Shangri-las: "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" (1965)
The reason I don't listen to oldies radio stations is because they play the same 200 songs over and over again. You'd think Otis Redding never recorded anything besides "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay."
I also hope I never again hear the Shangri-La's sing "My Boyfriend's Back." "Leader of the Pack." But check out this great song of theirs from 1965, called "Give Him a Great Big Kiss." What can't they at least alternate this one with ""My Boyfriend's Back?" (via Save vs. Death)
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That was The Angels with "My Boyfriend's Back." The Shangs did "Leader of the Pack," which at least has death in it.
"Ehh, he's good-bad but he's not evil."
Hot!
FYI, for oldies, I listen to Gold Radio.
Their stream is currently at http://83.170.89.19:9502
New York Dolls covered this. Now that was a good song.
Since we're travelling down memory lane, "Iko Iko" by The Dixie Cups has been haunting me lately. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to show up on the radio though.
And do ALL radio stations hate Tom Waits?
I'd take even the most repetitive oldies format over ANY cookie cutter Clear Channel format...if the WFMU stream went down, that is.
Awful. Truly, truly awful. (And to think I lived through this era!) But there were a LOT of bad bands in the 60's. Too much opportunity, too small a talent pool.
That reminds me... that Manson girl, Susan Atkins, she was up for parole recently.
Not sure though if it was granted or denied.
The Shangri-Las are amazing. "Give Him a Great Big Kiss," "Remember (Walking in the Sand)," "Leader of the Pack," "Train from Kansas City," "Out in the Street." Phew! They were terrific. Airship is a douche.
@#8 concurred! and i would add "long live our love," "the dum dum ditty," and, ehr, more or less everything else they ever recorded.
mary weiss' unexpected solo album from last year was alright, too.
"I am so sick of Oldies Stations-- hey geniuses, how 'bout some NEW oldies?!" --Carl Carlson, The Simpsons
This joke isn't so far off-- when you consider the number of records released every year in the US alone, there are certainly plenty of oldies from the 50's-60's-70's that never got much airplay. There are tons of reissues coming out of obscure or forgotten groups (Hell-- the whole "northern soul" craze in the UK is based on long lost 45s). I bet an oldies station could start playing plenty of obscure tracks and their listeners wouldn't complain, but of course radio is based on selling air time for advertisements, and program directors don't want to take chances ("Hey-- it wasn't a hit back in '59, what makes you think people will want to hear it today?") Lowest common denominator wins again.
(Reminds me-- I had a friend in High School who only bought "greatest hits" albums. "Silly, why not just listen to the radio?!")
Yes, it is nice to hear something else by these cool ladies!
Oldies stations play the same 200 songs over and over because they are corporate radio-bots owned by Clear Channel, the media conglomerate.
Kill Corporate Radio!
Oh, I wish they'd play oldies on the oldies station nowadays. My local regular radio oldies channel now plays:
The Clash - Rockin' the Casbah
Van Halen - Jump
Don Henley - The Boys of Summer
And a whole bunch of hair bands like Poison, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi etc.
and a whole bunch of other 80's stuff that I just can't think of oldies. I'd kill to hear Otis Redding one more time at this point. Maybe I'm just old.
#12--THat's classic rock. Not oldies.
I worked at a car wash during high school one summer and the owner loved the oldies station. They played about 80 songs over and over. I was just about crying by the end of my time there. "Hang on Sloopy" was played every other hour. And "leader of the Pack" Jebus. They never played stuff like THe Ink Spots "I don't want to set the world on fire" and a few others.
All radio stations are worthless. (Except for college stations--and then they are hit-and-miss.)
Oh I know, But the "Oldies" station has moved from up a decade from 50's,60's and 70's to 60's, 70's and 80's. It's too bad they mostly play 80's crap. But that's coming from a guy that grew up then and still doesn't like 99% of the music made during the decade.
By my count we'll be hearing Dr. Dre on the oldies station in 9 years and 7 months. That'll be a trip.
I have a theory (and it is mine):
1) Oldies stations by and large determine playlists from the Billboard lists of most popular songs.
2) Radio stations pay ASCAP and BMI money that is divided among royalty-holders.
3) Many stations "back in the day" were under influence of payola. (Payola was powerful enough that when Pink Floyd refused to pay, they could not get radio airplay, despite selling out concert venues within hours.)
4) So record labels that paid for a top Billboard spot then, are getting return on their investment now.
Good thing that NEVER happens any more, right?
