Segarini: Radio and Records Rule No More

The Rock Files: When Radio and Records Ruled the World, Part 16…The Beginning of the End. Part 15 and links to 1-14 can be found here.

For over 4 decades, since radio embraced recorded music as the replacement for its previous entertainment content, which was busy jumping ship and rushing to television, both radio and records had worked in consort to bring new and interesting music to the public. There were to be two more massive pop culture explosions before it all began to shift mainly from content to commerce, and the end of musical dominance for both radio and records, and even television’s music sources like MTV, who would find themselves becoming something other than what they had been…

Based on rhythms and spoken word music from Africa as well as Jamaica and American jazz and beat poets, a form of music began to appear on the streets of New York City that had neither record labels nor radio paying any attention. It was borne aloft by local music fans and a couple of currently successful musical artists in late 1979, even though the early foundations had been around for several years, and the roots of the new music for decades, this genre of music would not take off almost a decade. Nile Rodgers (pictured here) of Chic explains. Here are the two songs Nile refers to, although they are the same song when you get right down to it. Good Times and Rapper’s Delight. In 1981, Blondie also reacted to the music they had turned Nile Rodgers on to and released this classic hit.

Hip Hop and Rap weren’t always about bitches, Ho’s, Bling, and the Benjamin’s. There was a time when this music was vital, relevant, and undeniable.

Hip Hop’s dance moves would spring from as early as 1925 and the moves of Earl “Snake Hips” Tucker at the Cotton Club in New York’s Harlem. The Dude is Poppin’! Even ‘40’s music hinted at the genre. Here’s a wonderful clip done recently as a remix with a ‘40’s Andrews Sisters film clip as its basis. Break dancing? Here’s another clip from the ‘40’s. DJ Battling would have its roots in contests between disc jockeys that date back to the 1950’s. The rhyming inherent in Hip Hop and rap can in part, be traced to Cassius Clay’s bragging in 1965 on the fight he had with Sonny Liston.

Clay comes out to meet Liston
And Liston starts to retreat
If Liston goes back any further
He’ll end up in a ringside seat.
Clay swings with a left,
Clay swings with a right,
Look at young Cassius
Carry the fight.
Liston keeps backing
But there’s not enough room
It’s a matter of time…

In 1969 James Brown records two songs that would further influence the drum programming in today’s rap – “Sex Machine” with John Starks playing the drums and “Funky Drummer” with Clyde Stubblefield on the drums. On 1962’s Live at the Apollo, Brown’s drummer Clayton Fillyau influences a sound that is now known as the break beat. The break beat would later inspire the b-boy movement, as breakers danced to these beats at block parties.

In 1970, the Last Poets would release their first album and would later turn up on Common’s 2005 rap anthem, “The Corner.”)  The next year (1971), Aretha Franklin records a B-Boy song called ‘Rock Steady, The Rock Steady Crew would take breakdancing to the mainstream with crews all over the world. Then there was this game changing event in 1973: DJ Kool Herc (born Clive Campbell in Jamaica and nicknamed Hercules in grade school because of his size) deejays his first block party (his sister’s birthday) at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, NY. Herc would often buy two copies of a record and stretch the break parts by using two turntables and mixing in both records before the break ends. The Zulu Nation is officially formed by a student of Stevenson High school named Kevin Donovan. Donovan later changed his name to Afrika Bambaataa Aasim  in honor of an ancient Zulu chief. Kool Herc is often referred to as the Father of Hip Hop, and Afrika Bambaataa, sampling Kraftwerk, had one of the earlyhits in the genre in 1982. In 1983, Grandmaster Flash (pictured here) surfaced on record and had 2 major and influential releases in the black community. These records were beyond important. They were seminal as a starting point for young street kids to follow a career in music. The first, The Message, speaks of the current white pop culture influences infiltrating the black community at the time and the realities of street life. The second, White Lines is a great rail against cocaine, a drug that was decimating the projects and the lives of millions of young people at the time. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had a deep impact on people like Brian Eno and David  Bowie and the Clash, who had, in turn, influenced this music. That this form of music has been reduced to bragging about possessions, mistreating women, and how great you are, is as tragic as what has happened to traditional country music, rock and roll, and pop music. Oddly enough, Duran Duran covered White Lines, proving once again how influential this music was to other musicians, even though the general public was not aware of it, at least not to the point of mainstream success. It was another sign of radio becoming further and further removed from what was happening at street level in their local markets.

