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Book "Electronics of Rock and Roll"

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vladan3101 View Drop Down
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    Posted: January 29 2024 at 10:32

The book has two chapters on Prog Rock: one discussing various definitions of Prog Rock, the other how vinyl LP, electronic instruments (Hammond organ, Mellotron, synthesizers, special effects), multi-track tape recorders, Hi-Fi stereo systems, Pirate radio in Europe and Prog Rock FM radio in the USA etc. enabled and shaped many aspects of this genre.

In other sections, the book covers the history of early acoustic recordings, AM radio and "Top 40," amplification and PA systems, loudspeakers, electric guitars, vinyl and magnetic recordings, FM, analog TV, etc.,  showing that there would not have been any rock and roll as we know it without advances in these audio and electronic technologies. 

Newer digital technologies like CD, DSD, samplers, sequencers, surround sound systems, MIDI, audio compression and audio editing software are also covered, although they came too late to influence most of rock and roll and even Prog Rock music in its heydays. They did impact the form and provided new distribution channels for all kinds of popular music that followed.

For each of these technologies, a detailed explanation of the working principles and a technical description is provided on a popular level, with no background in STEM required in order to understand.

A detailed explanation of the imperfections in analog and digital audio recordings is presented, with a special emphasis on vinyl disks. LPs are regaining popularity rapidly with the "vinyl revival." Many aspects of vinyl disk performance seem not to be properly understood these days, mainly because most of the analyses predate WW2, and many results have been largely forgotten by now.

The book is written by an electronic engineer, the author of the first two papers on distortions in vinyl reproduction in the "Journal of Audio Engineering Society" in almost 50 years (https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=22236 and https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=21560), and also an old Prog Rock fan who worked as a journalist in a rock magazine in his youth. Although popularly written, the book provides a rather rigorous presentation of the science of audio engineering and Hi-Fi. This is in contrast to much of the traditional Hi-Fi literature, which is often a source of misconceptions that muddy the layman's view of the whole audio engineering discipline.

Available in paperback and hardcover, with B&W (https://www.amazon.com/Electronics-Rock-Roll-Electrnics-Enabled/dp/B0CR832NVZ) and color interior (https://www.amazon.com/Electronics-Rock-Roll-Enabled-Shaped/dp/B0CPJYFB37). The Read Sample link gives a complete "Table of Contents" and more details about the book and the author. 


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 29 2024 at 14:27
Hi,

I would like to read this ... and would review it. The descriptions are much closer to a lot of things that I write about here on PA and its changes in time since the 60's ... no rock/prog music history can be complete without it.

And a mention of the American FM radio? I have been, for quite since the 70's a person that attributes a lot of the progressive music fame to the American FM radio and how it helped sell so much stuff ... sadly enough, in many things I mention/write about this, a lot of it is lost in the translation. Folks are mostly into "song" and their sense of history seems distorted to my view of things having been right next to the FM and its major/massive importance, and also having been a part of the start of Space Pirate Radio in January 1974 ... something that brought out even more new music than most folks can actually conceive. I posted a listing once from 1974 of the few of Guy's shows I recorded (had over 350 hours all the way to 1981) ... and the list was so far and wide ... as to not have a single comment or appreciation for the ability that FM radio presented ... at least in Southern California. It explains why so many artists have done ID's for Guy's show, knowing that they have been played on the other side of the world!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vladan3101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 29 2024 at 21:38
Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

And a mention of the American FM radio? I have been, for quite since the 70's a person that attributes a lot of the progressive music fame to the American FM radio 

The book talks about the Prog Rock FM radio quite a bit, as one of the enablers of Prog Rock in the USA. This is often forgotten now, but not completely (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_rock_(radio_format)).

The book also talks about Radio Luxemburg and Pirate stations in Europe, without which we might not have had much R&R in the UK and possibly no British Invasion in the 1960s. In their biographies, Keith Richards and Paul McCartney talked about listening to Radio Luxemburg in their formative years.

In Europe, most radio stations were state-owned or state-sponsored (and even state-controlled behind the Iron Curtain) and played virtually no rock and roll (with a possible exception of some Pat Boone covers). 

Without Radio Caroline and a few other pirates, BBC would probably not have launched the BBC 1. I am not 100% sure because it was half a century ago, but to the best of my recollection, I first heard both Jethro Tull and Jimmy Hendrix on John Peel’s show on BBC 1.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Gerinski Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 30 2024 at 01:28
Hello Vladan. It looks very interesting!

