Easy Listening

Image: SeatacMedia

Today, we explore that strange Name That Tune genre of the instrumental cover of any given pop song originally called "Beautiful Music". "Muzak" Or "Easy Listening"

Or as most of us usually define it, "Elevator Music".

Today, the term "Easy Listening" gets tossed around carelessly to describe any non-descript Adult Contemporary vocal music. Michael Bolton, Lionel Richie, Celine Dion, Phil Collins and Natalie Cole, etc. get tagged as such. Or Smooth Jazz music like Lee Ritenour, Spyro Gyra, Kenny G. or Larry Carlton. While some Easy Listening radio stations play these acts, we're not talking about them.

We're talking about the real stuff.

Orchestras and instrumentalists with names like 101 Strings, Mantovani, Ray Conniff, The Hollyridge Strings, Henry Mancini, The Birchwood Pops Orchestra, Percy Faith and others.

Easy Listening is mostly defined as instrumental music. Vocals (if any) usually consisted of chorals and gender segregated by left/right stereo speaker channel (men on the left, women on the right. Or vice-versa.)

This may sound impossible, but at one time in the '70s and early '80s, it wasn't unusual to find at least two to as many as FIVE full power FM radio stations in some areas playing this very format. I am not making that up. Ask anyone over 40.

These radio stations were programmed for adults who couldn't tolerate the original versions of already schmaltzy pop hits. They wanted it with extra schmaltz.

There were even instrumental covers of instrumental hits.

"Music Box Dancer" Frank Mills (1978) was actually a Top 10 hit in the U.S. in 1979. But few easy listening radio stations played Frank Mills' original version, opting for any cover version from one of several piano players. When your schmaltz craving is this bad, you need to check yourself in for treatment....  

Back in the day in Seattle, we had KIXI, KEZX FM 99 (or as we called it in grade school, "K-Sleepy-X, FM Nighty-Nite"), "K-Bird FM 104" and the Queen Mother of all the Seattle elevator music stations, KSEA.


What kept America from a national emergency of mutually assured narcolepsy in the '70s and '80s was beyond me.

For the radio industry of the day, the choice was simple. First, it was the easiest radio format to automate.

Radio broadcasting industry trade advertisement for "The FM 100 Plan". One of several syndicators of the easy listening radio format. Photo: EasyListeningHQ.com

The FM 100 Plan also told you exactly HOW to program their format over the air on your station (Make. It. Real......Quiet.) And DON'T goof it up. They even sent reps around to the radio stations that carried the format to make sure they were conforming. Photo: EasyListeningHQ.com

Photo: EasyListeningHQ.com

Perhaps there was nothing worse for any young person in the '70s and '80s than having to go to the doctor's/dentist's office. Where these radio stations were the status quo soundtrack, wafting through the utilitarian waiting room furniture, abstract art on the walls, artificial potted palms, month old dog eared copies of Time, Highlights For Children and National Geographic on the tables and aquarium tanks with goldfish that never appeared to be moving.

How '70s/'80s kids felt with this music softly playing in the background in the waiting room at the doctor's or dentist's office....

 ....and here's what that sounded like:


It only added to the suffering of any kid already in pain who really wanted to hear some Kiss or Bay City Rollers. Or P-Funk. ANYTHING more rockin' than this dreck. We'd even put up with the country station.

But how did this supposedly non-intrusive audio wallpaper get so popular?

Well first, the genre came of age in the '50s. The Big Band sound was becoming passe and some of the famous 1940s Big Band stars (Benny Goodman, Harry James, Woody Herman, etc) had gravitated towards the be-bop sound of modern jazz. Early Easy Listening stars such as Ray Conniff and Henry Mancini got their starts in Big Band music.

It was also the pre-rock heyday of the pop crooner. Stars like Perry Como, Doris Day, Patti Page, Kay Starr and Eddie Fisher were ruling the pop charts.

But there were those (especially in the golden age of Hi-Fi) who yearned for instrumental pop music. Not the loud swinging brassy pop of the Big Bands, but something more genteel and mellow.

There were also G.I.'s returning from World War II from exotic places like Hawaii, The Philippines and the islands of French Polynesia and having been exposed to the rhythms and cultures from afar as well as worldy young bachelors with the latest stereo hi-fi equipment. Former Big Band leaders such as Martin Denny and Les Baxter noticed this and began the lounge music craze and exotically themed albums began popping up as fast as Tiki themed bars across America in the 1950s.


The craze for exotic instrumentals would continue well into the '60s with the Bossa Nova craze and the Latin Pop Jazz of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, which ruled the '60s easy listening sound.


