New Yorkers of a very certain age remember fondly WPIX and its short-lived Alternative format of the late ‘70s. Before disappearing unceremoniously one morning in early 1980 (replaced by an equally short-lived Top 40 format and the “102 Blue Kangaroo” mascot), WPIX was the kind of station where Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics might show up and chainsaw something on the air. It was the station for those who thought that ‘70s WNEW, remembered equally fondly for its eclecticism by many of their contemporaries, was the sellout corporate rock station.

Most other listeners never got to hear most of the music associated with CBGB—the club that was the epicenter of ‘70s punk and early ‘80s new wave—on a commercial radio station. So there’s no shortage of irony in CBGB Radio, which was just launched by Clear Channel’s iHeart Radio as a companion to its other indie rock channel, eRockster.com, and overseen by recently tapped CC Digital PD and 30 Under 30 honoree Rich McLaughlin.

Even the press release for CBGB Radio quotes Sire Records co-founder/chairman Seymour Stein—whose label was home to the Ramones, Talking Heads, and many other of the new station’s core acts—as describing the launch of the station as “both ironic and fantastic; ironic in that it was a never ending struggle” to get those acts on the radio and fantastic because “the new, exciting and sometimes eclectic music of one generation becomes the pop music of the next.”

Indeed, there wasn’t much on CBGB Radio that was intrusive enough to make me turn down the radio as I wrote today. There also wasn’t anything that would sound the least bit unusual being played in the great majority of mall stores these days. Does that mean that punk has been softened by time? Is this a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac? Just as likely, it just proves how much of the genre was already pop music at the time—something that its proponents tried in vain to convince the rest of mainstream pop listeners (and programmers) of in the five years before MTV. But even then it was hard not to listen to “Baby Baby” by the Vibrators and not think of the bubblegum records of a decade earlier.

CBGB Radio is billed as spanning “Costello to the Clash,” but it also plays currents and recurrents, staged as “here’s a band we would have booked.” There’s further irony in knowing that, with the exception of Blondie’s “Rapture,” the only songs that found a home on commercial radio are by the relatively recent acts. (The late ‘80s/early ‘90s bands like the Pixies and the Replacements did get airplay at the handful of stations that represented alternative radio at the time, but it’s not until you get to Radiohead and Gaslight Anthem that you start to get critical mass—and we’re using that term exceedingly loosely.)

Here’s CBGB Radio at 8:10 on Wednesday morning (27):

• Tom Tom Club, “Lorelei”
• Pixies, “Gigantic”
• Ramones, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”
• MC5, “The American Ruse”
• Dead Boys, “Caught With The Meat In Your Mouth”
• Gaslight Anthem, “The ’59 Sound”
• Clash, “The Guns Of Brixton”
• Pavement, “Gold Soundz”
• Talking Heads, “Swamp”
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps”
• Television, “Glory”
• Pere Ubu, “Heaven”
• Blondie, “Rapture”
• Radiohead, “Just”
• Replacements, “Can’t Hardly Wait”

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First Listen
CBS’ Grammy Radio

CBS Radio had its own high-profile online station launch last week, Grammy Radio—the first station to officially use the name or be carried on Grammy.com. Programmed by Seth Neiman, PD of sister Last.fm, the channel is positioned as “every Grammy-nominated song from every Grammy-nominated artist,” meaning the kind of segues, such as Charlie Wilson to Wilco (below) that would usually exist only in a better world—even in online radio.

Because it’s an excuse to play Jason Mraz into Maxwell, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the Grammy channel as sustaining throughout the year. After all, 52 years of material is a lot to work with, and it ties in nicely with what so many listeners say they like: “any kind of music, as long as it’s good.” And while there was some hosting here by Danii, also heard on many Last.fm/Discover segments, this is one concept that would definitely profit from being a full-fledged, hosted-in-real-time channel as opposed to the able-to-skip-songs version heard here.