I'm in Europe (Spain). I see that the book is already available at Amazon.es but it says it is offered as paperback (price 47,76 €) or hardcover (price 95,76 €!!). However you talk about the book being available as B&W or colour. Maybe Amazon.es has mistaken B&W by "paperback" and colour by "hardcover"? Could you confirm this?
As you can imagine a price in Europe of 95 € is very expensive! Even 47 € for a B&W book is quite expensive...

Cheers


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vladan3101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 30 2024 at 08:23

In Spain, the black and white version is at https://www.amazon.es/Electronics-Rock-Roll-Electrnics-Enabled/dp/B0CR832NVZ and goes for 33.53 €.  Your link is for colo(u)r versions.  All three seem more expensive than in the USA, not sure why, possibly VAT?  The hardcopy color version in the USA is priced at $90, Google says that it corresponds to 83.4 €, paperback in color is $48, about 44 €.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vladan3101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 30 2024 at 08:41
Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

Hello Vladan. It looks very interesting!
As you can imagine a price in Europe of 95 € is very expensive! Even 47 € for a B&W book is quite expensive...
Got another question about price.  Please note that the book is in large format (11 x 8.5 inches, the US letter size, close to the European A4) and has about 325 pages. The printing costs are quite high, and VAT does not help.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Gerinski Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 30 2024 at 09:11
Originally posted by vladan3101 vladan3101 wrote:

Got another question about price.  Please note that the book is in large format (11 x 8.5 inches, the US letter size, close to the European A4) and has about 325 pages. The printing costs are quite high, and VAT does not help.
Thanks, it's clear now. Just to estimate the impact of B&W vs colour, may I ask about the pictures content? Many of them or just a few? Perhaps many of them B&W anyway? Spread in most pages or just a few pages with all the pics?

Thanks again, 



Edited by Gerinski - January 30 2024 at 09:15
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vladan3101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 30 2024 at 12:13
Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

Just to estimate the impact of B&W vs colour, may I ask about the pictures content? Many of them or just a few? Perhaps many of them B&W anyway? Spread in most pages or just a few pages with all the pics?

The book has around 250 figures, spread evenly among the pages. About half are diagrams and drawings that are mostly in color but were prepared so that they can be viewed in B&W  (i.e. if the graph has red and blue lines, one is solid, and the other is dashed). My estimate is that more than half of the photographs are in the B&W originally because many are quite old (in the color version, they are shown in blue hues).

The color version on glossier paper looks nicer IMHO, but in terms of reading and understanding the content, the B&W version is completely fine.




Edited by vladan3101 - January 30 2024 at 12:15
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Gerinski Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 30 2024 at 13:29
Originally posted by vladan3101 vladan3101 wrote:

The book has around 250 figures, spread evenly among the pages. About half are diagrams and drawings that are mostly in color but were prepared so that they can be viewed in B&W  (i.e. if the graph has red and blue lines, one is solid, and the other is dashed). My estimate is that more than half of the photographs are in the B&W originally because many are quite old (in the color version, they are shown in blue hues).

The color version on glossier paper looks nicer IMHO, but in terms of reading and understanding the content, the B&W version is completely fine.



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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vladan3101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 05 2024 at 21:43
Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

Well, as for the cover picture, I know it is rather non-descript of the prog genre, I initially wanted to have Emerson's Moog or a collage of several quintessential prog rock instruments, or a pic of Wakeman surrounded by his keyboards in the 70s or something like that.

I just ran into this quote from a different thread (related to Gerinski's book), and the problem sounded so familiar. I first wanted a photo of Emerson playing the Modular Moog on the cover, but could not find the copyright owner. Then I tried the photo of Wakeman surrounded by his keyboards from the inner sleeve of "Six Wives of Henry VIII," but could not get in touch with the photographer (Ruan O'Lochlainn). After I learned about the Google Lens option to search for a picture, not just the text, I found that Emerson's photo from the cover, reproduced hundreds of times all over the internet seemingly without any permissions, was taken by Barrie Wentzell, who worked for the "Melody Maker" in the 1970s and had his own website. After some negotiations, I managed to secure the right to reproduce it and received a high-res copy. Some parts of this quest are chronicled in sections 7.5 and the Acknowledgment, but the fun part is that I did get permission to reproduce a reconstruction of the "Six Wives" sleeve after all (Fig. 7-31). It was made by Ronaldo Lopes Teixeira, who makes mock-ups of various electronic keyboard instruments in the 1/6 scale as a hobby, which I found fascinating (www.facebook.com/ronaldo.lopesteixeira).


