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by: Shannon West
It brings on a sense of apprehension. The lush wash of synthesized strings easing into those first soothing notes from the piano, the ones that give meaning to the term "tickling the ivories." Roger Williams circa 1961 or
any given smooth jazz keyboardist in 2008? Did we become our parents? Our grandparents. Did we come from The Beatles, Hendrix and the Allman Bros. or Van Halen, Pearl Jam, and U2, and end up in easy listening land just like they said we would? Some people are afraid of heights, some are afraid of spiders or snakes. I have an inordinate fear of Beautiful Music. It goes by many names - Muzak, Elevator Music, and Easy Listening. The industry calls it Beautiful Music, or B/EZ (a combination of Beautiful and Easy). I spent my childhood listening to progressive rock and Memphis soul and praying that that particular musical body snatcher would not come to call when I grew up.
They told me it would. I had an aunt and uncle who owned a record store and another aunt who worked at a radio station. In other words I had already gotten a nudge down the highway to hell before I even started school. They would give me rock'n'roll singles and I would take them to my room and play them over and over again to the dismay of my Mom. "She'll outgrow it," my aunt assured her, "Now that Sue (my cousin) is married and starting a family she listens to Andy Williams and The Lettermen. She even had a Percy Faith album." That was a time when you grew up, shed your teenage excesses, and moved into staid respectability. Listening from my perch behind the hall door I cringed. "Not me," I vowed, "Never!" and cranked up Aretha again.
This is the music that was the source of one of my biggest childhood traumas. By the time I was a pre-teen I was already hanging out at a local Top 40 station. I would get home from school, jump on the city bus, and spend the afternoon at the station answering the request lines, making food and coffee runs and telling the DJs which songs I thought were going to be hits. The afternoon DJ was into beat poetry and did standup comedy on weekends. I thought he was God. There were a few other kids who hung out there - teenagers, who of course seemed really old, wise, and cool to me. It was like a hip little club. We were all going to be DJs or comedians or all Three Stooges at once. One rainy, humid day in May, right before my big sixth grade graduation, I ran from the bus stop to the station, stepped in the door, and felt like I had walked into a deathwatch. The DJ wasn't cracking jokes or doing the 100 things at once that they had to do before computers took over the job. One of the teenagers was there going through a pile of singles. "Look over there." he motioned toward a stack of albums on top of one of the desks. I went over and picked up "Sing Along With Mitch," an album that had become the torture ritual part of many holiday family gatherings. Mantovani, Percy Faith, Ferrante and Teischer, 100 Strings, Living Strings, 100 Living Strings... a stack of music straight from the dentist's office sound system. "Some old guy bought the station and this is what we will be playing starting next week," Bobby, the fab DJ, shrugged his shoulders and pointed,' I felt that same stab in the gut I had felt when I didn't make the school play and when my first crush moved to Minnesota. I was devastated. Adults consoled me. "You'll appreciate that music when you get older. This noise you like will go out of style anyway." Within the next few months my beloved Collie died, my best friend told me we couldn't be best friends anymore because the boys thought I was too tall, and I found out I needed both braces and glasses before school started. I blamed it all on that evil stack of records at the radio station. Before they started playing that music my life had been pretty much OK.
Fast forward about 15 years. I'm the DJ now, having proudly landed the overnight shift on a Top 40 station because their Program Director heard me playing fusion at 3am on my college station. "We need to hire a female, you have your FCC license, and you can talk fast," he had stated, "You'll do." Like any pre-automation newbie, I was terrified that a record would run out. I would hover over the console for the duration of a 6-minute song and not pee for my entire 5-hour shift. I did, however, have to leave the studio once an hour, which scared me to death. Back then, a lot of FM stations had sideline broadcasting on a frequency that could only be picked up by special receivers. They would provide background music for offices and businesses that subscribed to the service and then supplied with receivers. It was like Muzak but cheaper for the clients. The music played from a towering tape deck in the back room. It was on huge reels. When one ended, an electronic signal was supposed to start the next one. The machine held three reels so someone had to check on them and change them. Being alone in the building at night, that job fell on me. Sometimes the machines would just stop. Sometimes a reel would fall off and unwind all over the floor, or catch on something when it rewound and then get tangled up in the machine itself. The little red light would come on in the studio and I would put on the long version of "Do You Feel Like We Do" and go negotiate it. Sometimes my song ran out. I would run back to the studio cursing the two stores that were open all night and had to lull their customers into a passive state with the music on those reels.
Fast forward a few years. I'm the actual Program Director at this cool little Top 40 station. We have a great staff, party too much, throw great bashes for our listeners, and report to all the right trade papers so the record companies send us goodies and get us into concerts free. We are use to having a grand old time until the owner calls the core group into his office. He's selling the station and the new owners are going to automate the station and use it as a Beautiful Music service. Why? Because that's what the new owner likes to listen to. So we all have to disperse and get other jobs, mostly in bigger cities where playlists were tight and consultants were starting to rule and it just isn't ever as much fun again.
A few years later, in the early 90s, a rumor is making the rounds at a radio convention I'm attending. There is a group of guys planning to put on a network that will feed stations the softer contemporary jazz, kind of like a Beautiful Music station with sax instead of strings. I got that same sinking burst of apprehension. Within a year it had happened, and within about ten years the country was full of automated stations playing relaxing instrumental versions of pop songs and show tunes. My various relatives are probably smirking from beyond the grave but they were only half-right. I had grown up to love instrumental music. On the other hand they were very much wrong. I didn't grow up to like easy listening music. The instrumental music I loved had electric guitar solos, powerful drummers, wailing saxes and blasting horn sections. As those elements disappeared that little gut level apprehension got stronger. Until we got to where we are now. And... within months of the shift to Smooth A/C I found out I needed reading glasses, could really use another round of braces if I can come up with the bucks, and several friends moved out of town when they were replaced by automation at their respective radio stations. But I did get a new dog.
