Category Archives: Today in history

Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

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WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

June 16, 1966 announcement

NYC WOR-FM Goes Rock

Scott Muni…Saturday 8 October 1966, the first day of DJs on WOR-FM

In the New York metropolitan area, we Boomers had grown up listening to AM music in our parents’ car (when they’d let us) or on our own transistor radios (when we finally got one).

We could watch teenagers dance to the top singles on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. His shows included a lip-synched performance by a current top 10 artist or band: like this one by Roy Orbison on June 5, 1966.

WOR-FM switched to its rock format on July 31. I remember seeing advertisements beforehand and using my parents’ radio–it had FM unlike my AM-only transistor radio.

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

WOR-FM Goes Rock

WOR-FM Goes Rock

I didn’t realize that union difficulties meant no DJs at first. All I knew was that the lack of DJ chatter meant more room for music. And that’s what I wanted. The down side was that if I heard a song I liked but didn’t recognize (e.g., Buffalo Springfield‘s “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”) I was stuck.

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

Those songs of those first days were far from the future of album-oriented playlists. Here’s are some examples from that first day:

  1. Supremes, “Can’t Hurry Love”
  2. Supremes, “Baby Love”
  3. Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames, “Get Away”
  4. Simon & Garfunkel, “Dangling Conversation”
  5. Rolling Stones, “Mother’s Little Helper”
  6. Beatles, “Paperback Writer”
  7. Petula Clark, “You’re the One”
  8. Bobby Moore & the Rhythm Aces, “Searching For My Love”
  9. Frank Sinatra, “Strangers in the Night”
  10. Sandy Posey, “Born a Woman”
  11. The Capitals, “Cool Jerk”
  12. Herb Albert, “A Taste of Honey”
  13. [I don’t know and neither does Shazam] 
  14. Tommy Roe, “Sweet Pea”
  15. Billy Stewart, “Summertime”
  16. Ruby and the Romantics, “We Can Make It”
  17. The Supremes, “Back In My Arms Again”
  18. David Garrick, “Dear Mrs Applebee”
  19. Them, “Gloria’s Dream”
  20. Percy Sledge, “Warm and Tender Love”

Quite a variety, but obviously not the album cuts that many of us would come to love.

As WOR-FM’s DJ gained experience and confidence with the evolving format, management began to balk. Murry the K left in August 1967.  His replacement, Jim O’Brien, played more of a Top 40 format that management preferred to the free-form that had started to happen. By the fall of 1967, the Top 40 format, much like the traditional AM format, had happened. [Music Radio 77 article]

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

WOR-FM Goes South

On October 2, 1967, DJ Rosko announced his departure and the reasoning for that departure right on the air. His discussion reflect the thinking and the approach that some young people were realizing was a preferred format and one that they had become attached to (click to listen):

WNEW-FM took up the reins of that more relaxed, increased choice, and variety-filled approach the fall of 1967. Rosko arrived. Scott Muni arrived. Alison Steele (already there) became the “Nightbird.” Jonathan Schwartz and Dick Summer also became part of that line-up.

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

Beatles, Music of the 60s, Today in history

Beatles Let It Be

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Beatles Let It Be

&
“The Long and Winding Road”
June 13, 1970

The Beatles were essentially no more in 1970. Only a few recordings and slim hopes remained.

Apple had released the Let It Be album on May 18. It had the highest number of advance orders for any album in the US record industry, with an astonishing 3,700,000 orders placed. The album retailed at $7, creating a gross sales figure of $25,900,000 before it was even released. [Beatle Bible article]

Despite crushed hopes, on June 13, 1970 we fans gave our musical brothers two #1s: a single and an album.

Beatles Let It Be
YouTube “Long and Winding Road”
Beatles Let It Be

Long and Winding Road

Their last #1 single.

“The Long and Winding Road” single seemed to say it all. Especially when Paul sang, “The wild and windy night that the rain washed away/Has left a pool of tears crying for the day/Why leave me standing here, let me know the way.”

Wasn’t he singing what we were thinking?

