I was a pretend DJ
I remember as a kid having one of those record players in my room. I don't think I owned a record, but my mother let me listen to her albums and her 45s. There was a lot of stuff from the '60s and a little bit from the '70s. I remember The Beatles Revolution and The Beach Boys Help Me Rhonda. The Trashmen The Bird and on one of those compilation albums Speak To The Sky by Rick Springfield.
When I started to develop my taste in music, I didn't have the budget to buy albums all the time, but I could buy 45s. I built up a big collection. Though those records were scratched, I had them all until I lost my home. Back in those days, disco was a big part of what I listened to.
So I had things like Cheryl Lynn Got To Be Real, Andy Gibb Shadow Dancing and I Just Want To Be Your Everything. Hot Chocolate Everyone's A Winner. A bunch of disco to choose from and rock started working its way into my collection too. Foreigner Head Games, Eddie Money Maybe I'm A Fool and Styx Babe.
I'm not sure if the first album I bought was the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, the Grease soundtrack, Donna Summer Live or The Village People album I got, but I had them. I also got K-Tel compilation albums. Remember K-Tel? All the top hits on one album for $6.99.
One day I just decided I wanted to pretend I was a DJ. This is probably before I did another one of our rights of passage back then. Do you remember taking your tape recorder and sticking it right next to the stereo speaker to record that hit song from the radio? Then, I got that stereo that allowed me to just record directly. Mix tapes became a thing. Nowadays, you get on YouTube or whatever streaming platform for whatever song you want.
I'd do the DJ thing. I'd introduce whatever the song was. I remember my calling letters at one time were KBIX. I called it KBIX rock and roll radio 99.9. I was playing the hits. One right after the other, I'd keep them coming. Here is Sister Sledge with We Are Family. That was the Pittsburgh Pirates theme song back in those days as I recall.
I think I even bought the Bee Gees Spirits Having Flown album, and I loved Too Much Heaven. It's one of my favorite songs by them. At that time, we'd go roller skating on Thursdays. The cheap night, and we'd do two sessions. Me and my sister used to sneak in for the second session. If we got away with it, there was a hot pretzel and a soda in it for us with the money we saved.
I had a lot of fun playing my favorite songs and could go the whole day sometimes. At some point, I started listening to the b sides of these records and started liking those songs even more. On the b side of Babe there was I'm Okay. Another Dennis DeYoung song. There was Do What You like on the b side of Head Games by Foreigner. There was Life For The Taking on the b side of Maybe I'm A Fool by Eddie Money.
I remember Pablo Cruise had a song called Don't Want To Live Without It. It was an okay song, but I really love Raging Fire. I'd put it on the player, "Here's a new hit from Pablo Cruise," and introduce Raging Fire. I thought I was cool. I could picture the DJs playing those hits that I loved, influencing my musical taste. As I've grown up, I started appreciating all kinds of music, even Latin pop. Progressive rock is my favorite.
At some point, the heart was taken out of a lot of these radio stations. There are still some stations that exist that allow the DJ to play what they choose, but most of the time it's focus tested. Nothing different gets on there. It's part of the problem with the music business. The way music is distributed got screwed up, and it killed artist's desires to make new albums. It's all about touring now. Record stores went by the wayside as well.
Why wouldn't terrestrial radio go the same way? Now, you have satellite radio with specific genres. There are whole stations devoted to individual artists, but it lacks the excitement of hearing your favorite song come on the radio back in those days. Or hearing Casey Kasem's Top 20 countdown. I used to do my pretend countdown too.
As kids, we come up with all kinds of things to entertain ourselves. Playing pretend is a good one. My days as a pretend DJ were a lot of fun. There was lots of good music to play back then. I'm not so old that I will say there's not good music today, but it doesn't quite compare to the music of the 1970s and 1980s that I enjoyed as a kid. I suppose we're all biased that way.
