Issue #115 - KHJ listener Micki Callen wins the “Words” lyric-writing competition with “The Hour of Not Quite Rain.” Buffalo Springfield recorded the song and it appeared on their Last Time Around LP.
KHJ Boss 30 - September 13, 1967
93/KHJ Boss Radio: A Look Back
5 comments:
Seeing all of these pristine Boss 30s makes me wonder how far into the future do you plan to post them? Till the end of 1969? Into the 1970s? I like seeing the week-by-week developments.
And are you really a night owl? I keep seeing timestamps like 3:37 a.m.
That's a good question regarding how far I plan to go. I initially thought I'd take it out to the last survey that was called the "Boss 30." That would be Issue No. 303 (4/21/71). The only problem I see with that is it would cut off in the middle of the run of third-generation survey design.
Rather than leave things dangling, I'm leaning toward taking it out to the end of the run of that particular design, Issue No. 352 (3/28/72). I still enjoyed the music up to that point and KHJ was still a forced to be reckoned with. I haven't decided how I want to display the third-generation surveys yet as the long, thin design doesn't easily lend itself to display. But I have some time to work on that problem. Issue No. 352 would be the absolute cutoff. I don't want to get into the orange fourth-generation surveys. Both the survey design and the music started heading south at about the same time.
The non-survey items start to taper off where I currently am (late 1967). I don't know if they put out less material or if I just couldn't locate it (probably both). Since they were the No. 1 station they probably didn't need to produce as much promotional material as they had earlier. In any event, you'll start to see longer runs of the surveys and less of the non-survey items. The little audio promos will stop altogether at the beginning of 1969.
Am I really a night owl? Pretty much. I've worked a lot of different shifts over the years and am used to being up into the wee (and sometimes not so wee) hours of the morning.
I'm glad you'll post the surveys into 1972. I think of that year as the last really great music year, although I differ with you on the years after that. I started high school in 1973 and continued to buy singles all the way through college (which ended in 1981), so the music of those years still holds great fondness for me. Yes, I even liked disco. I admit it. But I do agree that the hits post-1972 had a different feel to it. Coincidentally, 1972 is the last year that I listened to KHJ full time. By 1973, I was splitting time between KHJ and KKDJ-FM. I can still recall listening to KHJ as late as maybe 1976, and I was still collecting Boss 30s (or whatever they were calling it then) through spring 1978.
I sometimes think that Boss Radio being my initial exposure to radio had its downside too. Since I didn't know any better I assumed radio was always going to be, well, Boss. Rapid turnover of songs is all I knew. That's part of what made things exciting for me. In 1968-69 there were nine songs that lasted nine or more weeks on the Boss 30 (3.1% of the total). By 1972-73 the number had risen to 95 songs (51.6% percent). (Note: the above stats are from mid-year to mid-year since the Boss 30 charts started in mid-year.)
I found the combination of less songs lasting longer on the chart to be sort of boring. Songs I initially started out liking ended up being "played out" to me. In high school (1972-74) I started channel-flipping away from KHJ (mostly to KLOS/KMET) to try to find some fresh sounds. And the trend kept going in the wrong direction for me. I couldn't find a compelling reason to consistently listen to KHJ when songs like "Lonely Night (Angel Face)" and "Play That Funky Music" were spending 19 weeks on the survey.
As for disco, I thought it was some of best pop music from the mid- to late-70's. I have more 12" singles than I care to think about. And a lot of the really good disco songs never made it onto the pop charts or radio. That may have been a plus.
I've been able to print out every KHJ Boss 30 from the start in July 1965 through early 1977 (as well as the KRLA Tunedex from January 1963 through June 1965, since I didn't want to miss the start of the Beatles on the charts), using a couple of websites that you've been a contributor to. I've done a lot of research of those charts, and I did notice that starting around 1972, songs stayed on KHJ much longer than they did only a few years earlier. I think "Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone logged the most weeks -- something like 22. And I also noticed that the further we got into the '70s, the fewer regional-only songs were being played. Still, a few slipped onto the KHJ 30 as late as 1976 -- "Howzat" by Sherbet and "When Love Has Gone Away" by Richard Cocciante.
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