One Day in Your Life: July 31, 1976

The first-ever One Day in Your Life post appeared at this blog on October 7, 2004, just short of three months after we went “on the air.” It took awhile for the style to evolve, but it quickly became my favorite thing to write. Over the years, I’ve written maybe 130 of them between this blog and Popdose, where the feature appeared monthly in late 2008 and 2009. Five years ago today, I wrote about July 31, 1976. Since we’re trying to recreate that summer here in 2011, it makes sense to repost the post in its entirety rather than simply linking to it. I’ve added a few hyperlinks and some perspective from the present, too.

July 31, 1976, is a Saturday. Elvis Presley, on his last tour, plays Hampton Roads, Virginia. Eric Clapton plays London. Jethro Tull plays Tampa, Florida. Barry Manilow plays Philadelphia, where health officials are struggling to figure out what mysterious disease sickened over 200 people and killed 34 during an American Legion bicentennial gathering a few days earlier. It’s been nicknamed “legionnaire’s disease.” The Montreal Olympics are coming to an end, as an East German marathoner wins the gold in the final event of the games, and six athletes, five Romanians and a Russian, defect to Canada. The Green Bay Packers play the earliest preseason game in their history, losing to the Cincinnati Bengals, 23-16. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the first game in their history, losing to the Los Angeles Rams, 26-3. Future pro football player Marty Booker is born. In Colorado, a foot of rain falls in the mountains, causing a flood in Big Thompson Canyon that kills 150 people. NBC airs the first-season finale of its new weekend late-night show, NBC’s Saturday Night, hosted by Kris Kristofferson. (His wife, Rita Coolidge, is the musical guest.) Sketches include “Samurai General Practitioner” and “Gynecologist Blind Date,” with Kristofferson and Jane Curtin. Other TV programs on the air that night include the syndicated soap Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and The Invasion of Johnson County, a western starring Bill Bixby. NASA releases a photo taken by the Viking Mars probe before it landed on July 20. It seems to show a face on the Martian surface, but NASA says it’s merely a rock formation and nothing mysterious. A UFO is sighted in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Louisiana adopts petrified palm wood as its official state fossil.

On the Billboard singles chart dated July 31, “Kiss and Say Goodbye” by the Manhattans is spending its second week at Number One; “Love Is Alive” by Gary Wright is Number Two; Starbuck’s “Moonlight Feels Right” is at Number Three; Number Four is “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band. The Beatles and the Beach Boys are back-to-back at Numbers 7 and 8, with “Got to Get You Into My Life” and “Rock and Roll Music,” the first time both bands have been in the Top 10 at the same time since [1966]. New in the Top 40 are “Say You Love Me” by Fleetwood Mac, “Play That Funky Music” by Wild Cherry, “Who’d She Coo” by the Ohio Players, “Shake Your Booty” by KC and the Sunshine Band, and War’s “Summer.” Two versions of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” are bubbling under the Top 40—one is the 1967 original, the other is a new recording from the hit movie of the same name. New on the Hot 100 that week: “Still the One” by Orleans and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. George Benson’s Breezin’ tops the album chart.

And I probably drove my 1974 AMC Hornet somewhere that night, with the radio on, of course. It was a Saturday, after all.

There’s more on the flip, including a bit of American Top 40.

Sunrise, Sunset

We’re tearing another page off the calendar. Come Monday, it’s August. The days have been getting shorter for over a month now, a minute or two per day. For many AM radio stations, however, Monday will be quite a bit shorter than Sunday.

Certain AM stations are licensed to operate during the daytime only, defined by the approximate sunrise and sunset times in the middle of a given month. For this reason, operating hours will vary throughout the year. Take my company’s daytimer, WHIT. During June, the station signed on at 5:15AM and signed off at 8:45, its longest broadcast day of the year. This month, it gave back 15 minutes on each end of the day. Come Monday, sign-on moves up from 5:30 to 6AM, and sign-off moves back to 8:00 from 8:30. The broadcast day will continue to shorten as autumn and winter approach. In November, after the return of Standard Time, the station broadcasts from 6:45AM to 4:30PM. In December, sign-off stays at 4:30, but sign-on isn’t until 7:15AM. On January 1, however, the first sign of spring appears: although sign-on is delayed until 7:30AM, sign-off is a little bit later: 4:45PM. A station’s sign-on and sign-off times are a function of its latitude and longitude, so they can vary in different places.

