FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio - Don't touch that dial: why FM radio sucks - Review

Washington Monthly, Nov, 2001 by Frank Ahrens

Neer worked at WNEW from 1971 to 1999. Though he lived through its glory days, it would be accurate to say that his seat at the revolution was Standing Room Only--he was there when it all happened, but trapped somewhere near the back. Because, while FM contains a few dollops of amusing and illuminating stories, they're usually happening to someone else. For instance, legendary WNEW deejay Scott Muni once conducted an on-air interview with a very drunk Elton John, who insisted on playing deejay. (When? Possibly the '80s; Neer doesn't tell us.) John read a carefully worded commercial for the Pink Pussycat Boutique, a New York sex shop, crafted to avoid an FCC indecency fine. But the glam-rocker ad-libbed: "Do you like to rim your boyfriend? Or do you just like to eat pussy? So if you're the world's biggest faggot, or you just like to fuck, visit the Pink Pussycat Boutique." Terrific stuff. The book cries for more.

As Neer's colleagues cavort with rock stars, negotiate big paychecks, and reign like gods over the counter-culture radio intelligentsia, you start to feel sorry for him. Neer finally gets his turn when he's the first American deejay to play Monty Python comedy records. But after scoring an interview, he manages only to coax a "not very funny" Q & A from the hilarious Brits. Afterwards, it's back to the sideline. It's as though a history of the American Revolution was written not by Washington or his chief of staff, but by the second-soldier-from-the-right in Washington's rear guard. For this method to work, the narrator must be funny or insightful. Neer is neither. Worse, he's a lousy writer. Neer opines: "As the Eagles put it, `We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.'" Ugh.

The real problem is that Neer is too gracious to his former colleagues--he commits the cardinal sin of penning a tell-some, not a tell-all. Neer's either unwilling or unable to dish dirt. At one point, he piques our interest by telling us, "Jocks were doing coke while on the air on a regular basis." But two sentences later, Neer betrays his hopeless square-dom: "Never having been a part of the drug culture ..." Sigh. FM is crammed with similar copouts, so much so that you'll want to hurl it against a wall.

Jerk Jocks

Despite himself, Neer provides enough telling detail to show how free-form FM self-immolated. The most important point in the book, one that Neer nails, is that free-form radio's self-righteousness killed it, perhaps deservedly. "These jocks were interested in self-expression, which often translated into self-indulgence," he writes. "It's the elitist attitude that, `I know better than the marketplace. I know what's good, the great unwashed public doesn't.'" As that passage suggests, deejays lorded over set lists as if they were works of art. The seamless segue from one song to the next was considered a transcendent moment of sublime ecstasy. Jocks wanted only to educated listeners to their own tastes--in other words, a lot of these guys sounded less like jocks and more like jerks.