Oldies Deejays Have A.D.D.

^ Herman's Hermits ^

Originally published in the Advance-Titan, "Oldies Deejays" was written before I gained a begrudged fondness for Oldies Stations, which is fortunate, because otherwise this column wouldn't be so pithy and scathing.

Baby boomers often criticize my generation for our short attention spans, but have you ever listened to an oldies station that plays the a-sides from the mid-50s through the tapering of Beatlemania? The nasal-voiced deejays yammer over the opening 15 seconds of every song, shutting up only once the vocals begin. Then some preening tool with a sucked-helium falsetto rhymes “do” with “you” for 90 seconds before said yammering deejay interrupts him mid-chorus.

“Okay, we get the picture. Driving T-Birds and going steady with a swell girl—very nice.” Cue a new song. “Now here's a hit from that same year from Richie Doodleberry and the Nameless Subordinates called 'Driving in My GTO with My Sweetheart.' It's 50 degrees and partly sunny with a 40 percent chance of evening showers, the barometer is right around 30, the dew point has something to do with humidity, clouds are pretty, this booth is awful drafty, I see a penny on the floor and now I've got to zip it because the vocals start in half a second!”

God help you if you hear a surfer rock instrumental on an oldies station, since the Oldies Deejay is likely to drown out the entire song with an exhaustive anecdote about his days working as a roadie for the Mamas and the Papas.

The truth is that Baby Boomers have the shortest attention spans of any demographic group on the radio dial, and the Oldies Deejays adhere to their like-minded brethren. To prove my point, any time you hear the Doors’ “Light My Fire” on an Oldies station, the psychedelic jam is omitted, which shaves four minutes from the version you hear on the album and classic rock stations. The deejays at classic rock stations are only ten years younger than their oldies counterparts, but the difference in taste is substantial. Classic Rock Deejays prefer the full-length versions of tunes such as “Light My Fire” and even “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” since they allow more time to gawk at the lines in their left palm that totally shape a Star Trek symbol when they cross their eyes just right. Live long and prosper, Classic Rock Deejay. You know that I would be a liar if I was to say to you: “You couldn’t get much higher.”

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Curtain closed. You can purchase a copy of the book that features the rest of this essay by following the link offered below.

www.xlibris.com/NickOlig.html