Side A
I became well aware of Oldies, and their DJs, during my years at Theisen Junior High. My friend Willy and I carpooled to school. All 4 of our parents took turns getting us to and from Theisen, but Willy and I agree that we best remember the car rides with my dad from decades ago. The day after I lost my dad, Willy invited me over to his house to mourn and praise the man. We concluded that our parents must have divided the carpool as evenly as they could, but we mostly just remembered my dad driving us. Bill and his trusty Oldies station, 103.9 FM, left imprints on our minds.
When he picked us up, Willy and I could sense if my dad was in a foul mood. Sometimes he was cranky after eight hours of patrolling the streets of Fondy. Lack of feeling in his “hello” greeting was a dead giveaway. But if he seemed able to tolerate life, and, by extension, us, then we might comment on the Oldies tunes. Sorta Beavis and Butt-Head style. Dad would put up with our sarcasm.
He might even hint at a smile if we heard a Beach Boys song. We’d hear something like “Surfin’ USA.” Half-shivering in our coats, we gazed out the car windows at front lawns covered in a foot of snow, icicles hanging from houses. The band sang the praises of California, which seemed like another planet. The joke did not escape us, in Wisconsin, in January. I spotted a dog getting coaxed against its will to go outside to pee in the frigid cold.
“Well, this song sure makes me want to go surfing,” I said.
“We should scope out Lake Winnebago,” Willy said.
“Might have some gnarly waves. Might be… frozen.”
“Fifty-fifty chance.”
“Don’t forget your sunblock, boys,” Dad chimed in.
Sometimes we actually shut up and appreciated the likes of “Please Mr. Postman,” “Earth Angel,” “Runaround Sue” or “Twist and Shout.” Once in a while, Willy and I were willing to give an Oldie a chance, but Dad was not.
A novelty song like “Monster Mash” would make him wince. A dud on 103.9 led him to turn down the volume a few notches, from a reasonable volume to scarcely audible. I might offer a meek protest.
“But Dad, c’mon, it’s almost Halloween.”
He’d wrinkle his nose as if whiffing a fart. He’d explain his opinion in a single word.
“Dumb,” he said, shaking his head.
I never saw him dress up for Halloween. Dad didn’t suffer fools like Boris Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers. Oddities like “Monster Mash” and “Bird Is the Word” damn near got muted. But no matter how awful the Oldie was to Bill, he’d never change the station, because finding something better was against the odds.
He had no interest in the alternatives on the dial. To paraphrase him, he wasn’t about to gamble on the pop station with its Michael Jordan—er, Jackson. He wanted no part of Stone Temple… Whatevers on the Rockin’ Apple. Line dance anthems on the country station made him uncomfortable, and for that I’m grateful.
One Oldie he could stand, surprisingly, was “Rubber Ball” by Bobby Vee. I’ll never get why that song had the edge over “Monster Mash” or “Bird Is the Word.” But as the school year went on, we heard it a lot on the drive home. “Rubber Ball” was a go-to gem to the Oldies DJ in that late afternoon sweet spot.
For starters, Willy and I geeked out reciting the chorus: “I’m like a… Rubber Ball, I come bouncin’ back to you-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh.”
By the spring, we were getting deeper into the lyrics. At one point, the lady backup singers mention: “She calls you by some other guy’s name.” Why would we want to cheer for this bozo? We found it easy to roast this Bobby Vee character.
“I like how this guy keeps trying to get back with his ex-girlfriend, by pointing out the fact that he is annoying,” I said.
“Desperate too,” Willy said.
“Yeah. Selling points.”
I mention these wonderful memories to add more perspective. I’ve matured just a wee bit since I wrote side B in my early 20s. Back in the day, I portrayed the Oldies DJ in a way that was quite cynical and harsh. Now I find myself identifying a little bit with the stereotype who fell short of his lofty dreams and had to settle for less. Don’t get me wrong: I finally like my job. I’m a good reading tutor and assistant teacher, and that’s how I pay my bills. But if I got the fantastical offer of writing and recording stories as my full-time job, I’d probably put in my notice at the school.
Plus, I can recall showing side B to my friend Wes, whose dad was an Oldies DJ, a job I obliterated. And to sprinkle salt in that wound, I also vilified Phish, my friend’s favorite band. I didn’t even give him fair warning before I handed him the 2 pages stapled together. How insensitive was that? What a passive-aggressive asshole.
So, I’m sorry, Wes. Looking back, I understand why you didn’t laugh and just gave me a simple “Fuck you.” Now I see your point. But I still gotta have my jokes.