The fact that only a handful of this genre’s records saw the light of day on radio is telling. From 1986 through the end of the decade, Public Enemy, N.W.A (pictured here), and LL Cool Jay and a few others had records on mainstream music radio, with some other artists gaining traction in their local markets. That’s not to say that the influence of these records was not making headway. Everyone from Paula Abdul to the Pet Shop Boys were paying attention, and adding elements of rap and hip hop to their music. By the end of the decade, the first of the Boy Bands were having hits, and disco had morphed into ‘dance music’, and thanks to Michael Jackson, dance oriented rhythm and blues, for some incredibly strange reason, became ‘Pop Music’, and he became the ‘King of Pop’.  The actual pop genre has still not recovered from that misnomer. For those of you that are enjoying this piece of history, watch this 20 minute video about the history of the ‘Amen Break”, and sampling in general.

By the end of the decade, records were being released by the likes of Biz Markie, Beastie Boys (pictured here), Slick Rick and original heroes Run DMC, but this iteration of Hip Hop, commonly known as Rap, was popular on the street and with music lovers that understood the music as a touchstone to the angst and anger in th black community. Like Dylan had galvanized white youth in the ‘60’s, this music united and empowered black youth and street level kids who could relate to the political and social messages in the music. Mainstream radio and the mainstream music audience only heard the anger, and tuned it out or put it down. It wasn’t until the landmark recording of Walk this Way with Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Run DMC (as important a recording as the early rock records that introduced white mainstream American audiences to blues and country music), that radio, and the public really started to pay attention. Even so, it was an anomaly at the time, just hinting at the future domination of radio and records by the genre in the decades to come. And let’s face it…this is a fucking great record. Even so, the so called ‘Boy Bands’ would get more traction quicker, with record companies and radio.

From Wikipedia: In 1986, the hip-hop group Run DMC performed a cover of “ Walk This Way” with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry guesting on vocals and guitars. While working on Raising Hell, Rick Rubin pulled out Toys in the Attic (an album they freestyled over) and explained who Aerosmith were. While Run and DMC had no idea who Aerosmith were at that time, Jam Master Jay suggested remaking the song. Both Run and DMC did not like the idea. Later, however, they covered the song with Aerosmith. DMC later called it “a beautiful song” in a trailer for Guitar Hero. The 1986 version of the song is often credited as helping break rap into mainstream popular music as it was the first rap song to hit the Top 5 in the Billboard Hot 100,

While Rap (an early part of the Hip Hop culture) was getting its legs and building a grass roots following, the other significant musical explosion was festering in the Northwest city of Seattle Washington. It was called Grunge, a spinoff from the word ‘grungy’, a slang word from around 1965,which meant ‘filthy’ or ‘dirty’, and was supposedly coined by Green River, and later, Mud Honey vocalist, Mark Arrn. This would be one of the last locally produced musical fads that would garner attention from radio and records alike. The most important aspect of the movement wasn’t really the music, which was a combination of punk, rock, and metal elements and lyrically powered by the apathy and alienation of the slacker participants. That’s not a bad thing. The music and words touched a lot of young people who felt exactly the same way as the writers and musicians that made the music. If you were ever young (and of course, you were) you should remember sitting in your room in the dark or whining to your friends about how fucked up your life, and the world, seemed to be. Looking back on the 2 disparate musical trends, hip hop and grunge, it seems clear that one was angry and looking to change the way its participants and fans were treated and try to make the world a different if not better place, and the other was introspective, unable to change things and surrendering to the apathy and helplessness of youth. To put it simply, hip hop was about how awesome you could be, and grunge was about how awesome you weren’t.

The most important thing about Grunge was that it was a return to the days when young people made their own music. There was no artifice. It sounded as real as the emotions and world view that it was attempting to convey. In other words, like Elvis, and the Beatles, they made it sound like you could do it too. Teen angst is a powerful tool when it’s strained through a Les Paul and a stack of Marshalls.

When the first ‘grunge’ bands hit the boards in Seattle, the first palpable effect was to send everyone in the audiences out to form their own bands, and for awhile, Seattle was home to dozens of clubs and hundreds of bands playing their plodding, distorted anthems not for fame and fortune, but to express their feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness. A local label Sub Pop took notice, and suddenly, some of the bands had to deal with more success than they had bargained for.

