Being a lifelong music fan and an occasional radio host, I’ve often baffled my family with my song selections. I believe that the driver of the vehicle controls the music. I’m the one who has to stay alert, right? So my lucky passengers have long been treated to my music choices. At first, it was a mix tape, aptly named. Later, I began “burning” random songs to compact discs. Now I create my own playlists, and play them directly from my phone into the car speakers.
Take a ride with me, and you’ll be exposed to the same format I grew up with. I call it “train wreck radio.” Just like the radio stations I grew up with, there’s no rhyme or reason to the sequencing of songs.
Thanks to YouTube, I can find actual recordings of top-40 radio stations from my youth. When I listen to those shows today, it reminds me of why I fell in love with so many types of music. I was force-fed a selection of popular music that featured various genres. A neutral observer would say there is no way that one could enjoy and appreciate all of those songs, yet somehow I, and millions of others did. And each of them triggers a memory.
Let’s go back in time, and enjoy an hour of Train Wreck Radio. The show begins with a mushy ballad called, “Baby I’m a Want You” by Bread. Some radio announcers actually called the group “The Bread.” I haven’t heard it said that way ever since, unless someone says, “pass the bread.” The phrasing of the title was about 50 years ahead of its time, since some people now say, “Imma be there at 7:30.” I vividly remember asking a DJ to dedicate that song to my 8th grade girlfriend. I told her to listen for it, and she heard her name on the radio. She broke up with me anyway, and I blame it on The Bread.
That song is followed immediately by “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin, a five-minute rocker with lots of amazing drumming, psychedelic sounds, incredible guitar work, suggestive lyrics, and moaning and groaning. 12-year-old me had no idea what it was about, but the older boys who hung out at our store thought it was cool, so I did too. It didn’t matter, they still thought I was just a nerd, and they were right.
Incredibly, the next song is “Oh Happy Day” by the Edwin Hawkins Singers. This Black spiritual song sounded nothing like the hymns at my laid-back church, yet it somehow made the national Top 5. As an adult, I’ve attended some Black churches with some amazing choirs, and I always want to shout, “Now sing Oh Happy Day.”
The next song on the radio is about a guy who “shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.” It was “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash. Even though it was a country song, the top-40 radio stations began playing it, and I’ve been a Johnny Cash fan ever since.
So how do you follow a Cash song? Well, on my radio show, the obvious answer is with the Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next To You.” That’s the one in which every member of the group takes turns singing a line. Lead singer Dennis Edwards starts out, “I…can make a gray sky bluer,” followed by the bass voice of Melvin Franklin singing, “I can make it rain, whenever I want it to.” Soon, the other voices get their turn, and it’s just a full-blown party. That’s why this country boy has SOUL!
Of course, that’s played back-to-back with “Gitarzan” by Ray Stevens, who does the voices of Tarzan, Jane, and a monkey. As a 12-year-old, it was high comedy. As an adult, I took my city slicker wife to see Ray in concert. As I sat in the front row convulsing in laughter, she was next to me, shaking her head, and questioning her life choices.
The train wreck goes on, with the Carpenters, the Archies, Rare Earth, Ray Price, the Rolling Stones, and Marvin Gaye. None of it makes any sense, and I still love every minute of it.
