I grew up on FM rather than AM but radio always felt magical to me and it will always occupy a warm place in my memory. Some of my favorite nights were spent turning the dial across the longwave bands, listening to stations fade in and out through the static, wondering where they were coming from.
If there was a show I loved, out came the blank cassette and I'd sit there waiting for the DJ to stop talking so I could hit "record" at exactly the right moment. I still have too many of those old tapes collecting dust. One of these days, I'll finally digitize them. (Yeah, sure. I've only been saying that for about 30 years, lol.)
Sadly, today's streaming, fragmented listening habits and shrinking attention spans haven't done radio any favors.
This is such a warm read, and I love where you landed—that it wasn't video that killed the radio star, it was the algorithms. Which got me thinking about the song itself, because "Video Killed the Radio Star" has always been my favorite kind of pop trick: it's bright and bouncy and hooky as anything, and it's actually a little elegy about a whole world going obsolete. You put it on and dance to the sound of something dying. Your whole essay is doing the same thing that song does—mourning a vanished way of hearing music, but in a major key, with real affection instead of bitterness. That's the sweet spot of nostalgia, and you found it. And the human-curation point lands hard: the magic of AM Top 40 was that a whole city was hearing the same songs at the same hour, one shared dial. Thank you for this—Dr. Don Rose and a transistor radio never sounded so good.
Great piece, Taz. We are exactly the same age and both raised in California so I related to much of what you wrote. I believe in SoCal the AM station was KFI. Which then became a news station, I think a new age, music station, and then finally became a right wing talk station.
I haven’t read the comments, but it made me think of the Journey song, “Raised on Radio.“ I haven’t looked at the lyrics to see how much overlap there is, but that’s what popped in my head.
I think the music that we grew up with tends to have a stronger or maybe deeper hold on us. And when we hear new music, the stuff that reminds us of the music of our youth tends to resonate the most I think. I used to constantly seek out music unlike anything I’ve heard before. I was always looking for something to challenge me. I still do that to some extent, but it tends toward world or instrumental music, not pop or rock.
The pop and rock I gravitate to you is stuff that brings me back to the 70s and 80s. I think it’s why I’ve been on an air supply/soft rock kick lately. Which is funny because I did not like the music all that much when it came out, but it makes me think of that time. A simpler time. A time before bills and jobs and mortgages and rent.
Have a great weekend and hope the fireworks don’t upset the pup!🐶
Nice article. I was telling some recently how much I prefer human-curated radio. There are great stations still, and you can catch them by livestream. WUMB.org is amazing, and on Saturday mornings 8-noon EDT (rebroadcast 8-midnight Sunday), Highway 61 Revisited, hosted by Albert O., plays so much of what was on the radio in the 60s and 70s.
A person’s taste will take you places no algorithm will!
I'm in that second phase of Gen X. I'm just barely older than Star Wars. So for me, reel to reel and vinyl and cassettes were all simultaneous, as my dad had all three formats. Maybe a little 8-track too, but I can't recall ever listening to a working 8-track. Radio was never huge for me, as Jacksonville radio always sucked and has only gotten worse. NPR has been my only radio station for years. CDs were becoming the norm around the same time I started getting into rock and playing guitar, so that's the format that played the biggest part in my formative music listening. Now I'm all about vinyl, which is unfortunate for my checking account.
😂 yeah, vinyl has become a slippery slope. I never owned that much. CDs were just more practical, like cassettes. I gave away close to a thousand CDs about 15 years ago and am still kicking myself. NPR is a godsend.
I dumped all my CDs in 2013 when I left to be a truck driver and had to store all my stuff. I figured well, it's all on Spotify now, this is the way. I really, really wish I hadn't done that. I got my copy of Radiohead's OK Computer at a Tower Records in Seoul when it was released in 1997, so it was a Korean pressing. My copy of Limp Bizkit's first album (a hometown band and friends of mine) also was from Korea, though I got it at the Army PX so it likely was a U.S. pressing. But still, it traveled around the world with me. I don't know what possessed me to think I wouldn't want these things.
Brilliant post. There is indeed something magical about the radio. A few decades later and many many miles away from you, I also grew up with radio and records as my anchor. It’s wonderful how music has the power to transcend generations and cultures.
Oh man! AM in the 70s! I listened to WLS and WCFL in Chicago. I dutifully followed their Top 40 charts. It was a great era! However, I also LOVED the 80s and MTV! I feel like the quirkiness of all that music and those videos really spoke to me. I was glued to the station during the mid-80s. It fell off when metal began to take over...
