Radio Alarm Clocks Uk
Few Of Us Get Exposed To Different Types Of Music As We Used To When Tunes Were Not Sliced, Sliced And Targeted To Particular Market Segments.
CHICAGO As I scrolled thru my Twitter timeline last Sunday night, the MTV Video Music Awards-related tweets gave me that gloomy ache a few individuals get when they realize they’re getting older and are no longer in touch with young people’s passions.
I haven’t observed a music award show in years and, though Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Katy Perry are familiar from the mag covers I see at the food shop checkout, their music has never reached, not to mention touched, me.
I miss how music used to be more of a communal experience. Today electronic jukeboxes such as iTunes, niche of list of radio stations, satellite and streaming Web radio let everyone listen only to whatever music they prefer. Few of us get exposed to different sorts of music as we used to when tunes were not sliced, cubed and aimed at particular market segments.
Remember when it appeared as if everyone listened to Casey Kasem’s Top 40? Today Poster advertisement has so many chartsradio songs, digital songs and ring tones, and 29 different genres such as rock, classical, “Latin,” and “kids”I don’t know where to begin.
This is not always a lousy thing, but I’m a sap for a period when “popular” music, aka pop, portended refined societal shifts.
As an example, think back to 1984 when massive audiences tuned into the 2 annual music award shows and Michael Jackson was winning 1 or 2 VMAs and Grammys for “Thriller.” His hit performances at those shows exposed millions to a recent advance by a successful and talented black artist. It was the beginning of a fledgling shoot at black parity in conventional entertainment that commenced picking up steam later that year when “The Cosby Show” commenced its eight-season run on NBC.
For me, 1985 was the vital musical year. I was a world-weary 10-year-old who pushed the car’s radio dial to alternative stations that played punk, attempted my best to dress like Madonna, and was fully intolerant of my parents’ Spanish-language music.
Their salsa, cumbia, merengue and mariachi corridos consistently filled up the house and accompanied each large family get-together. It was music that I felt needed complex dance moves that I would not have dreamed of attempting, was surely not “cool” and, to my teen mind, definitely not American.
And then in October the Miami Sound Machine zoomed up the Billboard Hot hundred with “Conga,” which became the 1st single to be concurrently included on Billboard’s pop, Latin, soul, and dance charts.
Epiphany time : the trumpet-cowbell-hot-piano-timbale combo was stimulating, not simply to me but to other folks, most significantly my classmates and the people listening to English-language radio.
I can never forget the look on my parents’ faces the 1st time they heard me grating “Conga” on my boombox. “What are you listening to?” my mother asked, startled. She called my father over to witness the miracle of my embrace of a musical style that I had previously refused. They actually beamed with joy.
I shrugged it off, but mainstream audiences happily doing the “Conga” made me embrace a part of my culture that I’d never actually given any thought to. Back then, at least in Chicago, no one was going around making a fuss about who was Latino or Hispanic. I believed of myself as simply American.
The idolization of “Conga” was like a Michael Jackson moment for me and other Hispanics. The song’s popularity paved the way for an even wider audience’s embrace of Los Lobos’ version of “La Bamba,” from the flick about Ritchie Valens. Many radio stations played the tune, with its folkloric guitar outro, in its totality.
Those were heady days leading up to Ronald Reagan signing the not-particularly-contentious Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Salsa was on its way to becoming as popular a seasoning as ketchup. Who’d have imagined that a quarter of a century later folk would be genuinely anxious about America losing its actual soul to Latino culture.
Today calls for a new song to remind people that Hispanic and main line cultures can come together and be enjoyed equally by folks of all racesafter all, there are no census form race designations on the dance floor. Where are you, crossover star? And are you able to hit the Hot 100 in time for next year’s MTV Video Music Awards? – as reported tagya.com.
Strawberry Alarm Clock – Three/Radio Interview/Girl From The City
