When the top 40 radio format was being formulated, the creators determined that the average pop radio listener was a 13 year old girl, she was "stupid" and got poor grades in school besides, and she mostly wanted to hear love songs. She would not change the station to seek out her favorite song, but she would change the station to get away from commercials or a song she didn't like.
I thought that a refreshingly realistic take, looking at the consumers you actually have.
Those radio programmers were well aware that a teenybopper's money is just as green as the most sophisticated opera lover's. From the point of view of the music business, a dollar earned from "Kookie Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb" is worth exactly the same as a dollar earned from a timeless Joan Sutherland tour de force.
This is the nature, and, if you like, the fundamental flaw of capitalism. The value of a dollar is ever always only exactly one dollar. It does not matter whether it is AI schlock or a transcendent artistic statement, whether the artist is a good person or not, whether it comes from teaching inner city kids to read, or selling poison to those same kids. A dollar is the same as every other dollar.
A favorite leftie slogan of the Cold War years. Put you on the side of Free Trade, yet not opening one to charges of Commie doctrinaire. Also, without opening one up to being swallowed within market-driven US cultural sensibilities in evaluating 'new product' (and sub-culture).
It also can open the door to introducing folks to deep yuks and practical applications via LP's like the Various (Non-Singer Celebrity Vocal\Situ 'stylists') such as Central Casting circa 1950's cop templates like Jack Webb who carry well-orchestrated (even R&B 'hip' arranged tracks in the 1960's on Various Artist collections that became multi-generational TV gag tracks beloved on late-night FM free-form radio:
ripped from Various Artists collected LP that yielded a Volume 2 when such TV celebrities and A&R selections created demand for such yuks at the expense of TV celebrities: posted by Jarrett McCall
1 / 15
...Also a la truly underground surreptitious prank phone-callers and entertainment\political activist situational hoaxers a la this pair that took it to big & small screen film success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men
To get a sense consider that, in theory, the only color that matters is green, the color of one's money, but Negroes, as they were called back then, would often find that their skin color made their dollars sort of "empty".
Should mention that Byrnes played the lecherous dance show host in Grease. That's how most post-boomers recognize him. And he was wonderfully funny in the role.
Hmm, I knew of Avakian from his jazz background, but not this. Would he have said, "Dude looks like a jazz horn player; can't blow, so what?" (Remember Jack Klugman on Twilight Zone?)
What's sad about GA's attitude is that by this time (1958), Buddy Holly had demonstrated rock's potential by crossbreeding R&B with country and succeeding while looking nerdy. Then the Everly Bros put tight harmonies into rock and we're halfway to The Beatles.
Although this novelty song is silly, at least it isn't vulgar. Eventually there were well-written/produced novelty tunes; the mini Pop Opera "Leader of the Pack" comes to mind.
This was where my mind went. ‘Oh yes, officer, I speak jive’. Second, I’m reminded of Stan Freeburg, ‘high school ooh ooh’. Which unfortunately for us jazz cats, was not an eventual description of reality.
I once received a birthday card with a message on the front that said, "It's not who you are, it's just what you wear that counts." On the inside, it read, "Because, who really cares who you are, anyway." It still seems like all you need to do is roll up your collar on the back of your neck, and everything is cool, Daddy-o.
I was in elementary school then and really wanted hair like Fabian. All I ended up with was a standard flat top. I keep telling my grandsons that if they really want to be counter culture, forget the green or purple hair (nobody cares) but go flat top, and maybe the whole NASA engineer look.
On whether Kookie was the first influencer or not, it depends what you mean by an influencer. A true influencer acts as a thought leader for his or her followers. Kookie wasn't that. He was a manufactured Elvis who came three years after the King hit it big. I remember him as a cosplay rock star, and the screaming girls as cosplay fans. Everything in the '50s had that party-time silliness to it.
Later, The Beatles inspired their own cosplay imitators, The Monkees. I tried out for that show and was the first runner up for Peter Tork's part. As much I wanted to act and write songs for A BIG SHOW, I'm now glad I didn't make the cut. I'd still be straining to sing "Last Train to Clarksville," a song actually written by Boyce and Hart, with my shaky 78-year-old voice.
I put "Kookie" as a safe made for TV James Dean. As TV always, it was 5 years late for the whole early 50's Brando/Dean rebel movement. Face it he wasn't an influencer, he was a clown and foil for the straight characters. As to his "music", it wasn't the first time a producer saw a way to make a buck off a valuable product. The remarkable thing is that somebody was able to make a saleable record.
Unlike an earlier influencer, Lord Byron who was "mad, bad and dangerous to know". I think the influencer thing took off in the early 19th century with industrialization and a growing consumer class.
