Musical PTSD

Zendo Deb dug up a video of “One Hit Wonders from the 1980s.” I listened to it.

I shouldn’t have. But at the risk of triggering PTSD in other veterans, here ’tis

That was mostly an unpleasant flashback to a decade largely spent overseas, when the only available “entertainment” radio was AFRTS (A-Farts, of course).*

AFRTS — musically — mostly played the current pop chart, on endless repeat. There was also a disco program that pretty much everyone turned off. And a country program that tried. Then you got well-sanitized top-of-the-hour news. Everything else was sports, like it or not.

Until I got sick of it, and started doing my own programming (WMAL FM 107.9 The Voice Of Malatya!)**, it was AFRTS or nothing.

For the record, I recognized all but one of the “top twenty.” There’s one I even like. A couple more that were “Meh, OK.” The rest… it’s best that they were one hit wonders.


* Apparently they finally changed the name to “American Forces Network,” after decades of hating being called A-Farts.

** And that’s another story. Specifically the time the base commander at Diyarbakır AB took offense to my classic rock show… Although getting a phone-in request from Hawaii was amusing.

 

If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in my tip jar. I could really use the money, what with ISP bills, site hosting and SSL certificate, new 2021 model hip, and general life expenses.Click here to donate via PayPal.
(More Tip Jar Options)

Published by

Bear

2A advocate, writer, firearms policy & law analyst, general observer of pre-apocalyptic American life.

2 thoughts on “Musical PTSD”

  1. Man, I was just getting over the 80s…
    Yep, those mostly seemed like one hit wonders, and mostly I knew the songs but not the bands.
    AFKN was…odd. and then to get away you went into the ville where they played one hit wonders from the 60s and 70s. (By the late 80s they were putting up monitors and running music videos, so no more “Rah, Rah, Rasputin” or “I Wanna Go Stateside”…)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.