Isn’t this variability a competitive disadvantage for radio stations? It can be. For most daytimers, however, variable hours are a simple fact of life you get used to—although I once worked at a company whose AM station signed on at 7AM and signed off at 4:45PM year round, even in the summer when they could have been on far longer, just because it was easier.

Some AM stations operate at night at reduced power. Power will be raised or lowered based on the same set of sunrise and sunset times. Often, a 5,000-watt station will cut back to 1,000, or something like that. The little AM station I worked for was authorized to operate at reduced power after sunset, but was licensed for three watts, or seven watts, or something similarly ridiculous—I forget. That wasn’t enough to get the signal from the transmitter, which was located just outside of town, back to the studios downtown, so we didn’t bother.

Other AM stations “go directional” at sunset. This means their signal propagates in a specific direction, to protect the signal of another station elsewhere in the country on the same frequency. In Madison, for example, WIBA-AM’s signal goes primarily north and east at sundown — you can be a few miles southwest of the tower after sunset and have trouble picking it up, where during the day you’d get it five-by-five. Reduced power or a pattern change is why you would sometimes lose your favorite AM station at sundown.

I was once in the wilds of Minnesota, cruising down a deserted interstate highway, listening to a big AM station out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, early on a winter morning. In the middle of a song, something odd happened. The station’s audio cut out for a second, then cut back in again, briefly distorted, before returning to normal. Then the morning jock keyed his microphone, mid-song, and said, “Good morning, western North America.” In an instant, I realized what I had heard: the morning pattern change. It was officially sunrise in Winnipeg, and it was no longer necessary for the station to propagate its signal eastward to protect some station out west.

I was pretty sure I might be the only person other than the jock who truly understood what had just happened.

The biggest AM stations operate 24/7 at full power, often 50,000 watts, which is as big as AM stations in the United States can be. These signals are called “clear channels.” If you surf around the AM dial late at night, the distant stations you receive will almost certainly be clear channels.

The clear channel designations and all this power-reducing and pattern-changing date back to the dawn of radio, when the Communications Act of 1934 standardized the “wild west” that the AM band had become in the 1920s, to limit interference and make sure local stations serve local areas effectively. The regulations are bureaucratic, but the reasons for them have everything to do with the laws of physics.

If I have made any technical errors in this post, I am certain that those amongst the readership with first-class FCC radiotelephone operator’s licenses will correct me, and thereby educate the whole class.

Read more about why AM stations have to reduce power at night here. And stop back Sunday for a first in the history of this blog: a rerun.

Summer of Schlock

An e-mail came in one day last week from a reader who found this site while searching for the Gerry Rafferty song “Days Gone Down,” heard on a recent American Top 40 repeat from the summer of 1979. “I couldn’t help noticing what a surprisingly mellow time that was, music-wise.” A look at a mid-summer record chart confirms that observation. Perhaps 1979 didn’t go down quite as we remember it. It was our disco summer, wasn’t it?

Disco was still riding high in that season, but apart from that, the radio was not rockin’ very hard. Take a look at the Cash Box chart for the week of July 21, 1979. There are but three rock records in the Top Ten—if you choose to count ELO’s beat-heavy “Shine a Little Love,” otherwise it’s just two, “I Want You to Want Me” by Cheap Trick and John Stewart’s “Gold.” The latter is rockin’ gently, as are most of the rock bands in the upper reaches of the chart this week: Peter Frampton, Poco, Rafferty, Supertramp, even Van Halen. KISS is at Number 17, but “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” is as wimpy as anything that bad-ass band ever recorded.