Speaking of musical connections: I remember "Kookie" from 77 Sunset Strip, which starred (among others) Efrem Zimabalist, Jr. -- the son of the famous classical violinist.
So great! I was 14 and watched American Bandstand every day after school when doing my homework. I can't believe that I found Kookie's antics normal. They look so bizarre to me now.
I disagree that Shatner's Rocket Man is a "novelty song". In this instance singing is irrelevant because he completely transforms the song into another form. It is an example of his incredible skill as an actor and an orator and shows off every single bit of his Shakespearean training. It's always been an incredibly sad song, but he brings a pathos to it that is unparalleled, and also a bit of humour.
That one? Probably just a cigarette, the ones he had before he got on stage might be another matter....:)). The way he pauses on the word "high" and then continues, "as a kite by then". If anyone else tried to do it it would just be an obvious gag, but Shatner layers it with personal meaning.
I know I’m showing my age, but the name of that show was “77 Sunset strip.”
Followed by two finger snaps
That's right, Daddy-O.
It must’ve caught on. Cf: Dobie Gillis and the Addams family.
They were supposed to be private dicks, as I recall, but they seemed to spend more time tooling around in their convertible looking for girls.
There’s always been some quotient of talent in every generation, but talentlessness has never been encumbered by limits.
It worked.
When the top 40 radio format was being formulated, the creators determined that the average pop radio listener was a 13 year old girl, she was "stupid" and got poor grades in school besides, and she mostly wanted to hear love songs. She would not change the station to seek out her favorite song, but she would change the station to get away from commercials or a song she didn't like.
I thought that a refreshingly realistic take, looking at the consumers you actually have.
Those radio programmers were well aware that a teenybopper's money is just as green as the most sophisticated opera lover's. From the point of view of the music business, a dollar earned from "Kookie Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb" is worth exactly the same as a dollar earned from a timeless Joan Sutherland tour de force.
This is the nature, and, if you like, the fundamental flaw of capitalism. The value of a dollar is ever always only exactly one dollar. It does not matter whether it is AI schlock or a transcendent artistic statement, whether the artist is a good person or not, whether it comes from teaching inner city kids to read, or selling poison to those same kids. A dollar is the same as every other dollar.
This 13 year-old girl sounds a lot like Frank Zappa's description of Debbie, in his autobiography.
This reminds me of the phrase that goes, "He knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
A favorite leftie slogan of the Cold War years. Put you on the side of Free Trade, yet not opening one to charges of Commie doctrinaire. Also, without opening one up to being swallowed within market-driven US cultural sensibilities in evaluating 'new product' (and sub-culture).
It also can open the door to introducing folks to deep yuks and practical applications via LP's like the Various (Non-Singer Celebrity Vocal\Situ 'stylists') such as Central Casting circa 1950's cop templates like Jack Webb who carry well-orchestrated (even R&B 'hip' arranged tracks in the 1960's on Various Artist collections that became multi-generational TV gag tracks beloved on late-night FM free-form radio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo522Wb40bU&list=PL17Gx3vFMOc7zbDWCp7sGRVde4vVlZZZl
"Golden Throats"
ripped from Various Artists collected LP that yielded a Volume 2 when such TV celebrities and A&R selections created demand for such yuks at the expense of TV celebrities: posted by Jarrett McCall
1 / 15
...Also a la truly underground surreptitious prank phone-callers and entertainment\political activist situational hoaxers a la this pair that took it to big & small screen film success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8BK2RFFTA
"The Yes Men Fix The World (2010)--Part 7/7"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL7J1t-F7DA
"The Yes Men Fix The World (2010)--Part 1/7"
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what would a system look like that had "empty dollars" and "whole dollars" like empty calories and whole nutrition? something worth considering...
I don't honestly know, perhaps like a fish might have a hard time explaining water.
that's certainly the problem with getting there... but can it be imagined? dream it to do it :)
like... if you're saving the whole dollars vs the empty dollars, maybe the empty dollars lose value over time while the whole dollars gain?
i'm no economist, just enjoy thinking about these things...
To get a sense consider that, in theory, the only color that matters is green, the color of one's money, but Negroes, as they were called back then, would often find that their skin color made their dollars sort of "empty".
that's certainly the problem with getting there... but can it be imagined? dream it to do it :)
like... if you're saving the whole dollars vs the empty dollars, maybe the empty dollars lose value over time while the whole dollars gain?
i'm no economist, just enjoy thinking about these things...
Should mention that Byrnes played the lecherous dance show host in Grease. That's how most post-boomers recognize him. And he was wonderfully funny in the role.