Percy Faith was one of the first who took contemporary pop vocal music and made orchestrated instrumental covers of them    

       

"Thank you for waiting....Your patience is appreciated.....A customer service agent will be with you in 5 minutes......"

Jackie Gleason (yep, that Jackie Gleason), made a series of easy listening albums for Capitol Records from the 1950's to the '70s. He wrote and conducted his own arrangements.

In the 1980s however, the tide began to turn for Easy Listening. Stations began dropping the instrumental cover versions and playing straight ahead Lite Adult Contemporary vocal music or flipping to different formats.

In Seattle, KIXI flipped to Adult Contemporary in 1981 as "KIXI Light", followed shortly by KEZX.

KEZX however moved to a format that would later be described as AAA, or Adult Album Alternative and they were one of the pioneering stations in that format. KEZX played The Grateful Dead, Tracy Chapman, Matt Bianco, Roxy Music, Jackson Browne and Tom Waits as well as eclectic newer rock, among others and became a local phenomena. And somehow for eight years, they got away with it.

You see, KEZX's owner was an 85 year old man named Roy Park. Being elderly and frail, he did not travel much and pretty much took his station managers word for how his radio stations were doing and what they were playing and to Roy Park, KEZX was still playing Percy Faith and 101 Strings, not David Bowie and Bonnie Raitt.

And here's what happened. In September of 1990, Roy had gotten word KEZX wasn't playing the easy listening format he had intended for it. And so he made a surprise visit to the station and the minute he walked in, he heard the station's hallway air monitors playing the station's new imaging liner "98.9 KEZX, The Northwest Progressive" and segue into some uptempo song that wasn't anything close to what he was expecting and he hit the ceiling. And fired everyone. Two weeks later, the format abruptly changed back to Easy Listening in spite of some very vocal listener protests. KEZX later became a Smooth Jazz station called KWJZ and is a "Modern Adult Contemporary" today called "Click 98.9"

KSEA changed to Adult Contemporary in February 1989 and I remember watching hundreds of music reel tapes going into the dumpster (unfortunately, I couldn't rescue any. And they're extremely valuable to Easy Listening music collectors today because they contain music that was never released commercially and a single complete music reel today can fetch $500. But in 1989, they were garbage I guess.)

By 1990, Easy Listening radio stations were dropping like flies. Every day for a while, another station dropped the format for a younger leaning format. Easy Listening went from nearly 500 radio stations in 1980 to about 30 in 1995.

But easy listening still has die hard fans. And even younger generations are doing what my generation would never be caught dead doing - actually enjoying it. (And I still play Name That Tune with it.)

And there are a few radio stations still playing this music:

Terrestrial:

1340/107.3 KWXY Cathedral City, CA




90.9 WKTZ Jacksonville, FL  (Update: WKTZ is no longer broadcasting over it's terrestrial signal, which was sold to Jesuscaster chain K-Love. Jones College however still streams it's easy listening format via http://jcr.jones.edu/)


95.9 KMGR Delta, Utah 

97.5 KNXR Rochester, MN (No web link) (Update: Sold, changed formats)

101.1 WAVV Naples, FL (No Audio Stream)

102.1 KAHM Prescott, AZ

106.3 WGCY Gibson City, IL



Online:
WQEZ-DB (This is a tribute station to WQEZ Stereo 96 in Birmingham, AL by a devoted listener.)      
Airstream.fm  (Audio Stream Back up 12/25/15)
CrystalRadio.ca

Radio Programs:
The Tiki Cha-Cha Club
The Elevator Club
Koop Kooper's Cocktail Nation
The Spin-O-Rama Hour
Jet Set Planet

Cable/Dish:
Music Choice
DMX

XM/Sirus:
Escape

LGBT Radio Stations

Happy Pride Weekend!

Through most of the early 20th century, most LGBT media was in print. And very underground. But there were plenty of nudge-wink songs on recordings and in night clubs. In the 1920s and early 1930s, there was a musical trend called "The Pansy Craze", which featured cross-dressing performers that was very popular in large cities before the Great Depression began. But after, it was a different story.


The very first known attempt at creating LGBT oriented radio happened in 1933 when a musical revue called Boys Will Be Girls, starring female impersonator Rae Bourbon was broadcast live over San Fransisco radio station KFWI. But the program barely started when police raided the club (which was heard live over the air) and Bourbon was arrested.

While freedom of the press was one inconsistent thing for LGBT media, freedom of speech over the radio was another altogether during the early and mid 20th century. Anything even casually referring to homosexuality was forbidden over the airwaves.