BONUS FUN FACT TO KNOW AND TELL: One of the chief whistleblowers on recent payola was New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer.
The guy you've only heard of because he was caught in a prostitution sting.
I hasten to add that Mr Spitzer also was responsible for much more major cases involving the Gambino Family ("The Mob"), Wall Street fraud cases, Insurance company fraud, abortion (he attacked "fake abortion clinics" that would attempt to convince women not to have abortions), and gay marriage (he tried to create law recognizing it).
The only thing more painful to listen to than My Boyfriend's Back is that anthem of codependancy, I Will Follow Him.
But these girls rock.
mary weiss, lead singer of the shangri-las, actually released an album last year w/ the reigning sound backing her. great track:
http://www.last.fm/music/Mary+Weiss/_/Don%27t+Come+Back
The Shangri-Las ROCK.
I'll third #8 also, and say "remember (walking in the sand)" is amazing :)
I just thought they always had this kind of darker edge to them than other poppy-sock-hop types.
Way, hey, a-mateys-o
Turn on the pirate radio
Land of the free and home of the braaaaaaaaaave
(FCC crawl in your grave!)
Mojo Lives. On Satellite.
Used to DJ for an oldies station in Texas, and the station owner (a person, not Clear Channel). We were forbidden to play any tune that reminded him of 'Nam, so our playlist was 951 songs total. When "Dad" went out of the listening area on business, that was "Forbidden Oldies Day", during which we kicked out the jams with all the CCR, Stones, Kinks, etc. that righteously needed to be heard.
951! My sympathies.
I once created a little collection from about two and a half days worth of streaming radio. It's a great and legal way for getting an overview, for discovering new titles, and for finding out which song is which.
Among the yield were 527 unique songs from two different oldie stations. While I was weeding out duplicate titles, I calculated this: When you have 527 previously recorded titles, and your typical oldie station plays a song, there's a 97.3% probability that you already have it.
If anyone would like to hear some rarer oldies, I've just done a mp3 podcast mix of some more obscure tunes (and some more recogniseable ones, covered by other artists - Donny Hathaway's cover of John Lennon's Jealous Guy is a MUST hear!)
http://www.trademarkarts.com/imp/not-many-men/ (including track info)
http://www.trademarkarts.com/imp/podpress_trac/web/26/0/080603.mp3
(direct link)
I should be doing more of these over time, feedback would be good from anyone who digs this kind of music,
Alex x
Speaking of "oldies stations playing the same tunes over and over"-- we used to witness this on "classic rock" radio back in the 80's - 90's (what used to be called AOR, and which are now essentially the "new" oldies stations).
If you have to work at an establishment where any type of oldies station is de rigueur music of the workplace, there is a game you can play:
CLASSIC ROCK ROULETTE
Each player throws a dollar in the pot and picks three bands (say, The Who, the Stones, the Kinks), and when one of those bands comes up he/she gets a point, at which point the player can delete that band from their list and choose another (usually based on what other bands they have played in the last hour). At the end of the day the player with the highest points wins the pot. If there is a tie the pot rolls over into the next day's play. You can also choose to make "house bands" that go to the house and cannot be chosen by the players (when we first came up with this game we found any player could win easy, just by picking Tom Petty and Bob Seger every day; that particular station had a fetish with those two artists and would play them about 5 times a day each-- so these became the "house bands")-- if the house wins then the pot also rolls over until the next day.
(I agree, the Donny Hathaway version of "Jealous Guy" is perhaps better than the original).
Oldies formats finally drove me away from radio for good in the '80s. I refuse to have my treasured memories strip mined for the melody-fodder wedged between auto parts store ads. Due to scrupulously avoiding classic rock and oldies radio, I can still enjoy many great songs that have been overexposed to the point of unlistenability. If you hadn't heard Zeppelin IV fiftybillion times in the last 20 years it would sound completely different to you and you'd probably like it a lot more. These radio formats don't just trivialize an important form of our generation's artistic expression, they've rendered us permanently unable to enjoy our best songs.
I'll listen to CBC2, which has awesome programming and a great sounding signal. WDET in Detroit used to be one of the GREAT music stations until they went to a talk format a while back, to the dismay of many. There's still SOMAFM with their many carefully constructed streams. I probably get 10 hours/day from them.
The Raveonettes' cover of "My Boyfriend's Back" is good fun. I hate how repetitive all radio stations seem to be... not just the oldies.... except college radio, which I can't receive any of where I am right now. Lame.
http://www.cbc.ca/vinyltap/