| She said, 'Always keep the poetry out.' She said they ruined lyrics. | |  |  | | He wishes he knew: Steve Lacy at Coachella, April 23, 2022. | | (Scott Dudelson/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | | rantnrave:// | Old and Not in the Way
In the late 1950s, when he was broadcasting his influential rock and roll radio show from the parking lot of SCRIVNER'S DRIVE-IN in Los Angeles in front of crowds of teenagers hungry for hamburgers and hits, ART LABOE noticed his listeners were strangely partial to songs from four or five years past. Today we'd call this "catalog" music. Back then people hadn't thought to call it anything, so Laboe came up with a name of his own: "oldies but goodies." For him, that might have meant the PLATTERS' "THE GREAT PRETENDER." Today it might mean something by DUA LIPA or TRAVIS SCOTT. Same basic principles though. Pop music isn't ephemeral, nostalgia has one hell of a beat, and it pays to pay attention to what the kids in front of you actually want to hear. From one simple observation in a drive-in restaurant parking lot came a career of innovations in broadcasting (the very idea of oldies radio, not to mention the name, pretty much started with him) and beyond. Laboe, who died Friday after more than 70 years on the air, was also a pioneer in producing compilation records—his first OLDIES BUT GOODIES album remained on the BILLBOARD chart for more than three years—and in film and TV licensing, in which he fought for artist royalties from groundbreaking music films like GEORGE LUCAS' AMERICAN GRAFFITI.
The music may have been old but Laboe's ideas were prescient, and they continue to live on in the source code of everything from APPLE MUSIC playlists to NETFLIX soundtracks. There are stories in today's mix about catalog sales, tribute bands and the competition between old hits and new singles—all testaments to the enormous power of oldies culture in the current pop ecosystem. But Laboe's ideas, it should also be noted, were rooted in music that was current when he first encountered it. Before the R&B and rock of the mid-1950s became oldies, it was new music that Laboe was among the first commercial DJs to play. "When ELVIS PRESLEY came to town in 1956 with manager COLONEL PARKER, their only interview granted was to Laboe," music historian HARVEY KUBERNIK wrote in his book TURN UP THE RADIO! POP, ROCK AND ROLL IN LOS ANGELES 1956-1972.
Like the music he played, Laboe's radio show crossed ethnic lines, as did the segregation-defying dance parties and concerts he promoted. He was an especially cherished voice in Southern California's Latino community, where the requests and dedications he welcomed became a kind of regional bulletin board. "His show was the first place a young Chicano kid had to air his feelings, the first place you could say something and be heard," author RUBEN MOLINA told the LA Times in 1989. "It was like an intercom where you could tell the world—our world—'I'm sorry' or 'I love so-and-so' and everyone knew the next day."
Laboe kept that intercom open as long as he could. He recorded his final show, for Palm Springs' KDAY-FM, last week and it aired Sunday night, two days after he died at age 97. "Radio," he told the Times, "is my life." RIP.
Musical Dissidence
Two Iranian musicians for your GRAMMY consideration: SHERVIN HAJIPOUR, whose protest song about the killing of MAHSA AMINI, "BARAYE," is responsible for 95,000 of the 115,000 submissions the RECORDING ACADEMY has received for its the new Best Song for Social Change award. Hajipour was arrested after the song went viral... And dissident composer MEHDI RAJABIAN, whose album IT ARRIVES is being promoted by artists' rights groups for another new Grammy category, New Age, Ambient or Chant Album. "We would like to underscore the very special situation this album was created under, with the producer and composer, Mehdi Rajabian, being isolated inside a totalitarian state," a letter to the Academy on his behalf reads. Rajabian has been arrested multiple times and is currently out on bail.
Etc Etc Etc
Setting up shop in venue lobbies and festival fields with the help of artists including HARRY STYLES, ARIANA GRANDE, BILLIE EILISH and BEYONCÉ, the nonpartisan nonprofit HEADCOUNT says it has registered more than 150,000 voters in 2022. "We're joined at the hip with the record industry," executive director ANDREW BERNSTEIN tells Variety... Las Vegas is such a bizarre place to put something called the PUNK ROCK MUSEUM that it's kind of a perfect place to put it, if in fact you must put such a thing anywhere. The museum, which plans to open in January, is being overseen by a group of 10 musicians and music execs led by NOFX's FAT MIKE, who says the criteria for inclusion is, "If you're a punk band, you're f***ing in"... Liverpool will host EUROVISION in 2023 in place of Ukraine, which earned the right to host by winning the 2022 competition. Ukraine had proposed three cities, including Kyiv, that it said could safely host the competition, but Eurovision organizers, citing safety concerns, asked 2022 runner-up England to host instead. "We're doing it for Ukraine first of all," Liverpool's director of culture, CLAIRE MCCOLGAN, said.
Rest in Peace
Motown songwriter/producer IVY JO HUNTER, who co-wrote Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street" and had credits on numerous singles by the Four Tops, the Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye, the Contours and others... Engineer/producer BROOKS ARTHUR, who recorded several '60s girl group classics and was nominated for three Grammys—he won one—for producing and recording Janis Ian's "Between the Lines" album... Baritone saxophonist RONNIE CUBER, whose career traversed jazz, Latin and pop, and who spent five years in the "Saturday Night Live" band in the 1980s... Japanese avant-garde composer TOSHI ICHIYANAGI.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
| | | | | | | | | | |  | | Culture Notes of an Honest Broker |
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