MY BACK PAGES: "Spirit of the Radio"

We are taking a break this week from blogging this week to do consulting work for a new client. New Spark News posts will return on Monday 8/20.

This week we are featuring some of our favorite oldies about radio. Most of these songs come from the period when we worked in album rock radio. These songs meant sometime to us then and still do today.  

RUSH

Spirit of the Radio

In 1980 I was the GM of X93 in Sioux Falls, an upstart station that had absolutely no money and no hope. We changed the format from soft-rock to a hard rocking AOR station.  X93 went from last in the ratings to number in less than six months. Then the absentee owner sold the station and everyone who worked there was fired.

At the time, X93 was an AOR station and reported to Radio & Records. There was concern that tip-sheets like R&R were influenced by payola and “phantom adds” – stations that said they were playing a particular album cut when they actually weren’t.  This still goes on today.  It was in Power rotation at X93.

All this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted
It's really just a question
Of your honesty, yeah your honesty

One likes to believe
In the freedom of music
But glittering prizes
And endless compromises
Shatter the illusion
Of integrity, yeah