I’m finally at peace with this story. Some of the sentences I scribble down just before I go to bed turn out to be nonsense, but here goes nothing. I’m just a swimming Pisces getting older. I see that karma drives time that moves in a circle, and sometimes I swim back into my own shit.
Side B
Baby boomers like to criticize millennials 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 end of Beatlemania? These pieces of music are short. They last about two-and-a-half minutes, on average. Many track lengths are much shorter.
The nasal-voiced DJs talk over the start of the song. They have no qualms with drowning a good opening riff. They yammer over the first 15 seconds, shutting up only once the vocals begin. Then some preening geek with a sucked-helium falsetto rhymes “do” with “you” for 90 seconds before the DJ interrupts him again.
“Okay, we get the picture. Driving T-Birds and going steady with a swell gal—very nice.” Cue a new song. “Now here's a hit from that same year from Rich Doodleberry and the Underlings 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 can complain but no one listens, 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 DJ is likely to talk over the entire song with an exhaustive tale about his days working as a roadie for the Mamas and the Papas.
The truth is that Boomers have the shortest attention spans of any demographic group on the radio dial, and the Oldies DJs cater to this. To prove my point, any time you hear the Doors’ “Light My Fire” on an Oldies station, the psychedelic jam is cut, which shaves four minutes from the version you hear on the album and classic rock stations. The DJs at classic rock stations are only ten years younger than their Oldies counterparts, but the difference in taste is significant. Classic Rock DJs prefer the full-length versions of tunes such as “Light My Fire” and “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” since they allow more time to gawk at the lines in their left palm that look like the Star Trek symbol when they cross their eyes just right. Live long and prosper, Classic Rock DJ. You know that I would be a liar if I was to say to you: “You couldn’t get much higher.”
Say what you will about Phish, but there’s been a lot of demand for a worse version of the Grateful Dead. And hey, at least their stoner followers have the attention spans to withstand a 20-minute solo by Trey. And once it’s finished, it’s the damnedest thing, they nudge their buddy and say wistfully, “Dude, don’t you wish that solo would’ve lasted even LONGER?” And their buddy agrees whole-heartedly: “Totally. A 20-minute guitar solo only whets my appetite; it’s like a wedding night hand job. I wish Trey would have soloed through Monday morning so I could have an excuse for missing my drug test at Piggly Wiggly.”
Whenever a rare, eight-minute epic like “American Pie” plays, I picture the Oldies DJ getting anxious. He’s cooped up in his tiny booth. Fixating on the clock, heart racing at 130 beats per minute, his loafers matching that tempo against the booth’s square white tiles. He’s got a squirt of blood trickling down his chin because he’s been chomping on his lower lip with abandonment for the past six minutes and the damn song is still playing. Then, bursting with a fit of impatience, he stops the record and gripes into the microphone, “OK, was that eleventh verse really necessary? For God’s sake, Buddy Holly’s been dead for forty years. Aren’t you over it yet, you nostalgic sissy? I want to hear myself talk!”
You see, those Oldies DJs have a God complex. They spent their youth idolizing the head-bopping hip cats on The Ed Sullivan Show. Decades later, after their rickety bass has been pawned off to buy a hemorrhoid pillow, after their dreams of stardom have fizzled, they become jaded and bitter. When they’re confined in that ever-shrinking booth, listening to the bubbly tunes of Herman’s Hermits, cursing themselves for wearing a condom and failing to knock up Mama Cass when they had the chance, Oldies DJs may suddenly go power tripping on their former heroes.
With a devilish smirk, the Oldies DJ thinks, “The play button allows me to give life to these pricks, and if I choose to make that life fade into premature silence, then so be it. Herman’s Hermits, who were once so proud and getting laid all the time, are now toiling at the mercy of me: The Oldies DJ. BWAH-HA-HA-HA! I am omnipotent!”
After cutting off “I’m into Something Good” before the one-minute mark, the Oldies DJ makes a snotty announcement.
“Four measures of that garbage ought to hold you over. That was Herman’s Hermits, and they’ll be appearing at a county fair near you this summer—as long as the stage has a wheelchair ramp. Since we’ve got some time to kill before I play the next record, let me tell you guys about all the tail I chased at my 35-year school reunion in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin this past weekend...”
Many times the Oldies DJ has considered barricading himself inside his booth, quickly nailing boards against the door, maybe even toting a flare gun “just in case.” And as the station manager pounds desperately on the door, the Oldies DJ grabs the microphone and hushes the last half of “Like a Rolling Stone.”
“It’s my turn to talk, old man. The following people can burn in hell for all I care. I’ll do this alphabetically since it might take awhile...”