“I Want You to Want Me” and Blondie’s “One Way or Another” represent the extent of the rock ‘n’ roll bite among the week’s biggest hits, although several records that would return big riffage to the radio by summer’s end are on the way up: “My Sharona,” “Let’s Go,” “Goodbye Stranger,” “Bad Case of Lovin’ You.” As listeners, we perceived the coming of these records as an anti-disco backlash, and from 32 years away, it’s easy to connect them to Disco Demolition Night, which occurred in mid-July, although all of these tunes had already charted by then. But it’s just as easy to call them the sentinels of an anti-mellow backlash, because the first half of 1979 was the heyday of pallid, inoffensive pop songs, and the evidence is clear during this week: “When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman,” “Do It or Die,” “She Believes in Me,” “Shadows in the Moonlight,” “Lead Me On,” “Up on the Roof,” “‘Suspicions,” “You Take My Breath Away,” and the list goes on. (If there are three longer minutes in this life than the time it takes Rex Smith to croon “You Take My Breath Away,” I have yet to experience them.)

History may remember 1979 as our Summer of Disco, but it would be just as accurate to call it our Summer of Schlock.

I’ve posted this before, but it’s worth another look and listen. I wouldn’t hear it until the fall, but it was on the chart in late July, and where it was getting airplay, “Saturdaynight” by Herman Brood was the most kick-ass thing on the radio that summer.

One Day in Your Life: July 27, 1976

(On we go, attempting to recreate our favorite summer one day at a time. Other posts here. Edited since first posted.)

July 27, 1976, is a Tuesday. The country is abuzz over yesterday’s tradition-breaking announcement by presidential candidate Ronald Reagan: if he wins the nomination at the upcoming Republican convention, he will name liberal Republican senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate. In Tangshan, China (where it’s already Wednesday), a 7.8 magnitude earthquake kills around 250,000 people. President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger meet with Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser and other officials at the White House.

A gay-pride parade is held in Chicago. The Chicago Cubs beat the Montreal Expos 5-0 at Wrigley Field; the Cubs trail division-leading Philadelphia by 26 1/2 games; the Expos are buried even deeper in the basement. After losing the gold medal to the Soviet Union on a controversial last-second referee’s decision in 1972, the United States claims the gold in men’s basketball at the Montreal Olympics, beating Yugoslavia. Hungary wins the gold medal in men’s water polo. A feature story in the Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, notes the arrival of several new TV reporters in the city. Milwaukee Brewers baseball against Detroit and the Olympics take up the local TV air tonight along with reruns of M*A*S*H and Switch.  The Tuesday night special at Lombardino’s in Madison is veal parmagiano for $3.50; at the Old Stamm House in suburban Middleton, spaghetti and meatballs with a free glass of wine is $2.25. Monty Python and the Holy Grail plays at the Middleton Theater.

Elvis Presley continues his tour in Syracuse, New York, Judy Collins plays Cleveland, and Weather Report plays London. Procol Harum plays in Norway, and Rush plays in Jackson, Mississippi. Fleetwood Mac plays Landover, Maryland, and Elton John plays the second of a three-night stand at Chicago Stadium. At WLS in Chicago, Elton’s new single, “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” with Kiki Dee, debuts on the station survey. “Got to Get You Into My Life” by the Beatles holds the Number One slot for a third week, ahead of “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band. “You’re My Best Friend” by Queen and “More More More” by the Andrea True Connection are new in the Top 10. “I’m Easy” by Keith Carradine leaps from 23 to 14; “Moonlight Feels Right” by Starbuck is up to 22 from 28. “Say You Love Me” by Fleetwood Mac and “Let ‘Em In” by Wings take 11-place jumps further down the chart. On the WLS album chart, the Beatles compilation Rock and Roll Music knocks Wings at the Speed of Sound from the top spot. Rocks by Aerosmith, Chicago X, and Fleetwood Mac round out the top five.