The other important aspect of the culture springing up around the music was the total rejection of what had become the slick appearance and styles of the current stars of music. Flannel shirts, ripped jeans, and thrift store chic replaced the outlandish spandex and over teased hair of of the Hair Nation bands and rock and roll in general. No frills, in either the music or the look. Simple chord structures, over distorted and fuzztoned guitars and the rhythm slowed down to dirge-like tempos, drove the lyrics, and the angst, home for every kid that heard it. At first, the music was confined to the Seattle area, but soon spread to other isolated cities in the Northwest, and with the emergence of Soundgarden, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, to the rest of the world.

Eventually, other bands popped up from other cities across the states. Most notably the Stone Temple Pilots out of San Diego California, and the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., and Sonic Youth from the Northeast. This was real music played by real kids, and there is nothing more powerful to an audience than artists that understand how they feel.

As the ‘90’s rolled out, radio experienced unprecedented advertising revenue and the record companies experienced massive record sales. Rap, Grunge, Boy Bands, Dance Music, and New Country were fueling the thriving businesses, and there was something for everyone available on the radio and in the record stores.

The End…

Two very important things happened in the last half of the decade that would eventually lead to the present state of radio and records we have today. Three, actually, if you count a mistake made by the record companies in 1999 that would reverse the fortunes they had worked so diligently to achieve. More about these events next week.

Music would remain healthy and ever changing, genres would split off into sub-genres and new directions, but radio and the record companies would have very little to do with the new paradigm for music discovery and where the music was to be found. What will happen to radio and record manufacturers remains to be seen, and some of them continue to be wildly successful, but the days when radio and records ruled the world are at an end.

We’ll fill you in on the three earth shaking events mentioned above, address the current landscape and the future, when the Rock Files continues next week.

*May I have your attention Please*

I don’t think I’ve ever done this before, but I feel compelled to ask you to do something I think you will find enlightening, or at the very least, entertaining. I found it absolutely fascinating.

One of the reasons this column is being put online later than this morning when it was supposed to go up, is because of a link in Warren Cosford’s great newsletter to a short clip from a documentary called “Before the Music Dies”. I clicked on the link and was so rewarded for doing so, that I tracked down the rest of the documentary and am posting the links to the whole thing here. My sincere thanks to Warren Cosford in Windsor, Ontario for sending me the link to part one, and to Tom Bryant in Nashville for sending it to Warren in the first place.

I implore you to take the time to watch this program in its entirety. If you live in the U.S, there is a direct link to the complete documentary at Hulu. For the rest of you, there are 13 links which will take you to the entire documentary in segments that run in order 1 through 13.

As far as I can ascertain, this documentary has only ever been screened in a couple of hundred theatres, and to my knowledge, has never run on television, but that may not be the case. I can easily imagine, however, that VHI, MTV, and MuchMusic would be reticent to run it.

If you love music, and have slogged through this epic Rock Files serial, you owe it to yourselves to sit back and watch this documentary and listen to what these people have to say. The first thing I thought after watching it was that I am not alone in my beliefs about the state of the radio and record industries.

So please, watch this and let me know your thoughts about its content. I really want you all to email your reactions and your feelings about what you see in Before the Music Dies. I know you love music and a lot of you love radio and the record biz too. This documentary is for all of you.

Before the Music Dies Part 01

Before the Music Dies Part 02

Before the Music Dies Part 03

Before the Music Dies Part 04

Before the Music Dies Part 05

Before the Music Dies Part 06

Before the Music Dies Part 07

Before the Music Dies Part 08

Before the Music Dies Part 09

Before the Music Dies Part 10

Before the Music Dies Part 11

Before the Music Dies Part 12

Before the Music Dies Part 13

For American residents only:

Before the Music Dies Complete on Hulu

Before the Music Dies is also available to own here. I’ve already ordered my copy.

Next Wednesday…When Radio and Records Ruled the World Part 17: What happened, and The Epilogue.

That’s enough for now. Email me at segarini@fyimusic.ca with your comments, complaints, and thoughts…and remember…don’t believe a word I say.

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, and The Segarini Band and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now provides content for radiothatdoesntsuck.com with RadioZombie, The Iceage, and PsychShack. Along with the love of his life, Jade (Pie) Dunlop, (who hosts and writes “I’ve Heard That Song Before” on RTDS), continues to write, make music, and record.