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Gerinski Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 06 2024 at 02:56
Originally posted by vladan3101 vladan3101 wrote:

 I just ran into this quote from a different thread (related to Gerinski's book), and the problem sounded so familiar. I first wanted a photo of Emerson playing the Modular Moog on the cover, but could not find the copyright owner. Then I tried the photo of Wakeman surrounded by his keyboards from the inner sleeve of "Six Wives of Henry VIII," but could not get in touch with the photographer (Ruan O'Lochlainn). After I learned about the Google Lens option to search for a picture, not just the text, I found that Emerson's photo from the cover, reproduced hundreds of times all over the internet seemingly without any permissions, was taken by Barrie Wentzell, who worked for the "Melody Maker" in the 1970s and had his own website. After some negotiations, I managed to secure the right to reproduce it and received a high-res copy. Some parts of this quest are chronicled in sections 7.5 and the Acknowledgment, but the fun part is that I did get permission to reproduce a reconstruction of the "Six Wives" sleeve after all (Fig. 7-31). It was made by Ronaldo Lopes Teixeira, who makes mock-ups of various electronic keyboard instruments in the 1/6 scale as a hobby, which I found fascinating (www.facebook.com/ronaldo.lopesteixeira).


Congratulations for having solved the Emerson pic rights issue, it's a wonderful pic, very famous and immediately recognizable and it makes for a great book cover.
I had already seen the miniature keyboards by Ronaldo Lopes Teixeira, they are amazing!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vladan3101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 20 2024 at 11:01
The book has two 5-star ratings so far, but it just received its first review:
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2024

  • Awesome book.
  • Comprehensive.
  • Extraordinarily entertaining while at the same time being technically informative in plain language.
  • Loaded with key charts, diagrams, tables, and photos of electronic equipment & milestone musicians. It is now one of my key reference sources. I learned a ton!
  • The Eastern European viewpoint is a definite plus- sprinkled with author's wit.
  • Impeccably written, and no matter what kind of music you like [beyond just Rock & Roll], you will so 'get it'.
  • I  got the hardcover and believe it is more than worth the extra cost vs. paperback black & white."
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote richardh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 20 2024 at 18:38
Originally posted by vladan3101 vladan3101 wrote:

Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

And a mention of the American FM radio? I have been, for quite since the 70's a person that attributes a lot of the progressive music fame to the American FM radio 

The book talks about the Prog Rock FM radio quite a bit, as one of the enablers of Prog Rock in the USA. This is often forgotten now, but not completely (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_rock_(radio_format)).

The book also talks about Radio Luxemburg and Pirate stations in Europe, without which we might not have had much R&R in the UK and possibly no British Invasion in the 1960s. In their biographies, Keith Richards and Paul McCartney talked about listening to Radio Luxemburg in their formative years.

In Europe, most radio stations were state-owned or state-sponsored (and even state-controlled behind the Iron Curtain) and played virtually no rock and roll (with a possible exception of some Pat Boone covers). 

Without Radio Caroline and a few other pirates, BBC would probably not have launched the BBC 1. I am not 100% sure because it was half a century ago, but to the best of my recollection, I first heard both Jethro Tull and Jimmy Hendrix on John Peel’s show on BBC 1.



I first heard ELP on Alan 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday afternoon show. He used to devote the entire 2 hours to rock and prog. John Peel once quipped that Fluff was the man who discovered Emerson, Lake and Palmer when they were only millionaires and turned them into multi millionaires.

I used to listen to Radio Luxembourg a lot when I was 12/13 years old, so much better than mainstream BBC radio if you wanted to hear the more interesting pop/rock bands such as Sparks and 10CC.

By some strange quirk of fate I was able to pick up Radio Caroline in the early 80's at least for a while even though I lived nowhere near the South East of England. They were still playing a lot of prog stuff even then.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 20 2024 at 19:51
Originally posted by richardh richardh wrote:

Originally posted by vladan3101 vladan3101 wrote:

Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

And a mention of the American FM radio? I have been, for quite since the 70's a person that attributes a lot of the progressive music fame to the American FM radio 

The book talks about the Prog Rock FM radio quite a bit, as one of the enablers of Prog Rock in the USA. This is often forgotten now, but not completely (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_rock_(radio_format)).