Perspective From the Present: During the first part of this week, I spent a couple of days with my grandparents, as I had done for a few days every summer since I was little, although it would be the last time. They lived about 15 miles away, and had moved off the farm and into town a couple of years before, so my visits were not quite the adventures they had once been. I would spend the latter part of the week at the county fair in my hometown, where for the first time in several years I would not have to drag an ill-trained animal around the show ring, having given up that project, although I would still hang out in the 4H barn as before. One of those new TV reporters would quit TV and become a communications instructor at my small Wisconsin college. She didn’t seem like a very good teacher, but it occurs to me now that I may have been blinded to whatever skills she had by my smart-ass attitude at the time. And although I was a certifiable Monty Python fan thanks to the PBS broadcast of the show, I don’t remember going to see Holy Grail during its theatrical run in 1976. I would see it on TV at some point within a year or two, but would not see it on the big screen until college.

The Wind Blew Some Luck in My Direction

Certain songs have a magical power that captures the distilled essence of a moment. To me, the whole summer of 1976 lives in “Moonlight Feels Right” by Starbuck. Watch the video below, and pay attention to the keyboard player, whose rings are more easily (and frequently) seen than his face.

The keyboard player is David Shaver. He and I spent some time on a Facebook chat the other night talking about “Moonlight Feels Right” and his experience in Starbuck. ”I was not a member when the record was [made],” David told me. “There were so many Mini-Moog overdubs on the album that when ‘Moonlight’ started up the charts, they realized they needed to hire another keyboard player in order to reproduce the sounds live. I also played an ARP String Ensemble to reproduce all the string parts.”

“Moonlight Feels Right” had been released to in the fall of 1975 to a resounding chorus of who-cares. Early in 1976, a DJ in Birmingham, Alabama, started playing it, and it caught fire, eventually rising to Number 3 on the Hot 100, where it spent the weeks of July 31 and August 7, 1976.

Once the record hit the charts (in April 1976), things began to move fast for Shaver and Starbuck. “Opening for Hall and Oates in Macon, Georgia, was the first show I played. They were huge at the time.” Other shows followed. “The biggest show we did was opening for Boston at the Hollywood Sportatorium in Florida. I heard the sound of 16,000 screaming vocal cords and at that moment I knew what Beatlemania felt like. We played with Styx at the Atlanta Omni for Toys for Tots.” (Based on information at a Styx fansite, that show was on December 5, 1976, and also featured Boston, the Manhattans, and Dr. Hook, which is a pretty damn good concert bill in any decade.)

David says, “It was certainly one of the most exciting times of my life. We were being treated like rock stars, where two months prior we were playing night clubs! I met Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Don Kirshner, Dinah Shore, Dick Clark, Peter Marshall. Once on American Bandstand, some girls in the audience made a big fuss over me and the cameras zoomed in on me in my blue Hawaiian shirt. My one and only closeup. My big 15 minutes. I’d give anything for a copy of that video!”

Although “Moonlight Feels Right” is the only Starbuck song most people can name, the band actually charted five times in all: “I Got to Know” and “Lucky Man” from the Moonlight Feels Right album missed the Top 40 in the fall of 1976; “Everybody Be Dancin’” from the group’s second album, Rock and Roll Rocket, squeaked into the Top 40 in the spring of 1977. And in the fall of 1978, the title track from Searchin’ for a Thrill—a balls-out rocker far removed in style and spirit from “Moonlight”—spent six weeks in the lower reaches of the Hot 100. The 70s edition of the band split in 1979, although co-founders Bo Wagner and Bruce Blackmon continued to release records under the Starbuck name for a few years thereafter. Somewhere in my archives I have a single they made in the early 80s called “The Full Cleveland.”

