Sucking in the '70s
How deep is your love?
By KATE SULLIVAN
Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - 7:45 pm
As you’ve heard, the record industry as we know it is dying. And it’s even worse than it looked a few months ago. CD sales are down 20 percent from last year. Based on the inverse relationship between record sales and gas prices, I can only conclude America’s oil refineries are secretly owned by a cabal of record executives desperate to recover their losses on Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy.The major record labels have laid a lot of the blame on illegal downloading, and they are surely on to something. I don’t want to argue them on that. I don’t even want to bash them. (It’s no fun anymore!)
Instead, I want to listen to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. You can hear it every weekend on XM Satellite Radio. They broadcast vintage episodes, without commercials. It’s a fine way to spend a Saturday morning.
And for anyone who’s been wondering, What the fudge has happened to music? the show is also shocking. Stunning. Sobering and intoxicating at the same time. If you think pop music is bad today, you will positively weep blood when you hear what used to pass for bad.
Consider the episode they played a couple weeks ago — on March 10, I believe. It was the same episode aired exactly 29 years ago, in 1978. Just a random week in a random month, in a year not particularly remembered for great pop — and an era that was long derided for supposedly sucking.
Music today should suck so good. To wit (insert Kasem’s voice here): “On AT 40 this week, here’s the record that takes the biggest drop. It moves all the way from No. 11 down to No. 26! It’s Queen, and ‘We Are the Champions.’”
Real sucky, right? It’s only Queen. It’s just fucking “We Are the Fucking Champions,” falling to No. 26...read more here
No comments:
Post a Comment