The book also talks about Radio Luxemburg and Pirate stations in Europe, without which we might not have had much R&R in the UK and possibly no British Invasion in the 1960s. In their biographies, Keith Richards and Paul McCartney talked about listening to Radio Luxemburg in their formative years.

In Europe, most radio stations were state-owned or state-sponsored (and even state-controlled behind the Iron Curtain) and played virtually no rock and roll (with a possible exception of some Pat Boone covers). 

Without Radio Caroline and a few other pirates, BBC would probably not have launched the BBC 1. I am not 100% sure because it was half a century ago, but to the best of my recollection, I first heard both Jethro Tull and Jimmy Hendrix on John Peel’s show on BBC 1.



I first heard ELP on Alan 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday afternoon show. He used to devote the entire 2 hours to rock and prog. John Peel once quipped that Fluff was the man who discovered Emerson, Lake and Palmer when they were only millionaires and turned them into multi millionaires.

I used to listen to Radio Luxembourg a lot when I was 12/13 years old, so much better than mainstream BBC radio if you wanted to hear the more interesting pop/rock bands such as Sparks and 10CC.

By some strange quirk of fate I was able to pick up Radio Caroline in the early 80's at least for a while even though I lived nowhere near the South East of England. They were still playing a lot of prog stuff even then.

Hi,

I miss, so much, the incredible feel of the early FM stations and the local station Guy Guden was on, I think that a lot of the stuff and I think we covered a lot of what was in Moby Disk (legendary importer of music in the early 70's!!! in Van Nuys), which of course, today, it is all visible and a lot of it has been put on a CD so we end up not missing it.

The sadness I feel is a lot of the shows in the Internet, these days, do not have a good enough variety and what I would think ... a crazy attitude ... towards all definitions of music, and SPECIALLY the bizarre top ten that we believe in ... and still post every month, and my issue is that other than a handful of us actually listen to some of that stuff, and more importantly, so much of it is a copy of the same sound and attitude in a lot of music. 

It was really exciting in 1974 and beyond for many years, that for a really good amount of time you would hear 20 different things in one night, and not one of them sound the same as the other.

Another important part of Guy's shows, that are not quite visible today since the progressive/prog audience is attuned to "song" (ave 4 to 5 or 6 minutes so it can be considered prog!), and Guy was quite different ... when Crime of the Century came out, he played it in its entirety, not to mention crying at home (we were roomates then) by listening to it, and later he got a copy of TLLDOB before the station, and he immediately played the whole thing when he went on at midnight ... and later said that he would play it again later in the morning. 

You have to let go of the rules and the "choices" with the marks and numbers ... to be able to do something different, and even today, I don't think anyone plays so many different things as Guy does ... heck I'm listening to a Twitch show from 08/12/2019 right now ... 

Electronics were important, and there was not a single Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze album (and many others!) that did not get played in their entirety during his time ... and the sad thing is that the top this and that disdains a lot of electronic stuff, and guess who has a direct link to various German labels and still plays the stuff left and right ... amidst other things these days, but the contrast is enchanting and very different ... this is not "the son of KC" show, or something called progressive presented in regular format (ave 5 to 6 minutes) which, SADLY ENOUGH will end up excluding a lot of electronic music ... heck I even got Beaver & Krause in those days, Artemyev amidst many other electronic things, which I liked after I got better attuned to it ... and was a massive part of Guy's show ... heck .. No Pusseefooting was played too in its entirety, not just a sample!

Maybe I'll end up doing an electronic show, but I don't have enough of the more recent German things ... to really be able to make it better and more special ... I imagine that no one around has as much as Guy does these days!

My take, btw, is that rock'n'roll tried hard to kill electronic stuff, so one band has a beautiful opening for 30 seconds and that's it for electronics ... kinda sad ... really! 


Edited by moshkito - March 20 2024 at 19:53
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vladan3101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 21 2024 at 10:41
Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

I first heard ELP on Alan 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday afternoon show. He used to devote the entire 2 hours to rock and prog. John Peel once quipped that Fluff was the man who discovered Emerson, Lake and Palmer when they were only millionaires and turned them into multi millionaires.