I am not surprised you loved MTV. Or the 80s. I think you were leading a more age appropriate lifestyle than I was at that point. I was 19 in 85 but I might as well have been 35😂
Yes! Definitely "Super CFL!" A friend of mine used to babysit for Larry Lujack's kids as he lived down the street from her! Also started college in the early 80s when MTV music was everywhere.
Yep! Radio shows came to radio stations on records at the time. They had locked grooves so we could play the local spots after the national ones on the discs.
Glad you liked it Thanks for reading. I suspect you might say the golden age of AM started a little earlier. There is no doubt the mid 60s to mid 70s were incredible.
I remember listening to KGEO in Bakersfield. It was the station my mom listened to every morning. I will never forget the nasal tenor of the morning DJ.
I’m going to be 51 in five days. Statistically, most of my days are behind me, but thank you for calling me younger. I also think it has a bit to do with having a Baby Boomer as a mom and growing up in Bakersfield. We weren’t quite as quick to pick up stuff like FM then.
This was fantastic Taz! I grew up and came of age with most of the physical musical formats you mentioned (all except 78s). My dad had vinyl, cassette and reel to reel (and later, CD). A neighbor had an 8-track boombox. Before I had a boombox or an all in one stereo, I had my radio and my black Panasonic cassette recorder. I still vividly remember sitting next to the radio with Casey Kasem’s countdown show on, waiting for a given track to start so I could hit that little orange “record” button.
I also had this little clock radio on my bedside table. Somehow that little radio managed to pick up US stations and I used scroll around the dial in the middle of the night trying to find new sounds.
Growing up in Bermuda the AM/FM paradigm didn’t really hold. Much of what was playing on FM radio back then, what many of my friends used to call “FM89 music”, was what you’d later find on the “AM Gold” or Soft Rock compilations. Yacht Rock many people call it nowadays 🙄.
When I look back at the mainstream popular music from the 70s and 80s, the songs and albums that were appearing on the main Billboard charts, it was (I think) more diverse and just “way better” (yes, that’s my technical term) than the music appearing on the mainstream pop charts today. But I think most people think that music from their youth was “better” and perhaps I’m falling into that trap too, although I don’t think so.
Thanks for penning such a thought-provoking piece, it really took me back!
So glad you enjoyed it Mark. I can imagine Bermuda back then and radio being a critical part of music discovery. I don't think we are falling in a trap. I think it's an objective fact and I am grateful for it because it makes us very discerning listeners now. At least that is what I chose to believe.
LOL. Fair enough. Bakersfield was definitely still in the wayback machine back then. My mom’s a boomer too. She was only 21 when I was born. In my research, I was appalled to realize that Rush Limbaugh started in Sacramento in 1984.
Yep, I used to joke when I was a pup that Fresno was the new Mason Dixon line. And I have long since tried to figure out what goes on in the extreme north of the state. 🤣 I was born in Woodland.
Ok, this is great! I loved old-school AM radio stations playing the same top 40 most everywhere in the US when we all had a common musical language, not narrow genres, on our radios. I could listen on my transistor radio as I was falling asleep as a teenager.
For me, FM brought a newer, hipper set of artists and songs, and a wide range of musical styles, making it exciting and fresh. But somehow it was never quite the same comfortable vibe.
Thanks for bringing back some good memories. Great article! Blessings, Bob
Fantastic post! AM radio in the car with my parents was a huge part of my early music upbringing. I have vivid memories of the summer of '76 listening to a small radio in the attic of a house we had just moved into. "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" is the song I remember hearing the most that summer.
What a nice breakdown! Thanks for sharing your thoughts from that time period as well. Those songs remind me of my parents. Both of their coming-of-age years were the 70s.
KFRC! I'm a few years younger than it sounds like you are, and KFRC was the source of the first music I remember hearing. I lived in the same neighborhood as Dr. Don Rose, who was famous (at least among local six year-olds) for handing out entire regular-sized candy bars at Halloween.
The songs I heard on that station occupy a permanent place in the reptilian sub-basement of my identity and still have the power today to put me into an instant fugue state when I hear them in passing. This applies especially to Heart’s “Magic Man”, which I found terrifying at the time and still actually raises the hair on my neck when I hear it.
