Post by doofus67 on Jun 14, 2015 2:10:06 GMT -5
When I first wrote this on the day of Casey's passing, it was an e-mail / Facebook post for family and friends only. As we approach the anniversary -- and in light of having lost a loved one myself this week -- I'd like to share it here with all of you:
Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem, 1932-2014
[On 6/15/14], we lost a treasure in pop radio and all of music. For four decades beginning in 1970, Casey Kasem was the co-creator and host of several music countdown shows on radio and TV, most notably "American Top 40." When we tuned in for three or four hours each weekend, we got the top songs of the day, along with trivia and stories about the artists, all delivered in a personable, upbeat style. We weren't merely listening to pop music; we were really thinking about it.
Casey's genuine excitement about the music became our excitement. He made the pop radio experience so much more fun, especially during times when, to be quite honest, it wouldn't have been fun otherwise. He was the friend we wanted to invite over to our house to hang out and talk about music all night, or, as one writer put it, "your cheerful next-door neighbor." Sure, over the years, there were attempts to paint him in a not-so-neighborly light. The comics, like Dana Carvey, brought us a few laughs with their parodies. Blooper tapes surfaced in which Casey showed he could crack, and then some, under pressure. That just made him human.
On the personal side, Casey was, and always will be, my idol, the main inspiration for my lifelong passion for music. From my first taste of "AT40" on Milwaukee's WRKR in March, 1979, and all through high school, the highlight -- often the whole focus -- of each week was putting on the countdown. Soon, it became my dream to take over his duties when he retired. I even told him so in a letter when I was 15. (Given that he didn't actually hang up the headset until 2009, I'm sure I would have run out of patience!)
Thanks to him and his shows, I became particularly obsessed with keeping track of Billboard magazine's weekly charts, from which the shows were drawn. To me, there was a striking similarity between the drama unfolding on these charts and, for instance, the pennant races in baseball. In 1982, Olivia Newton-John vs. Foreigner was my Orioles vs. Brewers -- only Foreigner never did knock Olivia out of first place! Just as any sport was more exciting to watch or listen to live with an announcer calling the action, so were these two-way battles in music more compelling when Casey brought them to life.
Sometimes homework or running would keep me from sitting and listening to four hours' worth of Casey. Then I'd walk to a record store or book store that carried Billboard and write down the numbers I needed. The employees barely noticed that I was using their place as a library. Again, it might have been like reading about a walk-off homer in the paper the next day, but that was a chance I had to take. Before long, I was into music-related volumes like [fellow Milwaukeean] Joel Whitburn's Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits.
By the time my junior year at Whitefish Bay High School began in '83, I felt like enough of a chart expert to launch a monthly column in the school paper. I called it "Black Vinyl Doughnuts." It was a mini-"AT40" in print, complete with tidbits of trivia and a few song reviews. The most important feature was the Baker's Dozen, the top 13 songs of the previous month, based on my own calculations and listed in countdown order. Each June, I presented the top tunes of the school year overall. The timing for this idea couldn't have been better; almost every song mentioned in the articles is now an '80s classic.
In '86, when I moved on to Rock Valley College in Illinois, I started a new column, "18 with a Bullet." It focused more on album reviews (out of necessity; no station in Rockford carried "AT40," making it harder to keep track of the charts). Still, I managed to squeeze Casey into some of my work that year. In English 101, one assignment was a comparison/contrast essay on some aspect of the media. My choice was to write about music countdown shows, a concept completely unfamiliar to the poor teacher -- who, nonetheless, thought my paper was good enough not only to receive an A but to have an entire class period devoted to discussing it.
Currently, I'm working on a project that hones in on the period of 1974 through 1986. I'm still compiling weekly charts, but with a twist. Rather than merely copying an existing chart, such as Billboard, I'm taking the data from two of its competitors at the time, Cash Box and Radio & Records, and combining them into a new composite weekly ranking. My adult dream is to use these numbers to create a "new" countdown show to be broadcast exclusively on my own Internet radio station. All I need are two little things: time and money.
Any time a song from either the '70s or the '80s comes on the radio, within a few beats or a few notes, I can give the artist's name, song title, year, label, and chart peak position, right off the top of my head. This is possible in large part because Casey made it cool to be a music geek, or brought out the music geek we didn't know we had inside us. In much the same way as it happens with sports or science, it was the statistical aspect -- in this case the chart movement of the songs from week to week -- that got us hooked.
Casey's old programs are still being re-run every week on radio, both terrestrial and satellite. So he wasn't too far off the radar [in fall 2013], when the story of his family situation and, more important, the status of his health, first broke. You all know about it by now. It's a puzzle, to put it very mildly. This doesn't feel like the time or place to express any of my opinions about it.
Casey wouldn't want us to dwell on that sad stuff anyhow. He would want us to put on some old 45's, kick back, and enjoy the positive memories...and maybe play a little trivia game while we're at it. He would want us to, as the song goes, "take your passion and make it happen," while always having fun and always keeping our ego in check. That is his legacy, and I, for one, plan to honor it in everything I do from this day forward.
Thanks for taking the time, everyone.
Mike Stenz
Riverside, CA
