Earlier this week, we dropped the 50th episode of the DMOU podcast, this one featuring Dave Serino and Brian Matson of TwoSix Digital. During the Bonus Round question (where guests and I generally screw around and have a few laughs), Brian and I shared conspiratorial stories of breaking format during our tortured time on Adult Contemporary radio stations.
It got me thinking back to those days. The station was heavily formatted (meaning the on air talent had no say on the music). I was working 6pm to Midnight and bored out of my mind at my first paying gig in radio. After a few months, I started inserting love songs during the last 90 minutes of my shift, hoping that management was asleep (I was soon to learn differently...but you'll hafta listen to the podcast for that story).
It was one song at a time at first...then two...then three. Within a couple months of not being discovered, the station was 100% live after 10:30...and the fan base was growing. Where the phones had been ice cold when I started, I was getting requests. One advertiser actually asked his sales person if he could purchase spots between 10:30 to Midnight (which confused the hell out of management).
The Isley Brothers were the band behind "Shout" (which they wrote in 1959) and successfully covered just about everyone over the next 15 years. It was the mid-70s when they hit their stride with the album "The Heat is On," which featured the anthem "Fight the Power." But, it also initiated a period where the Brothers funked out on side one of their LPs...but went silky romantic on side two. And, it was those songs that got the phones ringing after 10:30.
On this Music Friday, it's "Sensuality"...a favorite of one of my late night callers that regularly hot-tubbed with his girlfriend to the music I spun.
Here's hoping they still are...
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