At work I do a lot of thinking about the obscure and abstract. Being a janitor and all that allows me that luxury. So I’m absently cleaning one of the restroom I’m responsible for and in the background there are various music genres that play throughout the casino though most of the guests are more than likely to tune out the tunes.
At any rate I’m thinking about how some artists get more airplay than others, and how some musicians’ are classed in one sub-genre rather than another. For example, Pat Benatar gets hardly any airtime on the radio stations I listen to, same as Joan Jett, both of which were extremely popular in the mid to late eighties. On the other hand I listen to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna incessantly here. Why? I have no idea. Neither are a big favorite of mine.
What really strikes me as interesting are musicians such as Daughtry who used to get decent airplay on some stations but none on the alternative stations I listen to now. I’m sure it has as much to do with a radio station manager’s own personal bias of who he or she likes as opposed to how popular that performer is locally.
I suppose had the Beatles not had Brian Epstein as their manager, but someone else, not nearly as good at marketing their brand, we may have never heard of them or been relegated to some obscure radio stations that had limited visibility. One has to wonder how many others out there were there that were just as good but lacked that one spark that set their star into the stratosphere and beyond. Be it a great agent, a perfect song or the times that evolved around them.
As a writer I’m still searching for my brand to set me on a course for future success. I’ve been seriously doing this since my stroke in 2002, have four published or self-published books and a couple of short story entries in my resume, but nothing that screams greatness of the magnitude of a Stephen King or Robert Crichton or Anne Rice. I hope one day my ship will come and I can retire happily ever after.
Jerry Schellhammer 