I once heard someone's theory about the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" album. He said the whole lp was about communication--communication between people and communication through the media of society. Especially the song "Blue Jay Way" ("There's a fog upon L.A. / And my friends have lost their way."), the Beatles are saying there's a sort of thick layer of static obscuring all our attempts to get through to people.

If the Beatles are saying this about our media, it is particularly true for radio. The radio is low percentage reception. And because radio people at least think they are responsive to what the listeners want of the medium, they keep the content to that which can be best heard when heard poorly.

The musical content of rock radio becomes, above all, what is simple. This helps us understand one of the "unnatural" things we find ourselves doing. Liking bad songs. We like those songs (e.g., "Sky Pilot") because they fully exploit the strengths and weaknesses of the radio. The songs are only complicated enough to approach the threshhold of what can't be heard. They have a strong drum beat to vibrate to, and usually one good, catchy riff that is repeated as many times as possible. It takes genius to write one great simple, yet very varied, song. The Beatles have written about fifty.

There is the theory of primal beats. This explanation says that we will like any song that has a simple one-two beat in it. The one-two subconsciously reminds us of the beating of our mother's heart which we heard when we were in the womb. The womb, it seems, is a nice place to be. Hearing this kind of sound makes us think we are there; consequently we are happy.

This sort of explanation might frighten us if we weren't long past any thinking that we were in control of what we wanted.

There is another thing about the medium that we know is true but aren't sure why. It is that repeated play of a song on the radio is necessary to our liking it. There are just very few songs played that we like the first time. Even with very good songs by very good groups we usually don't take a flying "like" from the start.

But once we decide we like a song we like it more and more each time it's played until we finally get tired of it. However, the more we hear it and like it the more we are guaranteed of always liking it when it returns as an oldie.

One of the main reasons we like oldies so much is because they remove us from the tension of getting used to new records and the threat of getting tired of the new ones we already like. We're a little bit nervous about any record as it is going through the rise and fall of its first genesis. But as an oldie, it is something we can like because of its repeated play, but not be tense about because of its popularity isn't threatened.

What repeated play means to the medium is that relatively few records can be introduced. Therefore the choice of what we will hear falls out of the hands of the listener into the hands of the disc jockeys, who then pick what the listeners will start to assimilate.

It is bad that the disc jockeys make the choice that we should be making for ourselves. If we didn't take so long to accept what we do accept, then we'd have time to hear a lot more and actually decide what to accept and what not to.

The necessity for an individual record's "repeated play" bleeds into the more general concept of "repeated sound." If a sound can be identified as familiar and reassuring, then we assimilate the new song faster. Unfortuately everyone, including the people selling the records, know this. So we get a group like Tommy James and the Shondells cutting a surprise hit with a new kind of sound in "I Think We're Along Now" (a crumby song with one catchy refrain); they followed that one up with a song, whose title I can't remember, but which was built around an imitation of the catchy riff in the first one. Now, it isn't very nice of Tommy James and the Shondells to try to get away with that sort of thing. But they did; and people listening generally saw what they were doing and just shrugged. We're not, it seems, a very critical audience.

The groups that are really well-known (and it is encouraging that about half of this group includes really great musicians such as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones) are, in their new songs, usually recognized by their style. This means that if Donovan comes out with a new song, people listening try to go with the flow of the new sound as soon as they hear it; they know they will probably like it. The identity of his sound with his name, and his name back to familiar sounds acts as an enzyme to the assimilation process.

It should also be remembered that most people who listen to the radio don't know the names of many groups, don't remember the titles of songs, and certainly can't identify styles. It seems that only the people who build up record collections and do that kind of careful listening ever become even the mediocre authorities. But the casual people often listen to the radio a lot; they just keep it in the background of their consciousness. And they can identify the new song of an old hit group as being a generally familiar sound which they are more ready to accept.

These people have an awareness of the rock radio really different from, for example, the kind of person who scores well on the CRIMSON's semi-annual exam period rock 'n' roll quizzes. They identify the radio's sound much more with the blurred flow of existence because they don't distinguish the elements of what they hear.

I remember, in this regard, that when I was a pre-pubescent child, I used to listen to the radio at night to drop me off to sleep. I was tremendously embarrassed to be talking with other boys, that I looked up to a lot, and to find myself unable to describe the difference between the Turtles and the Byrds (or whoever it was who were around then). It was about the time that I came to be able to identify these different rock groups that I found the radio no longer put me to sleep but rather kept me up.