The Top Ten Lives!
One of rock’s more interesting eternal conflicts is the debate over AM, Top 40 radio. I think I like AM, for what is is, even though I often don’t approve of what it is trying to be. Despite evisceration, singles-oriented stations — which now occupy both sides of the dial — continue to be more interesting, and just plain more alive, than even top flight progressive FM stations.
The Top Ten Lives!
DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL
by
David Marsh
Jan. 12
One of rock’s more interesting eternal conflicts is the debate over AM, Top 40 radio. I think I like AM, for what is is, even though I often don’t approve of what it is trying to be. Despite evisceration, singles-oriented stations — which now occupy both sides of the dial — continue to be more interesting, and just plain more alive, than even top flight progressive FM stations. (I can only think of three of the latter at the moment, anyway: WLIR, on Long Island, WABX, in Detroit, and WBCN, Boston.)
The worst song in this week’s Billboard Top Ten is Olivia Newton-John’s “Let Me Be There.” Among the other items on the Top Ten chart are Stevie' Wonder’s “Living for the City,” Brownsville Station’s “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room,” which is twice as good as any Alice Cooper single, (except “No More Mr, Nice Guy”) in the last year, Gladys Knight’s “Imagination,” A1 Wilson’s “Show and Tell,” Steve Miller’s “The Joker” (No. 1, and who ever thought he'd see the top of the hit parade again?), and the Ringo and McCartney singles.