I actually wrote and released a song that's sort of about late night KFRC listening (though there's no explicit reference in the lyrics) - it's here if you're ever interested in checking it out: https://soundcloud.com/radionowhere/revolver
The best part of AM radio came at night when you could get stations from all over the country. We lived in Michigan and had CKLW in the daytime but at night we could listen to Bruce Bradley and Dick Summer on WBZ in Boston. During baseball season we had George Kell and Ernie Harwell on WJR and after the Tigers were done playing we could switch to KMOX in St. Louis for Jack Buck and Harry Caray.
You had a cool uncle; both of my parents were into the music scene in those days, only partly because their children loved it. I checked out the 1970 Billboard Hot 100 list. This is directly in my AM radio listening prime, and i don't recognize about seven in the list, though even a couple of them sound vaguely familiar. I don't remember "Easy Come, Easy Go" by Bobby Sherman, but my younger sister liked Bobby Sherman.
A couple of observations about the list. "War" by Edwin Starr was #5 on the list and is hardly ever mentioned or played anymore.
"Close to You" by the Carpenters is ranked #2, while "We've Only Just Begun," which I consider a great song, was ranked #65.
Another great song down at the bottom of the list is "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" by Dionne Warwick at #95. As a songwriter, I'm sure you'll agree that Burt Bacharach wrote some amazing, complex songs that sound so natural and unforced.
Although my favorite AM radio years are about 1969-1972, I've got the 1960s as the most fertile period for popular songwriting.
I grew up on FM rather than AM but radio always felt magical to me and it will always occupy a warm place in my memory. Some of my favorite nights were spent turning the dial across the longwave bands, listening to stations fade in and out through the static, wondering where they were coming from.
If there was a show I loved, out came the blank cassette and I'd sit there waiting for the DJ to stop talking so I could hit "record" at exactly the right moment. I still have too many of those old tapes collecting dust. One of these days, I'll finally digitize them. (Yeah, sure. I've only been saying that for about 30 years, lol.)
Sadly, today's streaming, fragmented listening habits and shrinking attention spans haven't done radio any favors.
Thanks for sharing your memories!
Glad you enjoyed it. I remember making those cassettes too.
This is such a warm read, and I love where you landed—that it wasn't video that killed the radio star, it was the algorithms. Which got me thinking about the song itself, because "Video Killed the Radio Star" has always been my favorite kind of pop trick: it's bright and bouncy and hooky as anything, and it's actually a little elegy about a whole world going obsolete. You put it on and dance to the sound of something dying. Your whole essay is doing the same thing that song does—mourning a vanished way of hearing music, but in a major key, with real affection instead of bitterness. That's the sweet spot of nostalgia, and you found it. And the human-curation point lands hard: the magic of AM Top 40 was that a whole city was hearing the same songs at the same hour, one shared dial. Thank you for this—Dr. Don Rose and a transistor radio never sounded so good.
What a thoughtful response. So glad you enjoyed it.
Great piece, Taz. We are exactly the same age and both raised in California so I related to much of what you wrote. I believe in SoCal the AM station was KFI. Which then became a news station, I think a new age, music station, and then finally became a right wing talk station.
I haven’t read the comments, but it made me think of the Journey song, “Raised on Radio.“ I haven’t looked at the lyrics to see how much overlap there is, but that’s what popped in my head.
I think the music that we grew up with tends to have a stronger or maybe deeper hold on us. And when we hear new music, the stuff that reminds us of the music of our youth tends to resonate the most I think. I used to constantly seek out music unlike anything I’ve heard before. I was always looking for something to challenge me. I still do that to some extent, but it tends toward world or instrumental music, not pop or rock.
The pop and rock I gravitate to you is stuff that brings me back to the 70s and 80s. I think it’s why I’ve been on an air supply/soft rock kick lately. Which is funny because I did not like the music all that much when it came out, but it makes me think of that time. A simpler time. A time before bills and jobs and mortgages and rent.
Have a great weekend and hope the fireworks don’t upset the pup!🐶
Thanks Steve. Yeah, what you say hear really resonates. Raised on Radio is a great parallel.
Nice article. I was telling some recently how much I prefer human-curated radio. There are great stations still, and you can catch them by livestream. WUMB.org is amazing, and on Saturday mornings 8-noon EDT (rebroadcast 8-midnight Sunday), Highway 61 Revisited, hosted by Albert O., plays so much of what was on the radio in the 60s and 70s.
A person’s taste will take you places no algorithm will!
Right!? Human-curated radio is the way to go and a lost art (along with human-curated playlists) in an ever-growing algorithm-based music ecosystem.
