it was a golden age. At some point, a frequency band we know as FM, started playing elec gtr rock 24/7 and the kids ditched am mono.
Wehn I was in high school '70-'74 AM radio was still the norm in cars where a lot of socializing and listening occurred, but if you had FM, there were 2 BIG "underground" stations in San Jose by 1969, not counting KSAN which was one of the ones to get the ball rolling in '68, along with some stations on the east coast catering to college listeners.
On AM you got "Shaft" and the Jackson 5, and the Rolling Stones, (and even John Lennon and the Beatles) on FM you got Pink Floyd and the James Gang and by the early '70's Bowie and anybody too overtly counter-cultural for AM.
AM still wanted to appeal to a much broader audience age-wise, all the way into their 40's by which time they were gravitating towards a "Big Band station" which don't exist anymore, period...
Underground FM clearly had highschool-to-late 20s fixed in their crosshairs.
Oh yes, FM also played stuff that was longer than the standard 3 minute limit for an AM hit, like the long version of "Light My Fire".
I think that is the place where the great age of pop instrumentals ended.
In general yes but I think it lasted a while into the early '70-'s with some movie music in particular, and cars were still equipped with AM radios as "standard" well into the '70's so there was still a lot of AM pop over the airwaves including movie theme music.
Remember when fm was considered 'underground'? Over time, fm homogenized into a
Clearchannel/iHeart radio-owned bandwidth of blandness.
Right. "Classic Rock" for those who are now in the advertiser's prime demographic, just a little too young to remember what a marvelous musical collage AM pop radio offered.
FWIW, Lefevre's instrumental from 1968 was the last AM pop orchestral hit I remember. It marked the end of a great age. There was a gap between around late 1968 and the time we listened to 'Chariots of Fire' theme on fm in the 1970's. The magic was lost AFAIC. Nothing beats am mono.
"Chariots of Fire" was actually '81 (as a fan of Vangelis' earlier work I was keenly aware he'd finally "made it BIG") but the premise is still valid, it
was a golden age.
I started watching Mondo Cane again last night. What a dumb movie, a quaint artifact today. But it had a helluva theme song. 'More' by Kai Winding and Kenny Burrell.
Yep, there's another one.
To which I will add:
"Midnights in Moscow"
"Zorba's Dance"
"Theme From Midnight Cowboy"
"South American Getaway" (from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
