AM Top 40 formulas didn’t work on FM radio. No-budget operations didn’t hassle with two-and-a-half minute pop singles. FM jockeys had no playlists or charts and preferred to put on an spacey album and let it play: Black or hybrid White R&B, sitar music, Jug Band music, Folk or Folk Rock, LA or SF Psychedelic and even tapes from local garage bands. This, of course, exposed the Boomer market to the likes of Big Brother, the Dead, Quicksilver, Country Joe and the Fish, the Doors, Zappa, the Fugs and Phil Ochs.
Within a year, nearly every Boomer teen in America lived within range of at least one underground FM station. They handed down their AM transistor radios to younger siblings and bought albums, rather than singles. LPs became the Boomer standard, and this new, more expensive taste had an immediate impact… the record industry topped the billion dollar mark for the first time in 1967.
Top 40 AM stations suddenly found themselves competing with, or even trailing the new, much smaller FMs in many markets, and the Music Industry had no choice but to ease up censorship rules. Longer cuts with more radical lyrics hit the pop charts. Drug references, taboo before the Summer of Love, now couldn’t be separated from the appealing outlaw image. AM rationalized playing the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” in 1966 because the song could be taken literally with an innocent interpretation about soaring through the skies, rather than the effect of drugs. In 1967 Rock lyrics pulled no punches. How could the music establishment explain: “I’d love to turn you on”, or “One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small… Feed your head”, or “But, have you ever been experienced… Well, I have”? AM even played a “how to” drug song, about covering up the fragrant aroma of marijuana with “Incense and Peppermints”.
Top 40 listeners heard references to casual sex for the first time, as the Beatles broke new ground: “Took her home and almost made it, sitting on the sofa with a sister or two (followed by heavy breathing)”. Soon after, the sound of passionate lovemaking played on at least one cut of every psychedelic album. The topic heated up: “Play with me and you won’t get burned/ Let me stand next to your fire” and “Come on, Baby, Light My Fire”.
AM radio did, however refuse to compromise on songs that criticized the Military/Industrial Complex. “Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-to-Die Rag” never made the Top 40 with, “Come on, Wall Street, don’t move slow/ Here’s your chance to make more gold/ there’s plenty good money to be made/ Supplying the Army with the tools of the trade…And, it’s one, two, three what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn/ Next stop is Vietnam”. Nor did Phil Ochs’ “The War Is Over”. But, it really didn’t matter what AM played because, by the end of 1967, a Boomer teen could say, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” on FM.
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The National Counterculture Communication Network emerged independent, strong and complete by the end of the year. Boomers no longer depended on the censored newscasts of the Geritol Generation, and they didn’t miss the hype and mass manipulation a bit. They had been the main target of oldest con game in advertising for nearly two decades: Attach an attractive, forceful symbol to a boring product (as in “Tony the Tiger” to Cornflakes}. As the original electronic, mass-media generation, Boomers were the first to figure out that symbols are more important than substance to Middle America. Young people performed a little mass manipulation of their own by attacking some of the most cherished symbols of our society: the flag, the dollar bill and the Pentagon.
How can you get a million bucks worth of media coverage for, literally, a fist full of dollars? Ask Abbie Hoffman. In 1967, he and a few friends scraped up as many one-dollar bills as they could lay their hands on, divided the money, and then waited in line with the tourists at the New York stock Exchange on Wall Street. The scruffy group was almost thrown out by security, but Abbie started screaming, “They’re trying to keep Jews out of the Stock Market!” This confused the guards and they allowed the kids to continue. The counterculture commandos approached the viewing area high above the trading action, stepped to the rail and tossed the money into the air. Chaos broke out down on the main floor as stockbrokers scrambled after the bills like a pack of hungry mongrels after a bone. The electronic ticker tape machine (“the heartbeat of the Western World”) stopped cold. Reporters had been tipped off in advance, and TVs and newspapers broadcast the story almost as soon as it happened. “Hippies Shut Down Wall Street!” Granted, only for a few minutes, but long enough to demonstrate to Middle America the epidemic of petty greed in Big Business. What was the total cost of this amazing National anti-ad campaign? $300.