Thanks!
I'm in that second phase of Gen X. I'm just barely older than Star Wars. So for me, reel to reel and vinyl and cassettes were all simultaneous, as my dad had all three formats. Maybe a little 8-track too, but I can't recall ever listening to a working 8-track. Radio was never huge for me, as Jacksonville radio always sucked and has only gotten worse. NPR has been my only radio station for years. CDs were becoming the norm around the same time I started getting into rock and playing guitar, so that's the format that played the biggest part in my formative music listening. Now I'm all about vinyl, which is unfortunate for my checking account.
😂 yeah, vinyl has become a slippery slope. I never owned that much. CDs were just more practical, like cassettes. I gave away close to a thousand CDs about 15 years ago and am still kicking myself. NPR is a godsend.
I dumped all my CDs in 2013 when I left to be a truck driver and had to store all my stuff. I figured well, it's all on Spotify now, this is the way. I really, really wish I hadn't done that. I got my copy of Radiohead's OK Computer at a Tower Records in Seoul when it was released in 1997, so it was a Korean pressing. My copy of Limp Bizkit's first album (a hometown band and friends of mine) also was from Korea, though I got it at the Army PX so it likely was a U.S. pressing. But still, it traveled around the world with me. I don't know what possessed me to think I wouldn't want these things.
I know that feeling so well. I have moved a lot over the years. All the downsizing takes a toll in this way.
Almost completely the same. Minus the vinyl (thankfully it seems!)
Vinyl is a slippery slope these days.
At least it’s a motivator to keep moving up in my job.
Ha! We’ve all got something
Brilliant post. There is indeed something magical about the radio. A few decades later and many many miles away from you, I also grew up with radio and records as my anchor. It’s wonderful how music has the power to transcend generations and cultures.
So true!
Oh man! AM in the 70s! I listened to WLS and WCFL in Chicago. I dutifully followed their Top 40 charts. It was a great era! However, I also LOVED the 80s and MTV! I feel like the quirkiness of all that music and those videos really spoke to me. I was glued to the station during the mid-80s. It fell off when metal began to take over...
I am not surprised you loved MTV. Or the 80s. I think you were leading a more age appropriate lifestyle than I was at that point. I was 19 in 85 but I might as well have been 35😂
Yes! Definitely "Super CFL!" A friend of mine used to babysit for Larry Lujack's kids as he lived down the street from her! Also started college in the early 80s when MTV music was everywhere.
You can read a bit about it in my post called confessions of a teenaged roadie
I did an entire memoir about each year of my life and the music I loved on my site. Feel free to check it out! https://danpal.substack.com/s/the-playlist-of-my-life-a-top-ten
I still own a handful of those original AT40 radio shows - 3 LPs per show - from 76 and 77. Great piece - oh the memories!
Wow, that is so cool. I didn't realize they put them on albums. It was a glorious time for the format.
Yep! Radio shows came to radio stations on records at the time. They had locked grooves so we could play the local spots after the national ones on the discs.
That is amazing. I had no idea.
Terrific piece; thanks for sharing it with us. Our experiences growing up are pretty similar, especially considering I'm a few years older than you.
Glad you liked it Thanks for reading. I suspect you might say the golden age of AM started a little earlier. There is no doubt the mid 60s to mid 70s were incredible.
I remember listening to KGEO in Bakersfield. It was the station my mom listened to every morning. I will never forget the nasal tenor of the morning DJ.
You're a lot younger, so it's good to know AM was still having an impact.
I’m going to be 51 in five days. Statistically, most of my days are behind me, but thank you for calling me younger. I also think it has a bit to do with having a Baby Boomer as a mom and growing up in Bakersfield. We weren’t quite as quick to pick up stuff like FM then.
This was fantastic Taz! I grew up and came of age with most of the physical musical formats you mentioned (all except 78s). My dad had vinyl, cassette and reel to reel (and later, CD). A neighbor had an 8-track boombox. Before I had a boombox or an all in one stereo, I had my radio and my black Panasonic cassette recorder. I still vividly remember sitting next to the radio with Casey Kasem’s countdown show on, waiting for a given track to start so I could hit that little orange “record” button.
I also had this little clock radio on my bedside table. Somehow that little radio managed to pick up US stations and I used scroll around the dial in the middle of the night trying to find new sounds.