But LGBT oriented radio has around longer than you might think. It's beginnings were on radical, anything-goes progressive community radio stations such as WBAI New York, KPFA Berkeley and KRAB Seattle. 

In 1962, WBAI-FM New York aired the very first known completed  LGBT-oriented radio program, a roundtable discussion called Live and Let Live which chronicled the lives of 8 area gay men. After the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and through the 1970s, LGBT radio programs began appearing on Pacifica and unaffiliated public radio stations. KRAB-FM Seattle broke new ground by featuring weekly LGBT programming such as The Women's Survival Kit, WE: Women Everywhere and Amazon Media. Even one with a very tongue in cheek title Make No Mistake About It, It's a Faggot and a Dyke.

From a 1975 KRAB Radio listening guide. Image: krab.fm

However, this upswing for LGBT radio in the 1970's was seriously cut short in the 1980s after a new wave of social conservatism swept across America during the Reagan era. Programs that once aired frank discussions on LGBT issues were forced to tone down. Even as AIDS was becoming epidemic. Many LGBT programs simply vanished.

The fear was brought home when a lesbian program host on KRAB was intimidated by the FBI.     

In 1998, an upstart radio network called The Triangle Radio Network was formed in Palm Springs, CA and was carried on two Seattle area radio stations.

 

The network initially consisted of two small AM radio stations in the Seattle area, KBRO 1490 AM and KNTB 1480 AM (licensed to Lakewood, WA, a suburb of Tacoma.) 

The network consisted mostly of daily personality talk programs with some music added (the selection was up to whoever was on the air. I've heard everything from thrash metal to country) and electronic music overnights. It didn't have any real consistency, like Proud FM. It also appeared to be skewed to an older audience and completely missed the younger demographic. Being on low-fi, staticky monaural AM radio didn't help. 

(KBRO sticker from 1984, during their run as a soft rock station. Image: Radio Sticker of The Day)   

And KBRO, with only 1,000 watts and a tower in it's city of license across Puget Sound in Bremerton however has the added curse of having only a noisy rimshot daytime signal inside Seattle on the graveyard channel of 1490 kHz, which severely hindered nighttime reception outside of Bremerton. 

And KNTB on 1480 was even worse, It had daytime signal problems in Tacoma and it had to drop nighttime power to 111 watts. 

And when you can't even be heard 7 miles from both your own respective transmitter sites at 2am (did I mention this was on AM radio?) Well, you've got signal problems.

The Triangle Radio Network was never able to attract a sustainable audience. They never appeared in the Seattle/Tacoma ratings and major advertisers then were reluctant to advertise on a upstart network with no ratings. Especially one that was so niche and potentially controversial in 1998 and they folded in 2001. KBRO and KNTB are now Spanish language affiliates of ESPN Deportes.

But there's a few terrestrial AM/FM radio stations today that are programmed for the LGBT community and there will be more to come. I once talked to a marketing consultant a few years ago. He told me about it and he explained why; They're influential on others, they set the trends in everything. Many are upscale. And they like to shop.  

He emphasized those last few words with all the delicious, hand rubbing zeal you'd expect from a go-getter money guy. 

"Excellent....."

One of the difficulties of programming a commercial LGBT oriented radio station is what would you play? You can't necessarily target an entire genre of music on someone's sexual orientation any more than you can target an entire genre on someone's gender. Everyone is different. 

While there are entire sub-genres of music made by gay and lesbian artists specifically for the LGBT community, these artists are mostly unknown independent acts. And none of it has had any commercial familiarity or popularity outside of a very niche audience - even within the LGBT community itself.

And talk for the LGBT community is very difficult because while the range of topics are infinite, some of them are still unmentionable on the air in some more socially conservative backwaters at the risk of starting license threatening and very expensive and epic legal problems with government broadcasting regulators (such as the FCC in the United States and the CRTC in Canada)
  

CIRR 103.9 FM, (103.9 Proud FM) out of Toronto, Ontario Canada is the only terrestrial commercial LGBT oriented station that seems to have risen above all that. At first listen, you'd have a hard time telling the difference between Proud FM can any other CHR/Top 40 station on the dial. It's musical format mostly skews in that direction, with some upbeat '70s/'80s/'90s pop hits thrown in. It's just a feel good wall of non-stop party music.

Weeknights feature the syndicated Perez Hilton radio show (segments are pre-recorded and done as "voice tracks", dropped in between songs and commercial sets, similar to how John Tesh's program and Delilah is done on Adult Contemporary radio stations.) Weekends feature electronic, house and dance music and specialty programming. 