I remember Freeman, not as well as Peel, but I remember him well enough. Just did a search, he is mentioned several times in the book.  I don’t recall him playing the EL&P albums, but I remember days when we could hear the entire “Tarkus” and “Pictures at an Exhibition” on the radio. Scott Muni did the same for them in the USA, he is even mentioned on the EL&P's page on Wikipedia for doing that.

It bothers me tremendously that no such thing is possible on any radio programs these days. “Classic Rock” FM stations would play some excerpts here and there, but never a full-length piece if it is longer than maybe 10 minutes. I caught “Thick as a Brick” on Deep Tracks on Sirius XM some time ago, and even they faded it out halfway through the first side.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Gerinski Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 21 2024 at 11:17
Hi Vladan, congratulations for that first 5-star review! Receiving positive reviews is very rewarding, my book has got so far 19 reviews of which 17 are 5-stars (and 1 of the others is because the person received a copy with bad printing quality). And the Spanish version has 18 reviews all of them 5-stars.

Honestly I didn't order it yet, it's not a cheap book, even less considering shipping to Spain, but it stays on my wish list.

Regarding radio stations playing prog, nowadays it's indeed unthinkable listening to prog on any regular FM stations, but fortunately we have internet radio which did not exist back then, and there are a few dedicated to prog.


Edited by Gerinski - March 21 2024 at 11:30
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote richardh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 21 2024 at 23:35
Originally posted by vladan3101 vladan3101 wrote:

Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

I first heard ELP on Alan 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday afternoon show. He used to devote the entire 2 hours to rock and prog. John Peel once quipped that Fluff was the man who discovered Emerson, Lake and Palmer when they were only millionaires and turned them into multi millionaires.

I remember Freeman, not as well as Peel, but I remember him well enough. Just did a search, he is mentioned several times in the book.  I don’t recall him playing the EL&P albums, but I remember days when we could hear the entire “Tarkus” and “Pictures at an Exhibition” on the radio. Scott Muni did the same for them in the USA, he is even mentioned on the EL&P's page on Wikipedia for doing that.

It bothers me tremendously that no such thing is possible on any radio programs these days. “Classic Rock” FM stations would play some excerpts here and there, but never a full-length piece if it is longer than maybe 10 minutes. I caught “Thick as a Brick” on Deep Tracks on Sirius XM some time ago, and even they faded it out halfway through the first side.


Freeman was my entry point for prog pretty much. Famously he played the whole of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here on his show when it was first released and it later became his favourite album. ELP - Brain Salad Surgery was also an album he championed and also listed as a personal favourite.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 22 2024 at 06:31
Originally posted by vladan3101 vladan3101 wrote:

...

It bothers me tremendously that no such thing is possible on any radio programs these days. “Classic Rock” FM stations would play some excerpts here and there, but never a full-length piece if it is longer than maybe 10 minutes.

...

Hi,

All "Classic Rock" stations in America are corporate owned and generally do not play independent stuff, and their play list is related almost exclusively to the material their groups distribute around America, which is probably about 80% now ... and that number will slowly fade away and go down as more and more people buy things off downloads and pick up the CD online, so you don't have to wait for a distribution group to wake up.

Regarding the "Classic Rock" plays, it is usually a tape (or mp3 these days ... cheaper!) and it is distributed the same. Just recently I wondered if the stuff repeated elsewhere and I marked down a sequence of pieces while at 7-11 getting some morning brew, and sure enough I got home and turned on my boom box and it was some FM station ... same sequence ... and that was 30 minutes after my 7-11 visit.

The tough part is that the "ratings" system that many stations used years ago, is gone ... so if the Classic Station has only 5 listeners, you are still going to be fed the same stuff.

We need another FM radio explosion, that is another new way to present music, and mostly new music as a angered response to the commercialization of it all, that is gone over the top and not given us anything new for some 30 to 40 years now. However, I don't see this happening since the majority of "radio" done on the Internet, is not different and understands what created "progressive" and "prog" which was to disdain all the rules and do something else. What you find in 9 out of 10 shows is just a bunch of songs, and too many of them have a similar sound ... and that's the difference .... in the old days, on any FM station in 1074/1975 or so, you would hear 10 completely different things ... and an hour has passed by before you noticed it.

We have to revolt to the commercialization of all this by corporate groups and their controls, but before we do that we need a new FCC since the folks running it are the same folks that are a part of the major music corporations!



Edited by moshkito - March 22 2024 at 06:32
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vladan3101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 22 2024 at 09:55
Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

We have to revolt to the commercialization of all this by corporate groups and their controls, but before we do that we need a new FCC since the folks running it are the same folks that are a part of the major music corporations!

