As I got older I knew that Devo and The Go-Go's must be the coolest groups ever because LL liked them.
Since my first memories of her childhood begin in about 1977, she filled in all kinds of gaps for me. I learned about the Hudson Brothers and Paper Lace from LL! One day while we were digging up a copy of The Night Chicago Died that gave her a memory jog and she realized she also needed a copy of Run Joey Run. "I don't know that song," I said and she answered, "Ooooooooh, it's sad!"
She was right, but it's sad in a way that only a tragic song from the seventies can be. It's over the top, it's syrupy, and when the tragic part of the song arrives all you can think is, "Good! That means the song is almost over." As I hear more seventies tragedy songs, my reaction is always the same. I only sat through Rocky to make sure it followed the formula and it did so beautifully. Sad...happy...extra sad!
I don't know why the tragic sixties songs are so good and the ones from the seventies are so terrible, maybe it's because of the alteration of the formula. It's like Classic Coke versus New Coke. The premise was the same but the slightest adjustment made something that was genius become crap. In the sixties it was teens heading for the dance or whatnot, by the seventies a marriage and/or child and/or disease had been added to the mix and it didn't work. Instead of making the songs more tragic it just made them stupid.