The Scariest Stephen King Story Ever
Written Sep. 14, 2009 by Larry Rosin in Content with 8 Comments
In the September 18th issue of Entertainment Weekly Magazine (but apparently not available online as of this writing), Stephen King has an article about the future of media. Among his entries is this:
What's going to replace rock & roll radio?
I can personally testify that it's on life support, because I own a rock station (WKIT in Bangor, Maine) and I see the balance sheets. If I may wax vulgar, ad revenues are in the pooper. And this is true whatever the rock format: pop, oldies, heavy metal, middle-of-the-road (which I think of as Doobie Brothers Radio). Right now the only real radio rent-payers are right-wing ratchet-jaws like El Rushbo. If there's no rock & roll radio, who's going to find the great new artists to make the little girls scream? Where are the DJs like COusin Brucie...or Carroll James of WWDC, who is credited with playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" first in America? How culturally important are the gabbling "personalities" who make prank calls and own morning drive-time? Let's put it this way: As far as I'm concerned, you can take Opie and Anthony and shove 'em where the sun doesn't shine.
Reader Comments
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Amen my brother I agree with all that you say and pray everyday that all this bull-shit go away....
The scariest thing ever to happen was the advent of Rock & Roll radio. It didn't care about what happened to the great music that came before it (and I'm not talking about Lawrence Welk).
What goes around comes around.
I feel, as a writer and performer, that rock radio is now in a post 90's hangover. Mainstream rock music, for most of the 90's was whinny, depressed grunge on a heroin high. Large numbers of promising rock musicians turned to country/country rock to exit a style they were no longer comfortable with. If you listen to most new country, your hearing wailing distorted guitars. Couple this with bass and drums slamming away, and you have yesterdays rock! Listeners and balance sheets go hand in hand, so maybe its time for rock to take a look back to its real roots. Once this happens, "artists" may start to produce product the buying public wants to hear, and buy! The question then becomes will rock radio play it? So many stations go with mass market formats, with rotations set by some computer in New York City, doing away with the human aspect. This may be seen as safe from the board room, but DJ's at one time could choose to, or not to, play new and different instead of the same old same old. It was the feeling of, heres something new and cool that drove early radio DJ's into the limelight. Now with downloads and file sharing, limewire and all the other search engines, music is no longer heard primarily on radio.
So while I do share your opinion of all schlock jock morning non-personalities, sad to say, rock-n-roll music radio may be heading the way of the 8-track.
This is all to true. Our society is going down the tubes. We need radio and news that doesn't only feed the mindless. We need a cultural revolution, but You have to wonder are the walls of corporate America are too thick. rich and high to let it happen?
Personally as a song writer. I am working on it but am running out of time and money. Somehow, we who have not been broken down need to bond together and help make a change. Please don't give up or give in hang on at all cost I am.
I believe that there are more out there who believe and at some point the wall can be scaled or broken. I refuse to give up hope. The Drug companies and corporate monsters who fund "idiot gabbers", can only own all our souls if we let them.
People in general are deaf from technology.
Sub woofer lone wolfs @ gangs roaming neighborhoods inflicting
pain at random with "booming".
Deafness cause mindlessness and soon one will buy or steal any noise with a hint of bling.
Karaoke takeing jobs from real musicians
and that encourages people to sing that really shouldn't and peoples desire and ability to create
new music is deminished. If all you hear is crap
then all you create will be crap or much worse.
An excerpt from my song
"please mommy; I want to be like all the rest
cruisin down the street with the
army of the deaf"
when they ban or limit use of some of the tech toys
then rock radio will comeback. The real answer
is EDUCATION about the dangers of tech.
There is a group committed to this.
By the way as we all know; Michael Jackson died
from prescription drugs BUT no one asks WHY?
There was a comment on CNN that someone had heard him say that he couldn't get to sleep because
there was a beat in his head that wouldn't go away.. Same thing happened to me when I was exposed to "booming" for a period. It sent me to the ER. Lot of sound engineers have hearing damage
too long. Rock and Roll forever BUT educate.
The death of Rock'n Roll radio began along time ago when D.J.'s and program directors lost control of what they wanted to play on their stations to the so called "experts" of canned programming.
In combination with the record companies decisions to put penny counters in charge that couldn't tell the difference between a haircut and a hit song!
You really have to dig find what's good out there... and these days, it's usually not on the radio.
I'm happy to see rock radio go away! None of the (new) music I like is played on it :-)
Maybe if some artist with some creedence
made a 1000 public service announcements
of the difference between noise and rock
and roll and the danger there-in of the noise.
"Booming is more dangerous than guns and
misuse and over use of cellphones isn't far
behind". "The army of the deaf is feeding wallstreet and technology is devouring itself".
That's scarier than Stephen king. I wish Steven would write a story about this!