Wednesday, February 1, 2012
6 comments:
Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.
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I watched many episodes of Soul Train growing up in Flint. It's probably the reason I always preferred WDZZ over WWCK.
ReplyDeleteWDZZ and WTAC. WWCK was so focused on endless guitar solos! And, of course, Soul Train was just the best.
ReplyDeleteGuitar solos and an endless stream of corporate rock in the seventies.
ReplyDeleteAnyone notice Rerun from What's Happening and, earlier, the dance group The Lockers in the Soul Train dance line?
WFBE was the BEST throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. C'mon, Take No Prisoners, Alternatives, and Anarchy? Sure it sucked for most of the week, but still for a few hours a week it ruled.
ReplyDeleteWDZZ jumped the shark during the 80s when they went payola crazy playing the same 8 or so crap songs EVERY hour.
I still have my stupid WWCK Rock Card.
When WTRX dropped Top 40 in 1968, I also stopped listening to WTAC, and began listening to WAMM and CKLW. When WFDF went to Top 40 at night in 1970 and all day in 1971, I listened to that also. They had a more R & B Top 40 edge at night after WAMM signed off.
ReplyDeleteRecord promoters in the 1960s would try to get obscure records played on WTAC, but when they wouldn't, they'd go right to WTRX. And if it was R & B and WTRX wouldn't play it, they'd get WAMM to play it. WWCK as Top 40 only beginning in 1971 didn't change that equation much; they were after WTAC's listeners. The goal of all of that was to get CKLW to notice the record and add it, leading to a national breakout. Only later, in about 1975, was WWCK Album Rock and later, in the late 1980s, Top 40/CHR again.
But as a result of this record promotion approach, in the 1960s, WTRX and WAMM broke a lot of records that fit into an obscure Pop/R&B genre that later would actually become part of the leading edge of what later constituted "Northern Soul" in the UK. And WFDF continued that tradition for a short while in the early 1970s as Top 40. WDZZ didn't even sign on until 1979.
So a listening alternative to WTAC and WWCK preceded the WWCK vs. WDZZ choice by a good half generation or more. You kids seem to think you invented R & B/Soul/Hop Hop! :)
I GREW UP IN FLINT,ON WOLCOTT ST.I HAVE WONDERFUL MEMORIES OF FLINT. IT IS SO SAD TO SEE IT NOW. GOOD PEOPLE AND HARD WORKING PEOPLE, IM SURE SOME ARE STILL THERE. THANK YOU FOR THE MEMORIES.
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