Growing up in Bermuda the AM/FM paradigm didn’t really hold. Much of what was playing on FM radio back then, what many of my friends used to call “FM89 music”, was what you’d later find on the “AM Gold” or Soft Rock compilations. Yacht Rock many people call it nowadays 🙄.
When I look back at the mainstream popular music from the 70s and 80s, the songs and albums that were appearing on the main Billboard charts, it was (I think) more diverse and just “way better” (yes, that’s my technical term) than the music appearing on the mainstream pop charts today. But I think most people think that music from their youth was “better” and perhaps I’m falling into that trap too, although I don’t think so.
Thanks for penning such a thought-provoking piece, it really took me back!
So glad you enjoyed it Mark. I can imagine Bermuda back then and radio being a critical part of music discovery. I don't think we are falling in a trap. I think it's an objective fact and I am grateful for it because it makes us very discerning listeners now. At least that is what I chose to believe.
LOL. Fair enough. Bakersfield was definitely still in the wayback machine back then. My mom’s a boomer too. She was only 21 when I was born. In my research, I was appalled to realize that Rush Limbaugh started in Sacramento in 1984.
See, people ignore how alt-right the San Joaquin Valley really is when they think of California as liberal. Lots of farmland in California.
Yep, I used to joke when I was a pup that Fresno was the new Mason Dixon line. And I have long since tried to figure out what goes on in the extreme north of the state. 🤣 I was born in Woodland.
It’s a weird collection of hippies, drug dealers, and anti-government wingnuts. I have some friends up there.
Ok, this is great! I loved old-school AM radio stations playing the same top 40 most everywhere in the US when we all had a common musical language, not narrow genres, on our radios. I could listen on my transistor radio as I was falling asleep as a teenager.
For me, FM brought a newer, hipper set of artists and songs, and a wide range of musical styles, making it exciting and fresh. But somehow it was never quite the same comfortable vibe.
Thanks for bringing back some good memories. Great article! Blessings, Bob
So glad you enjoyed it Bob.
Fantastic post! AM radio in the car with my parents was a huge part of my early music upbringing. I have vivid memories of the summer of '76 listening to a small radio in the attic of a house we had just moved into. "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" is the song I remember hearing the most that summer.
That one was omnipresent. Glad you enjoyed it Matt. Sometimes a trip down memory lane is fun.
What a nice breakdown! Thanks for sharing your thoughts from that time period as well. Those songs remind me of my parents. Both of their coming-of-age years were the 70s.
So glad you enjoyed it
KFRC! I'm a few years younger than it sounds like you are, and KFRC was the source of the first music I remember hearing. I lived in the same neighborhood as Dr. Don Rose, who was famous (at least among local six year-olds) for handing out entire regular-sized candy bars at Halloween.
The songs I heard on that station occupy a permanent place in the reptilian sub-basement of my identity and still have the power today to put me into an instant fugue state when I hear them in passing. This applies especially to Heart’s “Magic Man”, which I found terrifying at the time and still actually raises the hair on my neck when I hear it.
I actually wrote and released a song that's sort of about late night KFRC listening (though there's no explicit reference in the lyrics) - it's here if you're ever interested in checking it out: https://soundcloud.com/radionowhere/revolver
Great post - thanks so much for writing this!
Cool. Thanks. I will check it out.
The best part of AM radio came at night when you could get stations from all over the country. We lived in Michigan and had CKLW in the daytime but at night we could listen to Bruce Bradley and Dick Summer on WBZ in Boston. During baseball season we had George Kell and Ernie Harwell on WJR and after the Tigers were done playing we could switch to KMOX in St. Louis for Jack Buck and Harry Caray.
I remember those days well.
You had a cool uncle; both of my parents were into the music scene in those days, only partly because their children loved it. I checked out the 1970 Billboard Hot 100 list. This is directly in my AM radio listening prime, and i don't recognize about seven in the list, though even a couple of them sound vaguely familiar. I don't remember "Easy Come, Easy Go" by Bobby Sherman, but my younger sister liked Bobby Sherman.
A couple of observations about the list. "War" by Edwin Starr was #5 on the list and is hardly ever mentioned or played anymore.
"Close to You" by the Carpenters is ranked #2, while "We've Only Just Begun," which I consider a great song, was ranked #65.
Another great song down at the bottom of the list is "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" by Dionne Warwick at #95. As a songwriter, I'm sure you'll agree that Burt Bacharach wrote some amazing, complex songs that sound so natural and unforced.
Although my favorite AM radio years are about 1969-1972, I've got the 1960s as the most fertile period for popular songwriting.