David Shaver is still playing today, 30-plus years after his rock-star adventures. “I am very happy to be performing in a show band called Glow. We’re based out of Atlanta and have some of the best vocalists in the Southeast. We play every weekend! Concerts, weddings, corporate parties, and a few select dance clubs. We just opened for the Little River Band a few months back.” Because Glow is a show band, David says, “Our song choices are focused 100 percent on the dance floor,” so “Moonlight Feels Right” is not part of their regular repertoire. But he also says, “Back in 2004/2005 I played in a wedding band and we did a great version of “Moonlight.” I did my best at imitating the marimba solo on the keyboard. Not an easy task!”

In 1976, I was an adolescent boy in Wisconsin, waiting for my life to begin. David Shaver was a slightly older guy whose life had not only begun, but was taking off like it was strapped to a rocket. (I am still waiting for my rocket.) Thirty-five years later, what we share is this: no matter how far 1976 recedes into the rearview mirror, “Moonlight Feels Right” will always bring it back.

Top 5: Happy Summer Days

We have spent so much time in 1976 at this blog lately that we need to set the Wayback Machine for another era.

We have made our way to Jamestown, North Dakota, a couple of times previously, including a memorable trip to April 1966, when we found the station’s music survey inhabited by several interesting records that were bigger in eastern North Dakota than elsewhere. If we go back to that same place during the week of July 22, 1966, we find that the station was playing the hits that would last forever—”Wild Thing,” “Hanky Panky,” “Summer in the City”—but they also gave significant airtime to records less enduring, and for our purposes, more interesting.

5. “Spring Fever”/Tony Pass (up from 6). Written and produced by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, with Ellie singing backup, and a damn fine summertime record. Not one of the great forgotten records of the age or anything, but definitely deserving of more than general obscurity. On the other hand, however . . .

9. “Happy Summer Days”/Ronnie Dove (up from 13). The MOR cheese that is “Happy Summer Days” hasn’t stood time’s test especially well. Neither has Ronnie Dove  himself—I can’t think of another 60s artist who charted more but gets less radio play today. He hit the Hot 100 20 times between 1964 and 1969, and five of those made the Top 20, but you may not know any of ‘em. Dove played a show at my college sometime around 1979, but nobody I knew—even the older music geeks who were more far obsessive than I was—had ever heard of him.

12. “It’s You Alone”/The Wailers (up from 20). Also known as the Fabulous Wailers, this band formed in Tacoma, Washington, in the late 50s, and took “Tall Cool One” onto the charts in 1959 and again in 1964. “It’s You Alone” bubbled under the Hot 100 for a few weeks. An edition of the band is still together today. Their website contains this unusual claim about the Pacific Northwest: “The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who,  The Kinks & David Bowie all can be linked to this corner of the country by their quotes or music.” I have no idea what the hell that means.

20. “Peter Rabbit”/Dee Jay and the Runaways (down from 16). In mid-60s Milford, Iowa, Dee Jay and the Runaways built their own studio and formed their own label, IGL (for “Iowa Great Lakes”), partly because they didn’t want to go all the way to Minneapolis to record, and partly because they saw a good business opportunity in selling studio time to other aspiring Iowa artists. (Three hours of studio time and 1000 copies of your single on either the IGL or Sonic label cost $345, and the Runaways would back you if you needed a band.) “Peter Rabbit” was picked up by the Smash label from Chicago and just missed the national top 40. It was the top-selling single of the 60s by an Iowa band.

40. “She Ain’t Loving You”/Distant Cousins (debut). There’s not much about this band on the Interwebs. I suspect they were from Ohio—Toledo, maybe?—although “She Ain’t Loving You” was one of several singles released on Date, a Los Angeles label. (One of them was called “Mister Sebastian (Write Me a Song),” referring to John Sebastian of the Lovin’  Spoonful.) “She Ain’t Loving You” sounds like what you’d get after you locked the Four Seasons in the garage for a week.

When I got into radio 30 years ago, I was as guilty as anybody of wanting to play the big national hits, and of not caring about local and regional bands and their obscure singles. If I had it to do over again, maybe I’d be a little less dogmatic and a little more discerning.

“Peter Rabbit”/Dee Jay and the Runaways (still in print, believe it or not, so this song will be coming down after the weekend; buy it here)