Beatles Let It Be

Tells the story

In an ironic twist, the song reflects the progression of the Beatles’s demise. First, Paul McCartney did have the Beatles’s disharmony in mind when he wrote it. They (and Billy Preston) first recorded it in January 1969. It was a simpler version than the one that Phil Spector produced in April 1970. Those orchestral embellishments upset and maddened McCartney. So much so, that later, in his legal citations for the break up, he used those embellishments, done without his permission, as one of the reasons.

Allan Pollack says this (and much more) about the single:  in spite of his [McCartney’s] unabashed and sometimes even shameless sentimentality, he comes up with an affecting, durable torch song with “The Long And Winding Road”. The secrets of his success are to be found in the manner in which novel approaches to form and harmonic structure underscore the emotional core of the song, and belie whatever curbside surface clichés it has which may initially turn you off.

Beatles Let It Be

Let It Be

The Let It Be album was released on May 8, 1970. The Beatles last release. They had already broken up. The date most often used for that breakup is Paul’s public announcement on 10 April 1970.

They had actually recorded the album before the previous one, Abbey Road, thus forever creating fodder for fans to argue that Let It Be is the penultimate and Abbey Road the last.

Horseshoes and hand grenades.

Get Back was Let It Be’s original title  and intended, like its name suggested, to be a return to their musical roots. The single Get Back certainly gave that impression. A proposed album cover echoed their first album’s cover:

Beatles Let It BeDisruption after dissension delayed and delayed again the completion of the album.  Abbey Road intervened.

As they say in baseball, “You need a scorecard.”

Let It Be was not a critical success. However as I said previously about John and Yoko’s Some Time In New York City,  the Beatles on a bad day were always better than any critic on any day.

Beatles Let It Be

John Lennon, Music et al, Today in history

Plastic Ono Some Time NYC

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Plastic Ono Some Time NYC

John Lennon
Released June 12, 1972
“New York City” live @ Madison Square Garden Que pasa, New York?
Plastic Ono Some Time NYC

Life after the Beatles

The last Beatle album, Let It Be, was  already more than two years old. Each of the individual Beatles had been active since the breakup. Elvis met President Nixon and asked for a badge to be a drug czar. The FBI was investigating Lennon to back up a plan to deport him.

Life for John Lennon and Yoko Ono had become political. It is no surprise that Some Time in New York City happened.

Ironically, Lennon pursued this political avenue at the same time that traditional political singers such as Joan Baez and Judy Collins had moved away. No matter.

Plastic Ono Some Time NYC

In Your Face

The album was not a subtle one and smacked us right in the face with its first track: “Woman Is Nigger of the World.” To say some stations wouldn’t play it is an understatement.  The National Organization for Women awarded Lennon and Ono a “Positive Image of Women” citation for the song’s “strong pro-feminist statement” in August 1972.

The album cover resembled a newspaper with articles reflecting the songs. I’m sure the picture of President Nixon and Chairman Mao dancing nude didn’t help get Lennon off of Nixon’s Enemies List.

Plastic Ono Some Time New York City

Plastic Ono Some Time NYC

Some Time in New York City

It was a double-album with the second disc live material. The studio tracks were the main statements. All were co-written by Lennon & Ono except where noted:

Side one
  1. “Woman Is the Nigger of the World”
  2. “Sisters, O Sisters” (Ono)
  3. “Attica State”
  4. “Born in a Prison” (Ono)
  5. “New York City” (Lennon)
Side two
  1. “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
  2. “The Luck of the Irish”
  3. “John Sinclair” (Lennon)
  4. “Angela”
  5. “We’re All Water” (Ono)

Yoko Ono’s influence, presence, and art continued to rankle some fans and critics. Even today it seems de rigueur and reflexive for many to mock and demean her at the mention of her name .

Rolling Stone magazine still held powerful sway over what fans felt. Stephen Holden’s July 20, 1972 review read in part, ““except for ‘John Sinclair’ the songs are awful. The tunes are shallow and derivative and the words little more than sloppy nursery-rhymes that patronise the issues and individuals they seek to exalt. Only a monomaniacal smugness could allow the Lennons to think that this witless doggerel wouldn’t insult the intelligence and feelings of any audience.”

Time has been kinder than Holden, but still few today think of this work as Lennon’s best. [All Music review] [Ultimate Classic Rock review]

Having said that, Lennon on a bad day is far better than nearly all of us on any day.

Plastic Ono Some Time NYC