Here’s the stream of Grammy Radio that I heard yesterday morning at 9 a.m.:

• Britney Spears, “Womanizer”
• T.I. f/Justin Timberlake, “Dead And Gone”
• Boney James, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”
• David Guetta f/Kelly Rowland, “When Love Takes Over”
• Kelly Clarkson, “I Want You”
• Taylor Swift, “Breathe”
• Kid Cudi, “Make Her Say….”
• Musiq (Soulchild), “So Beautiful”
• Charlie Wilson, “There Goes My Baby”
• Wilco, “You And I”
• Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat, “Lucky”
• Maxwell, “Phoenix Rise”
• Miranda Lambert, “Dead Flowers”
• Eminem, “Crack A Bottle”
• Beyoncé, “Halo”

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It was a safe bet that Ross On Radio readers would wade into the fray on which version of a hit song is the right version to hear on the radio. Tuesday’s column had talked about rediscovering some of the actual single versions of hit songs like “Two Tickets To Paradise” and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and thinking that they sounded wrong now, compared to the album versions that have taken hold over the years. That realization prompted a certain amount of cognitive dissonance for somebody who has always bemoaned radio’s failure to seek out the versions of songs that were actually played at the time.

There have been dozens of responses so far, and counting. And there are indeed some votes for the single edit, such as Calgary reader Harry Anchan: “I will settle for nothing less than the original 45 single that played on the radio originally. I usually turn off the radio for the rest of the day when I hear a remake.”

But WBLI Long Island, N.Y.’s Al Levine allows that the right version can change over the years. He remembers playing the medley of “Hard To Say I’m Sorry/Breakaway” by Chicago in the early ‘80s. Now, of course, the shorter, one-song-only version “has overshadowed the memory of that version I used to play.”

“The radio hit of David Allen Coe’s ‘You Never Even Called Me By My Name,’ which was four minutes long, eventually got replaced by the longer, not-as-good album version,” says consultant Joel Raab. “I spoke to one veteran PD recently who didn’t even know there was a four minute version.”

A lot of replies took a middle ground – the correct version depends on the song and what was played in the market. Don Beno votes for the singles of “Black Betty,” “American Woman,” and “Beach Baby” but the album version of “Layla,” “That Lady,” and even “Signs” by Five Man Electrical Band. Scott Childers of Chicago-area WSSR (Star 96.7) remembers WLS Chicago as playing mostly album versions, even of “Feels Like The First Time” and “Cuts Like A Knife,” which he then put back in rotation when he programmed suburban WERV. But “Abacab” and “Tonight Tonight Tonight” were played as edits during the day because “no one needs eight minutes of Genesis at 10:30 a.m.”

Then again, Adam Jacobson writes, “I cringe when I hear the CHR mix of ‘Tonight Tonight Tonight.’ They butchered the song for pop radio.”

Joel Dearing usually votes for “the version the listener buys when they buy the album for the first time.” But he also remembers doing his own CHR edits in the ‘70s and ‘80s—e.g., combining all three parts of “Another Brick In The Wall,” as a number of radio stations did.

There was general derision about the wrong versions often foisted on radio and consumers by the labels. Or the impossibility of avoiding those re-recorded versions that are usually (but not always) labeled on the iTunes Music Store or compilation CDs. “You think someone either with the artist or record company would take a little time to research the details, but what do I know?” asks WDSY (Y108) Pittsburgh’s Charlie Mitchell. And Chuck Southcott, now of KGIL (Retro 1260) Los Angeles, points out that many right versions of songs instantly became the wrong versions because they were re-EQ’ed for CD. Then, of course, there were stations that sped songs up—meaning that just hearing them at the correct speed no longer sounds right.

Variety’s Michael Schneider writes, “I’ve especially noticed this with old Madonna tracks. AC stations are more likely these days to play cuts off her ‘Immaculate Collection’ and other greatest hits CDs . . . I don’t think I’ve heard the original versions of ‘Like A Prayer’ or ‘Holiday’ on the radio in years—it’s always those updated edit/remixes.” (WHTG [Hit 106] Monmouth/Ocean, N.J.’s Scott Lowe cites both the Madonna hits and Queen & David Bowie’s “Under Pressure.”)

You can see the full set of comments on this topic here.
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Have a great, correctly EQ’ed weekend. Ross On Radio returns on Tuesday.

Sean Ross is Executive Editor of Music and Programming for Radio-Info.com. He is also a consultant to the radio and music industries, and VP of music and programming for Edison Research. He can be reached at 973.763.1306. Stations he has recently worked with in his Edison capacity are asterisked.