If you came for any torchy Judy Garland ballads, Proud FM probably isn't for you. They even play a strange upbeat dance remix version of "Someone Like You" Adele - one of these versions, I'm not even going to try and find which particular one.

(And if you think that's weird. You. Ain't. Heard. NOTHING. Yet. Not sure if Proud FM plays this. But hearing that Adele remix threw my AADD off on yet another tangent and I just had to see how many other modern Adult Contemporary radio ballads got that treatment. - L.)  

It's decidedly upbeat for a reason. First, depression sucks. Second, feel-good party music is better for a commercial LGBT station because it crosses over across the demographic spectrum, attracting straight people as well.

     

(Playing Proud FM also works for those unpleasant scenarios when you are absolutely out of Thorozine.)

However, Proud FM is not the very first attempt at a 24/7 LGBT commerical radio station.

 

3JOY 94.9 FM (Joy 94.9) Melbourne, Australia is currently the longest running all-LGBT radio station in the world and has been broadcasting since 1993.

 

And as this was going to print, a new low power FM station is going on the air this summer in Portland, OR. KPQR-LP 99.1 FM (Wild Planet Radio) is currently streaming now and their format musically is very similar to Proud FM.

Reader's Digest......Electronics?

You probably don't instantly think of your grandma's favourite magazine when it comes to audio equipment. But it is true. Reader's Digest really did sell stereos, radios and tape machines under their own brand name in the '60s, '70s and '80s.

"'A' My Name Is Alice" Donny & Marie Osmond (1976)

Somewhere, deep down in the 9th circle of hell sits a jukebox.

It's seen better days.

On selection A-1 of this particular jukebox is this song.

You are hearby warned.

The School Lunch Crisis

Image: KCPQ-TV

You may have heard about the outrageous incident in Kent, WA recently when a student who was 26 cents short on his school lunch card was not only denied his lunch, but the lunch was tossed in the trash and the student was humiliated in front of his peers.

http://q13fox.com/2014/06/11/kent-father-angry-after-son-is-denied-lunch-and-humiliated-at-local-middle-school/#axzz34vFqNfvM

It's not just in Kent, but around the nation and for far too long, we've been hearing similar reports of children being denied school lunches and bullied by the very people serving them due to an inability to pay.

It is a national embarrassment. And enough's enough. This is the United States of America. These are our kids, not inmates at a North Korean prison camp.

There was a time my mom couldn't afford my school lunch money. The lunch ladies served me anyway and gave me a form to take home to my mom about the reduced or free school lunch program. She'd send me back with it next day with her information. I still got lunch. Problem solved thereafter.

Why can't it still be this way?

Sometimes parents lost jobs, sometimes there would be financial hardships. The principals and teachers knew this and they would eagerly talk to parents and see if their kids qualified for reduced or free school breakfast/lunch programs until they got back on their feet. Sometimes a bully took your lunch money. It made no difference. You still got a decent lunch.

And we funded these programs well during the '50s, '60s and '70s. Granted, it wasn't the greatest taste explosion for some of us.

I couldn't wait for pizza day!

But for others, we'll never forgot them because they got us by and we looked forward to them, no matter what they seemed like to us.

People then never viewed it as a problem. Or as "socialism". Or any myriad of disgusting and completely WRONG analogies that never even appeared in the public discourse until the 1980s when the Reagan administration made devastating cutbacks in public education and drastically reducing funding for school lunch programs. A precedent that has only gotten worse.

Since that time, public education funding has dropped even further, leaving school districts to make up the balance in unpaid meals or to serve special alternate lunches for indigent children (a concept I find revolting because it marks poor children in the lunchroom, making them targets for bullies. Poor children in the school lunch program deserve exactly the same lunch offerings in the same portions as everyone else.)

School lunch programs were once viewed as an investment in children. An investment that has paid off incalculably since the 1940s. And we never thought twice about it. And it's time to let our representatives in Congress know we view it that way again. Because it is an investment in our children's education. And one of the worthiest.

But instead of talking about it, some of us are DOING something about it.

Come to Louie G's Pizza in Fife, WA Friday July 11th at 7:30pm for a spectacular all ages benefit show featuring cutting edge Northwest music from Boneshaker, Alien Nation, Q-Dot, Mister Von and Gossamer. Proceeds to go to a special fund to help needy local school children afford school lunches. A great night of music and fun for all at the Northwest's BEST place for live music, food and fun for the whole family. Voted among the Best in Western Washington by KING-5's Evening Magazine.

And please donate what you can to help.

https://www.facebook.com/events/490991297700830/