I Want, Uh...My MTV

Good op-ed by Jim Fusilli over at Opinion Journal about how so many "boomers," and I would qualify here, are being ignored by the record companies.

A recent page-one story in the New York Times noted that 11 of the top 50 albums on Billboard's charts that week were recorded by artists over age 40, and that shoppers who'd already celebrated that birthday are buying more than 35% of all albums sold.

The implication: Middle-aged people prefer to buy albums by middle-aged people. "Adults like music too," Columbia Records' president was quoted as saying. "And they're starting to get served."

Forgive me if I don't consider this act by Columbia and its recording-industry brethren a public service. I'm past 40, and about the last thing I want is music by people coaxed into catering to me. What usually results is what the middle-age set is contributing to the current charts: bland, uninspired recordings and stuff you've heard many, many times before.

I almost never listen to radio any more, except talk radio sometimes. I just don't hear the music I'd like to hear. Consulting agencies have turned programming at radio stations into a finely-tuned format that targets particular narrow audiences for the advertisers to sell to. Country music is a perfect example, where the music is programmed for 24- to 36-year old single women with kids. Advertisers want to sell to these women, so the music it's believed they won't tune away from is all that's presented. Never mind that "country" is an enormous range of styles and that there are a large number of artists of real talent dying from lack of airplay. If it doesn't appeal to that narrow demographic, it doesn't play.

I can't speak for others, but I'd like to hear new music, not the same old crap I've had to listen to since the Seventies. (Hello, Rock103, I'm talking to you! If your playlist was any tighter, you'd die of constipation.) I'd like to know where I can find it, and who sounds like what. I've discovered bands like Interpol, who remind me of Television, and The White Stripes, largely by accident and love their music. I want more! Tell me where it is talked about in a way I can relate to. I'll buy it, I promise.

There used to be a radio station here in Memphis, 107.5 FM, that played something called the Underground Network, which was a national radio feed of what came to be called alt-bands, or bands bubbling along in the underground. It was awesome to listen to! But 107.5 was owned by George Flinn, and he in his usual restlessness changed formats after less than a year, to an all-blues station. Which was a perfect idea for Memphis. Now it's something called Radio Pig, a strange mix of folk rock, Americana, singer-songwriter, and New Orleans. That turns out not to be as adventurous as you'd think. You start hearing a lot of Sheryl Crow, The Grateful Dead and The Band/Robbie Robertson. Ah well....

There's tons of cool music waiting for me. With the explosion of the 'Net, I don't know where to look anymore to find the sites that tell me what I might like. I used to know all the music mags of the Seventies and Eighties, even the individual writers' preferences. Any readers here old enough to remember reading Lester Bangs in Creem? Or Greil Marcus when he was a record reviewer? Trouser Press?

Those were the days, he says nostalgically....