CouchCoach
Staff member
- Messages
- 41,122
- Reaction score
- 74,965
I think it's swell of us to let them talk football on our music site and from what I've seen there are a hell of a lot that know more about music than football.........present company included.
You may or may not know (isn't that clever, narrowing it down to only two options?) how Album Oriented Rock aka AOR which morphed into Classic Rock came into being and accelerated the growth of bands and music but also helped the record labels in spite of their own myopic point of view.
Radio was really at the mercy of record labels and it was a single song world and the number of 45's sold versus 33's was really top heavy with the real record buyers, 12-24's back then. Radio stations faced the wrath of the labels if they jumped the gun on a release date and faced service being cut off. It really was more of a tail wagging the dog back then.
FM was still the stepchild of AM in the 60's and early 70's and there were few format holes on the AM side and with the better audio quality on the FM side, it was a natural progression. There is really no evidence of the first architect of the format but many feel it was KSAN is SF and idea was considered really experimental and radical at the time. Radio was song driven, not artist driven and the format formula went completely against the grain of playing the hits in tight rotation.
What actually started this idea was the British Invasion. So many singles were being released off albums from the Beatles and the Stones, it was an awakening to radio, the labels and the artists. The artists were trying to get songs released to sell singles and didn't realize the kids would get smart and figure out it's cheaper to buy the album instead of the singles, if it was a super band.
So, program directors at AOR stations didn't just listen to songs, they listened to albums and projected the "singles" off the album and began playing them faster and some times 3 songs at once off the same album. They were previewing entire albums for their audience at 11 or 12 at night. It was the birth of something entirely new for radio and was the instigator of album sales for the labels. These maverick program directors actually helped the labels and once they realized it, changed how A&R guys and producers approached building an album.
Sorry for the length of this but until birth was given to the AOR format,, I could have cared less for Top 40 radio because AOR wasn't about radio, it was about the music.
Picking the best album of all time is tricky indeed as there are so many to choose from and there is no real criteria, it is your opinion,. Doesn't matter how many hits were on it but there is one rule, no greatest hits or compilations, it must be an album constructed by one artist or band so Saturday Night Fever would not qualify or a compilation of British Invasion or Motown artists on an album would not qualify.
So, what say you, you little resident musicologists?
Note: I only bring up AOR because that really is what mushroomed album sales but jazz listeners had been buying albums for years, there just weren't many of them. Your BAOAT might be Classical, Country or Jazz.
You may or may not know (isn't that clever, narrowing it down to only two options?) how Album Oriented Rock aka AOR which morphed into Classic Rock came into being and accelerated the growth of bands and music but also helped the record labels in spite of their own myopic point of view.
Radio was really at the mercy of record labels and it was a single song world and the number of 45's sold versus 33's was really top heavy with the real record buyers, 12-24's back then. Radio stations faced the wrath of the labels if they jumped the gun on a release date and faced service being cut off. It really was more of a tail wagging the dog back then.
FM was still the stepchild of AM in the 60's and early 70's and there were few format holes on the AM side and with the better audio quality on the FM side, it was a natural progression. There is really no evidence of the first architect of the format but many feel it was KSAN is SF and idea was considered really experimental and radical at the time. Radio was song driven, not artist driven and the format formula went completely against the grain of playing the hits in tight rotation.
What actually started this idea was the British Invasion. So many singles were being released off albums from the Beatles and the Stones, it was an awakening to radio, the labels and the artists. The artists were trying to get songs released to sell singles and didn't realize the kids would get smart and figure out it's cheaper to buy the album instead of the singles, if it was a super band.
So, program directors at AOR stations didn't just listen to songs, they listened to albums and projected the "singles" off the album and began playing them faster and some times 3 songs at once off the same album. They were previewing entire albums for their audience at 11 or 12 at night. It was the birth of something entirely new for radio and was the instigator of album sales for the labels. These maverick program directors actually helped the labels and once they realized it, changed how A&R guys and producers approached building an album.
Sorry for the length of this but until birth was given to the AOR format,, I could have cared less for Top 40 radio because AOR wasn't about radio, it was about the music.
Picking the best album of all time is tricky indeed as there are so many to choose from and there is no real criteria, it is your opinion,. Doesn't matter how many hits were on it but there is one rule, no greatest hits or compilations, it must be an album constructed by one artist or band so Saturday Night Fever would not qualify or a compilation of British Invasion or Motown artists on an album would not qualify.
So, what say you, you little resident musicologists?
Note: I only bring up AOR because that really is what mushroomed album sales but jazz listeners had been buying albums for years, there just weren't many of them. Your BAOAT might be Classical, Country or Jazz.
jk