The book has two chapters on Prog FM radio, one dealing with its (improbable) birth and the other with its demise. Besides changes in music taste (and we must admit that the popularity of Prog Rock faded quite a bit later in the 1970s),  it was mainly due to commercialization indeed. Let me quote one paragraph, it will be faster:
  • What killed Prog Rock Radio? After reading several books on the subject, the best answer I could find is probably the one that Susan Douglas offered in hers: FM accounted for one third of all radio listening but only 14% of all radio revenues” in 1974. Ms. Douglas does not mention Lee Abrams, but two other well-informed books I consulted heavily for this chapter, by Richard Neer and Marc Fisher, both agree that he was one of the individuals most responsible for transforming the FM radio from a creative and chaotic amalgam of voices, personalities, and weird programming ideas into the present cookie-cutter state of the FM affairs.

Based on his marketing research, Abrams came up with the incredibly successful ratings-wise “Superstar” radio format, with fixed playlists and no DJ escapades that almost all “classic rock” FM stations follow nowadays. The other reason was probably the digitalization of radio programming via software tools to automate the process. Let me quote the last paragraph of that chapter once again:

  • In the longer run, digital technology and computers provided the radio station owners with the means to maximize ratings, which means their revenue, while minimizing their program production costs. Prog FM Radio could not survive this double-pronged squeeze the way it was, and we ultimately got the FM radio we have now. It changed irreversibly long before satellite radio and internet streaming transformed the broadcasting landscape, based purely on technological advances. And the deregulation policies of the Clinton era, which removed almost all restrictions on the ownership of radio stations, including the ownership of multiple stations in the same market, stifled the competition. Companies like Clear Channel could buy radio stations left and right to end up controlling more than 1,200 radio stations by the year 2000. It would probably not surprise you that Clear Channel also bought one of the major companies that make radio programming software (RCS – Radio Computing Services). Nor that it could ban somebody as radical as the Dixie Chicks from all their stations because of a comment they made in 2003 criticizing President George W. Bush.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 23 2024 at 08:18
Originally posted by vladan3101 vladan3101 wrote:

...
What killed Prog Rock Radio? After reading several books on the subject, the best answer I could find is probably the one that Susan Douglas offered in hers: “ FM accounted for one third of all radio listening but only 14% of all radio revenues” in 1974. 
...
HI,

I believe this is a falsehood, as in LA, at least 2 stations were top, and in Santa Barbara one station was top, and in SF there were a couple of stations that were up there.

To my ears, it seems like typical mis-information so "radio" business seems much more important than the new music ... which of course, they were wrong about. 

I can not say when the FM stations came to make some money, and you might have to ask Guy Guden about it, but it might have been when the stations "stopped" being about the local businesses, and started taking on the "national accounts" which added easily 10/20 times more money! So, there might not have been as much business, because all of these FM stations WERE LOCAL and served LOCAL INTERESTS, which died complete when the National Accounts showed up and the main killers? Army, Navy, Pepsi and Coke.

A couple of years later it didn't matter ... no local place of business could afford the higher prices and a year or two later the great American Corporate Rape of FM Radio took place, when the major companies bought all the FM stations and turn them into the repetitive crap of today as a "Classic" station.

The worst example of it all was the incredible dismantling of KMET in LA and no one gave a damn, and the big name company owner didn't care what anyone thought, and the next day the station only had washing machine music called New Age ... 

One last topic ... both electronics and progressive music NEVER DIED ... artists don't disappear of the face of the earth and please stop that commercial idea that progressive died. It continued, hower it did not have the advantage of FM radio anymore since it had gone "Classic" already ... and you only need to look at the amount of music discussed, sold and found these days, to realize it did not die. A lot of commercial interests like the idea that it died, so their product would look better ... and its sales prettier.

I do with, and this is not a thought about you at all, that we had more respect for the ART FORM ... we don't and continually think that it died, when the arts NEVER die, they might change some clothing, but they never die! And I am just not sure that you know, or understand that. It is an important moment for the 80's, but the fact that today, that material is better known than ever supports the idea that it never died ... and I really am not sure why folks think that it died, unless they are proactively suggesting that the record companies and commercial interests were right and all the artists were idiots and megalomaniacs.

That's just crazy!!!


Edited by moshkito - March 23 2024 at 08:18
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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