I like eqasy listening music as background music in stores, but some of the grocery stores have started playing some new crap with vocals (is there a better term?) and it makes it very difficult for my damaged brain to filter out the lyrics while trying to concentrate on what I need and locating it amidst constantly changing product placement on shelves. The aisles are further congested with inane cardboard displays (which I do not mind knocking over, especially when trying to get around someone oblivious to the world at large while talking too loudly on a cell phone). I think stores need a loud source of white noise like from air conditioning and refrigeration compressors so that cell phone use is rendered impossible except in small sound-insulated phone booths where shopping activity must stop. It would spare the rest of us and probably shorten the conversations saving everyone a lot of time which is so valuable to the cell phone users that they have to talk while driving, shopping, going to the bathroom and maybe while engaging in reciprocal amorous relations (a teacher's term from the late 60s). In Silver Spring, MD the call letters WGAY were at the top of the World Building and for decades the station played a wonderful mix of instrumental music all of the time, but the market audience was deemed too small and too old so they changed the format. When the station changed to a rock mix, many listeners were taken by surprise. John said that there were probably old console stereos where the tuner had been on WGAY got so long that it was frozen in that position.
I, too remember when WSB AM radio in Atlanta had good music, news and information. There were great songs we heard for the first time like The Poor People of Paris, Wonderland by Night, Cherry Blossom Pink and Apple Blossom White and a hauntingly sad group of songs like The Ship That Never Sailed and Jamaican Farewell. Even the Rock and Roll or top 40 stations like WQXI AM and WLS played a mix in the early 60s. Yes there was the usual Elvis, and the Beach Boys type music, but also songs sort of sung by Walter Brennan like Momma Sang a Song and Old Rivers and Me. There was just a lot of diversity that is not present today. It is strange when hit songs of the 60s and 70s that were associated with wild youth are used as music in commercials.
Funny that shot of a George Maharis album should show up this week.
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