Beans and pop

Press, 3 June 1981, Page 19

Beans and pop

Radio

Heath Lees

Radio Avon got into the holiday mood over the weekend with a “Best of Times” format. The general idea was that in between the playing of the records, people were invited to phone in and say what their Best Times had been. If they were Really Good Best Times there was a gift — for example, a Radio Avon tee-shirt or even a tin of baked beans. Hardly the Nobel Prize, but no doubt these were felt to be suitable tokens of public esteem. There didn't seem to be many takers over the weekend. but. when they did phone in. the participants were grouped into competitive pairs so that Phil Darkins could use his "Loveline” computer-gadget to choose who should get the baked beans. Thus Radio Avon, which isn't made of money after all. was able to give out tins of beans to only some of the callers, and the blame was lifted from Phil's shoulders, and put into the computer's —, a typical practice nowadavs in business circles. Nothing though, not even the Queen, is allowed to stand in the wav of the American Top Forty, which Avon runs for four hours on a Sunday afternoon.

This show is huge business, and is relayed on commercial stations throughout the world. Which seems amazing when one considers that the host. Casey Kasem is positively awful. Like his namesake. Casey Jones, he railroads his way through mountainous hyperbole and impossible cliche, with the only saving grace being his accent which so distorts words as to make them often unintelligible. Darrey Waist turned out to be the singer Dottie West. According to Casey, she used to live in good of Tennessee, pickin’ cotton an’ cuttin’ cane and — would you believe it — the only water was some miles away in the creek. And sometimes she would save her pennies to go to the Gran' 01' Opry. and dream that some day she too would sing there. For Darrey that dream came true. This and other embarrasing W’alt Disney stuff comes over each week, but Sunday's seemed particularly bad. Did you know that when the Rolling Stones were down on their luck they used to trade in pop bottles’? Gee whiz! And now. heh, heh, they return their Rolls-Royces when the ashtrays get full. Oh. and Sheena Easton comes from Scatland, which

is not, as you might think, where Louis Armstrong learned to sing, but a country north of England. The records that Casey plays are the usual run of good, bad and indifferent: But nothing deserves this treatment of brainless, teenmag chatter. The real choker was a dedication from a girl in Kentucky whose Mom and Pop got divorced at a time when she didn't even know the meaning of the word, so for this little girl's daddy, wherever he is, this, is for you. Time to don the Radio Avon tee-shirt, finish the baked beans and wonder how a show like this can be allowed to happen, far less be distributed on a global scale. Lennon, thou should'st be living at this hour.