THE COUNTDOWN WILL NOT CONTINUE
Casey Kasem passed away a couple of weeks ago, but I was neck-deep in travel and work, so I didn’t have time to write something about him. Now I do, and there’s really no way I can’t blog about him.
Not because of the family melodrama over his healthcare, which doesn’t interest me at all, but because - like a lot of people my age - Kasem was an ubiquitous presence in pop culture, either via cartoon voiceovers (he WAS Shaggy Rogers) or American Top 40.
As a youngster, of course, I had no idea they were the same guy. I never made the connection between Shaggy and the guy doing the weekly countdown on the radio. (This was in the days before cartoons gave credits to the voice talent, and even when they did, the end credits typically ran at blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speeds. So sue me.) Once I found out, I was impressed that there was more to him than American Top 40.
That said, American Top 40 was itself a radio institution. American music fans tend not to be as chart-obsessed as (say) British music fans, but we do like to rank songs, and even though American Top 40 was based on strictly quantitative data from Billboard, there was something appealing about finding out what the top songs were - at least until you outgrew Top 40, discovered college radio and learned that there was so much better music out there.
One funny thing about American Top 40 is that, reportedly, a lot of people are writing tributes to Kasem hailing him as a sort of tastemaker of pop music who knew a hit when he heard one and didn’t let himself get pinned down by any single genre.
Which is, of course, ludicrous. Kasem didn’t decide anything - his weekly countdowns were determined by the Billboard charts. He was basically reporting the charts and movements, and giving a modicum of background for each track, without passing any personal judgments on them, yet sounding as though he liked each track. Which is what all DJs are supposed to do (unless they get paid to be opinionated). He was the equivalent of an anchorman reporting the news, but more personable and engaged rather than detached.
And he was very good at it. Arguably he was better at it than his eventual replacements Shadoe Stevens and Ryan Seacrest.
I suspect that’s why those studio outtakes of him swearing out the staff became a popular item. Some people just thought it was funny to hear Mr Clean Cut American Top 40 say “fuck”, but others hated Kasem (or more accurately hated the music on his show) and saw it as proof that the Corporate Rock advocated by Kasem and Tipper Gore was two-faced hypocritical bullshit, man.
Personally, I didn’t find it all that funny after the initial shock value wore off, if only because I was already in radio by then and hey, I’ve had bad days in the studio too. And I probably wouldn't like it if someone taped that and released it into the wild - especially if there was a chance it would cost me my reputation or my job. (For the record, I didn’t find that Bill O’Reilly Inside Edition meltdown outtake all that funny for similar reasons. Politically I think Papa Bear is way off the reservation, but I don’t think the tape proves anything except broadcasting is a stressful job, especially when you depend on other people doing their job so you can do yours.)
That said, I admit there’s something fascinating about the Kasem tape as a sort of contradictory pop-culture artifact. So I appreciate it better in the context of something like, say, Negativland’s notorious “U2” record.
Speaking of which, Negativland has marked Kasem’s passing by releasing the “U2” single in multi-track form and inviting fans to remix it and post the results on their site. I plan to give it a shot.
TRUE STORY: My first commercial radio job was running Casey's Countdown, a shorter version of Casey's Top 40, the show he did after quitting American Top 40 in 1988. The show was delivered to the radio station on six (6) vinyl records, so my job was to play the records and commercial spots and station IDs during the breaks. My first day on the job, I mixed up the records and played one side in the wrong order. Big fun.
Keep reaching for the stars,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1476510.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Not because of the family melodrama over his healthcare, which doesn’t interest me at all, but because - like a lot of people my age - Kasem was an ubiquitous presence in pop culture, either via cartoon voiceovers (he WAS Shaggy Rogers) or American Top 40.
As a youngster, of course, I had no idea they were the same guy. I never made the connection between Shaggy and the guy doing the weekly countdown on the radio. (This was in the days before cartoons gave credits to the voice talent, and even when they did, the end credits typically ran at blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speeds. So sue me.) Once I found out, I was impressed that there was more to him than American Top 40.
That said, American Top 40 was itself a radio institution. American music fans tend not to be as chart-obsessed as (say) British music fans, but we do like to rank songs, and even though American Top 40 was based on strictly quantitative data from Billboard, there was something appealing about finding out what the top songs were - at least until you outgrew Top 40, discovered college radio and learned that there was so much better music out there.
One funny thing about American Top 40 is that, reportedly, a lot of people are writing tributes to Kasem hailing him as a sort of tastemaker of pop music who knew a hit when he heard one and didn’t let himself get pinned down by any single genre.
Which is, of course, ludicrous. Kasem didn’t decide anything - his weekly countdowns were determined by the Billboard charts. He was basically reporting the charts and movements, and giving a modicum of background for each track, without passing any personal judgments on them, yet sounding as though he liked each track. Which is what all DJs are supposed to do (unless they get paid to be opinionated). He was the equivalent of an anchorman reporting the news, but more personable and engaged rather than detached.
And he was very good at it. Arguably he was better at it than his eventual replacements Shadoe Stevens and Ryan Seacrest.
I suspect that’s why those studio outtakes of him swearing out the staff became a popular item. Some people just thought it was funny to hear Mr Clean Cut American Top 40 say “fuck”, but others hated Kasem (or more accurately hated the music on his show) and saw it as proof that the Corporate Rock advocated by Kasem and Tipper Gore was two-faced hypocritical bullshit, man.
Personally, I didn’t find it all that funny after the initial shock value wore off, if only because I was already in radio by then and hey, I’ve had bad days in the studio too. And I probably wouldn't like it if someone taped that and released it into the wild - especially if there was a chance it would cost me my reputation or my job. (For the record, I didn’t find that Bill O’Reilly Inside Edition meltdown outtake all that funny for similar reasons. Politically I think Papa Bear is way off the reservation, but I don’t think the tape proves anything except broadcasting is a stressful job, especially when you depend on other people doing their job so you can do yours.)
That said, I admit there’s something fascinating about the Kasem tape as a sort of contradictory pop-culture artifact. So I appreciate it better in the context of something like, say, Negativland’s notorious “U2” record.
Speaking of which, Negativland has marked Kasem’s passing by releasing the “U2” single in multi-track form and inviting fans to remix it and post the results on their site. I plan to give it a shot.
TRUE STORY: My first commercial radio job was running Casey's Countdown, a shorter version of Casey's Top 40, the show he did after quitting American Top 40 in 1988. The show was delivered to the radio station on six (6) vinyl records, so my job was to play the records and commercial spots and station IDs during the breaks. My first day on the job, I mixed up the records and played one side in the wrong order. Big fun.
Keep reaching for the stars,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1476510.html. Please comment there using OpenID.