They told me it would. I had an aunt and uncle who owned a record store and another aunt who worked at a radio station. In other words I had already gotten a nudge down the highway to hell before I even started school. They would give me rock'n'roll singles and I would take them to my room and play them over and over again to the dismay of my Mom. "She'll outgrow it," my aunt assured her, "Now that Sue (my cousin) is married and starting a family she listens to Andy Williams and The Lettermen. She even had a Percy Faith album." That was a time when you grew up, shed your teenage excesses, and moved into staid respectability. Listening from my perch behind the hall door I cringed. "Not me," I vowed, "Never!" and cranked up Aretha again.
This is the music that was the source of one of my biggest childhood traumas. By the time I was a pre-teen I was already hanging out at a local Top 40 station. I would get home from school, jump on the city bus, and spend the afternoon at the station answering the request lines, making food and coffee runs and telling the DJs which songs I thought were going to be hits. The afternoon DJ was into beat poetry and did standup comedy on weekends. I thought he was God. There were a few other kids who hung out there - teenagers, who of course seemed really old, wise, and cool to me. It was like a hip little club. We were all going to be DJs or comedians or all Three Stooges at once. One rainy, humid day in May, right before my big sixth grade graduation, I ran from the bus stop to the station, stepped in the door, and felt like I had walked into a deathwatch. The DJ wasn't cracking jokes or doing the 100 things at once that they had to do before computers took over the job. One of the teenagers was there going through a pile of singles. "Look over there." he motioned toward a stack of albums on top of one of the desks. I went over and picked up "Sing Along With Mitch," an album that had become the torture ritual part of many holiday family gatherings. Mantovani, Percy Faith, Ferrante and Teischer, 100 Strings, Living Strings, 100 Living Strings... a stack of music straight from the dentist's office sound system. "Some old guy bought the station and this is what we will be playing starting next week," Bobby, the fab DJ, shrugged his shoulders and pointed,' I felt that same stab in the gut I had felt when I didn't make the school play and when my first crush moved to Minnesota. I was devastated. Adults consoled me. "You'll appreciate that music when you get older. This noise you like will go out of style anyway." Within the next few months my beloved Collie died, my best friend told me we couldn't be best friends anymore because the boys thought I was too tall, and I found out I needed both braces and glasses before school started. I blamed it all on that evil stack of records at the radio station. Before they started playing that music my life had been pretty much OK.
Fast forward about 15 years. I'm the DJ now, having proudly landed the overnight shift on a Top 40 station because their Program Director heard me playing fusion at 3am on my college station. "We need to hire a female, you have your FCC license, and you can talk fast," he had stated, "You'll do." Like any pre-automation newbie, I was terrified that a record would run out. I would hover over the console for the duration of a 6-minute song and not pee for my entire 5-hour shift. I did, however, have to leave the studio once an hour, which scared me to death. Back then, a lot of FM stations had sideline broadcasting on a frequency that could only be picked up by special receivers. They would provide background music for offices and businesses that subscribed to the service and then supplied with receivers. It was like Muzak but cheaper for the clients. The music played from a towering tape deck in the back room. It was on huge reels. When one ended, an electronic signal was supposed to start the next one. The machine held three reels so someone had to check on them and change them. Being alone in the building at night, that job fell on me. Sometimes the machines would just stop. Sometimes a reel would fall off and unwind all over the floor, or catch on something when it rewound and then get tangled up in the machine itself. The little red light would come on in the studio and I would put on the long version of "Do You Feel Like We Do" and go negotiate it. Sometimes my song ran out. I would run back to the studio cursing the two stores that were open all night and had to lull their customers into a passive state with the music on those reels.
Fast forward a few years. I'm the actual Program Director at this cool little Top 40 station. We have a great staff, party too much, throw great bashes for our listeners, and report to all the right trade papers so the record companies send us goodies and get us into concerts free. We are use to having a grand old time until the owner calls the core group into his office. He's selling the station and the new owners are going to automate the station and use it as a Beautiful Music service. Why? Because that's what the new owner likes to listen to. So we all have to disperse and get other jobs, mostly in bigger cities where playlists were tight and consultants were starting to rule and it just isn't ever as much fun again.
A few years later, in the early 90s, a rumor is making the rounds at a radio convention I'm attending. There is a group of guys planning to put on a network that will feed stations the softer contemporary jazz, kind of like a Beautiful Music station with sax instead of strings. I got that same sinking burst of apprehension. Within a year it had happened, and within about ten years the country was full of automated stations playing relaxing instrumental versions of pop songs and show tunes. My various relatives are probably smirking from beyond the grave but they were only half-right. I had grown up to love instrumental music. On the other hand they were very much wrong. I didn't grow up to like easy listening music. The instrumental music I loved had electric guitar solos, powerful drummers, wailing saxes and blasting horn sections. As those elements disappeared that little gut level apprehension got stronger. Until we got to where we are now. And... within months of the shift to Smooth A/C I found out I needed reading glasses, could really use another round of braces if I can come up with the bucks, and several friends moved out of town when they were replaced by automation at their respective radio stations. But I did get a new dog.
