PSF Chat II

[NostradamusTheSeer]

I'm a Gen-X'er.  It's not just a letter or a lifestyle; it's a rating. 

There is a growing rift between Gens X, Y, and Z, as I've illustrated here.

Soon the nascent "Alpha" (the children of the "zillennial") will widen the gap even further, when they are old enough to talk back and begin to question their parents' ideas and perceptions.

Although ostensibly college kids love the company of people my age [¹], I get a lot of static, I find, from those who don't feel young people have any use for the older generation anymore.  They seem to particularly rankle when I tell stories about the old days or talk about how much better or simpler the old days were than now. My enemies seem to be of the mind that anyone over 35 who befriends someone a decade or so younger must be a "groomer"--and I ain't talking dogs here.   

[Grapefoot]

My fellow late eighties and nineties kids, these videos are for you.  For us.

I feel it.

I'm a Gen-X'er.  It's not just a letter or a lifestyle; it's a rating. 

There is def some overlap among all these generations.

[MasterXtreme]

Wild Saturday evening.

[NostradamusTheSeer]

Tame Sunday evening.

You know you're starting to getting old and stodgy when the biggest surprise in your life is when you find your favorite local AM talk radio host has been replaced with a podcast on Flannery O'Connor.

...Actually, that moment may have already come for you when you realize you know who Flannery O'Connor is.   

[Silverwing]

Reminds me of when my favorite radio station back in the day (and the number one radio station in my city's market) got bought out and changed to a different format! People were livid and it made no sense because they went from number one to far behind many stations.  They fired the entire original crew and just ruined the whole station.

[Grapefoot]

Reminds me of when my favorite radio station back in the day (and the number one radio station in my city's market) got bought out and changed to a different format! People were livid and it made no sense because they went from number one to far behind many stations.  They fired the entire original crew and just ruined the whole station.

Ooofff, I've had that happen before too.  It stinks.  The Radio business is cutthroat.

[NostradamusTheSeer]

I heard a commercial yesterday on the local AM station that said something like, "If you're old enough to have taped songs off the radio, it's about time to make an appointment for a colorectal screening." And I thought, well, yeesh, that's a pretty harsh punishment for song piracy, ain'nit?

"Them music companies have that kind of power? Goldurn.  I mean, I loved 'at 'I Saw The Sign' song as much as anybody, but I'm not sure it's worth gettin' a dose o' ass cancer fer.

"...'We Didn't Start The Fire', now, that one's well worth the risk I took."

I've been a radio nomad for some 35 years--seen these giants rise, fall, rebrand, retire, pass on... recorded quite a bit of that history on mix tapes, too.  I recall one such FM format changeover in which they played 72 straight hours of nothing but covers of "Louie, Louie" by the Kingmen.  Oh, you haven't lived until you've heard that song chanted by a group of Benedictine monks.
                                                                                                     

[MasterXtreme]

^ That is wild.  Benedictine monks?!   

I'm glad radio is still kicking all these years later.  Radio actually outlasted its "killing" by video.  VHS is obsolete.

[NostradamusTheSeer]

I thought making the move from record albums to cassette tapes was a big leap--still remember my hours spent after school lovingly transferring Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, all of Bill Cosby's albums, and Escape Club's "Wild Wild West" over to the new format... Now we have podcasts, mp3s, YouTube--light years ahead.  Though, surprisingly, vinyl has made a comeback in recent years thanks to your more discriminating music lovers, who enjoy the richer sound.

Radio has survived, but sadly the "morning zoo" format is dying. Whacky deejays playing call-in trivia games, pulling outrageous stunts, and doing silly voices is old-hat, it seems. I recall one show years ago out of Memphis that had "Barney The Security Guard" (a pretty spot-on Don Knotts impersonator) drop in form time to time with some dumb scheme, like marketing collapsible Christmas trees that fit right in your pocket, or selling Earth Day pamphlets (the gag being that he would flush all unsold ones down the toilet). One of my favorites was the time he showed his vacation slides on the air. Ridiculous for that format, right? In 1989, yes. But 35 years later, in the era of webcams and streaming video, suddenly not so silly.

Man, I've got to go into storage and hunt up my old tapes--these kids today should know that long before Jackass we had premiere FM radio stuntman Danger Boy.