Posted by Tony Santiago on August 02, 2007 at 19:03:59:
In Reply to: Polarizing Music posted by Allan Sniffen on August 02, 2007 at 08:09:18:
Allan,
This post is going to go long and I apologize in advance.
I knew there was going to be buttons pushed when I've created that thread but I didn't expect the amount of fervor to come out of it. Having said that, I have NO regrets starting that thread because if the oldies are going to enter into the 80's, one has to "go there" regarding certain genres that were popular or up-and-coming during that decade. And in one small part the thread has a special meaning for me.
I didn't think about hairbands/metal but there's another extreme since that music was popular in the 80's as well. And if CBS-FM, in the sake of getting those from the 80's, starts playing any of the groups (such as Poison...what was done with "Jack"), then rap cannot be completely ignored. And what I was thinking of when the rap thread was created was more of the fun, "innocent" material such as "Rappers Delight" and "Walk This Way". Nothing "gangsta" whatsoever.
Being a student at Marist College (Poughkeepsie) during the mid 80's, I would tune in, at times, to K-104 and did remember hearing you as Dr. John Barron. Even though I've probably spent more times playing with the rabbit ear antennas to try to pull in 98.7 Kiss and Hot 103, it always boggled my mind (and it was probably one of those instances as you have said where one sound leaned heavy over another) that I would constantly hear the hair bands/borderline heavy metal on K-104 over one basic rap tune that wasn't touched at all until it had no choice but to bust out mainstream (as "Walk This Way" had done). Yet rap was coming and there was certainly a population in the Hudson Valley (mainly the cities) that was into it and had to do the same thing I did by trying to pull in 98.7 Kiss the best they could for those DJ Red Alert/Chuck Chillout mastermixes (NO WAY was I able to pull in WBLS).
I've even had problems with the college radio station when it came to playing rap on the air (and yeah, I was INTO rap back in those days...first rap/hip-hop DJ at Marist). Some of it was political (someone high up at Marist who isn't there anymore felt I was "ghettoizing" the college) but a lot of it did get personal with students that were running the station since they wanted to go with a "New Rock" format. However at the time since I had wanted to get into radio I knew that I had wanted to take more of an urban approach. But the battles were waged and being a college student, I didn't deal with it the best I could. I just felt for a college station, if people wanted to follow a format, they could but if someone such as myself wanted to go in a completely different direction soundwise and in the process push boundaries that college was okay with that...yet I was "mistaken", so I thought, which is why Marist NEVER gave me a "house music" show back in 1987. The one person that gave me hope and actually made me feel that I was right all along was Bruce Morrow (yep, Cousin Brucie) who was in Poughkeepsie signing autographs for his book at the Galleria. I had asked him about my situation and what I felt. He did answer me that yes college should be a learning ground and if that I had something creative that needed to be tested or challenged, that I should have had the opportunity to do so.
It's part of that thinking that does burn into me today regarding dance music. Yet, for the brief moment, I had wanted to test the "rap" waters again just to see if things might have opened a crack.
TONY SANTIAGO