Hmm, I knew of Avakian from his jazz background, but not this. Would he have said, "Dude looks like a jazz horn player; can't blow, so what?" (Remember Jack Klugman on Twilight Zone?)
What's sad about GA's attitude is that by this time (1958), Buddy Holly had demonstrated rock's potential by crossbreeding R&B with country and succeeding while looking nerdy. Then the Everly Bros put tight harmonies into rock and we're halfway to The Beatles.
Although this novelty song is silly, at least it isn't vulgar. Eventually there were well-written/produced novelty tunes; the mini Pop Opera "Leader of the Pack" comes to mind.
For whatever reason, the Edd "Kookie" Byrnes clip reminded me of the "speaking jive" scene in the movie Airplane. Similar cadence and intonation.
Too bad we didn't have subtitles back then. June Cleaver would make a credible mom to Edd Byrnes.
This was where my mind went. ‘Oh yes, officer, I speak jive’. Second, I’m reminded of Stan Freeburg, ‘high school ooh ooh’. Which unfortunately for us jazz cats, was not an eventual description of reality.
I once received a birthday card with a message on the front that said, "It's not who you are, it's just what you wear that counts." On the inside, it read, "Because, who really cares who you are, anyway." It still seems like all you need to do is roll up your collar on the back of your neck, and everything is cool, Daddy-o.
signed "the culture that made you" :)
Wow, i really like that card. Tis so true
Wasn't that Beau Brummel's shtick?
Phase II was Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Annette etc. Thank God the Beatles showed up.
We used to call them "Cute guys with great haircuts."
I was in elementary school then and really wanted hair like Fabian. All I ended up with was a standard flat top. I keep telling my grandsons that if they really want to be counter culture, forget the green or purple hair (nobody cares) but go flat top, and maybe the whole NASA engineer look.
I know. Flat tops weren't exactly Bill Haley's flip curls, but, with some Vasaline, they were pretty cool.
On whether Kookie was the first influencer or not, it depends what you mean by an influencer. A true influencer acts as a thought leader for his or her followers. Kookie wasn't that. He was a manufactured Elvis who came three years after the King hit it big. I remember him as a cosplay rock star, and the screaming girls as cosplay fans. Everything in the '50s had that party-time silliness to it.
Later, The Beatles inspired their own cosplay imitators, The Monkees. I tried out for that show and was the first runner up for Peter Tork's part. As much I wanted to act and write songs for A BIG SHOW, I'm now glad I didn't make the cut. I'd still be straining to sing "Last Train to Clarksville," a song actually written by Boyce and Hart, with my shaky 78-year-old voice.
I put "Kookie" as a safe made for TV James Dean. As TV always, it was 5 years late for the whole early 50's Brando/Dean rebel movement. Face it he wasn't an influencer, he was a clown and foil for the straight characters. As to his "music", it wasn't the first time a producer saw a way to make a buck off a valuable product. The remarkable thing is that somebody was able to make a saleable record.
Jack
Unlike an earlier influencer, Lord Byron who was "mad, bad and dangerous to know". I think the influencer thing took off in the early 19th century with industrialization and a growing consumer class.
Speaking of musical connections: I remember "Kookie" from 77 Sunset Strip, which starred (among others) Efrem Zimabalist, Jr. -- the son of the famous classical violinist.
So great! I was 14 and watched American Bandstand every day after school when doing my homework. I can't believe that I found Kookie's antics normal. They look so bizarre to me now.
There really should have been an Edd Byrnes "Twilight Zone" episode.
He was the ginchiest...
I disagree that Shatner's Rocket Man is a "novelty song". In this instance singing is irrelevant because he completely transforms the song into another form. It is an example of his incredible skill as an actor and an orator and shows off every single bit of his Shakespearean training. It's always been an incredibly sad song, but he brings a pathos to it that is unparalleled, and also a bit of humour.
It is a compelling INTERPRETATION and what is IN that cigarette?
That one? Probably just a cigarette, the ones he had before he got on stage might be another matter....:)). The way he pauses on the word "high" and then continues, "as a kite by then". If anyone else tried to do it it would just be an obvious gag, but Shatner layers it with personal meaning.
I also LOOOOVE his interpretation of Common People. So very good.
Yes, a brilliant version. Helped immensely by Joe Jackson.
It happened with cartoons. Think of the brilliance of warner brothers cartoons, and reflect on Clutch Cargo.
And his dog Paddlefoot.
That show was animated only given a rather generous definition of "animated".
Here's a thought:
Human beings will most often act like they are treated.
In the 20th century the consumer society was pushed as a model throughout society. (Please research Edward Bernays)
Culture is the glue that holds society together. It is a sort of shared consciousness.
Bubblegum music is what stuff like this was called. Another term was filler.