Classic Rock Radio Is Really Wierd When You Think About It

(I mean, if I'm in Ottawa now and I tune in, it's just in hopes of catching "Burnin for You" or something. I think they've grown both relatively and absolutely safer.)

Oh yes it is.

Read here:
Twisted Sister and Motley Crue are now classic rock
"Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen -- who really enjoys this overproduced crappy glop?
In Damnation of....."Levon" by Elton John
Mind-numbing, jaw-slacking Classic Rock query: "Captain Jack" by Billy Joel

I've been astonished that as older portions of the target demographic are presumably drifting away (maybe boomers are dying now?), 80's stuff is added to the playlist that virtually no commercial radio would have touched for 2 decades in the interim, eg. (in the local case) Duran Duran's "Girls On Film", Soft Cell's "Tainted Love". Probably displacing the occasional 70's Springsteen track, and having me wondering whether "classic" merely means "comfortably familiar sounds from 20+ years ago"!

xpost: that stuff's even odder.

They should precede them with Progust.

Yeah. Similarly, some of the sloppier garagey tracks that are considered utterly classic ("Wild Thing", assorted Them tracks, the odd Nuggets track you might find on radio, etc), I'd speculate are all probably grottier than the last current CD purchase of yer typical target "classic" listener.

Also, although these stations do indeed juxtapose very varied styles, it's interesting how firmly circumscribed the selections are from some of the more interesting "classic" artists: probably only 1-2 tracks by most, maybe 5 or 6 tracks by someone like Bowie or Pink Floyd (again based exclusively on local examples).

These further suggest that a high degree of familiarity is the key to getting on the "classic" playlist, regardless of the style or identity of the artist, or how the familiarity to the listener was achieved [essentially reiterating M@tt's qn there : )]. One local station almost conceded as much in their promo which featured a supposed listener saying "No rap, no weird stuff -- music I can sing along with all day!"

Anyway, what really makes me sad is the coterie of NY-area disc jockeys like Ken Daschau, Jim Kerr, Pat St.John and newswoman Shelley Sunsteen who have ended up at Q104 like it's some radio old age home. I remember listening to those creeps back in grade school (before I realized that classic rock radio was a fuckin' wasteland). Sad.

when i met ned's young friend saturday night, he told me that WMMR -- a philadelphia classic-rock station and another mainstay from me youth -- has "stretched out" by throwing stuff like pearl jam, nirvana, soundgarden, etc. into the usual classic-rock gumbo. not too tempting there, chef.

That's a good question. I'd say thirty-five years. Tune in to an oldies station today, and you're going to hear songs like "Proud Mary", "Gloria", "Light My Fire", "Ruby Tuesday", "I Can See For Miles", etc. played alongside Ricky Nelson and the Beach Boys.

At this rate, I would say that it's probable that you'll hear things like "The Joker" and "Peaceful Easy Feeling" on oldies radio in the year 2010.

'The problem with classic rock is classic rock radio' -- Bob Bannister

Quick side trip for all Phillyphiles...
TS: WMMR vs WYSP... FITE!

nowadays i dunno -- i don't live around there any more!

the oldies station (in minnesota, again) now plays stuff from the 60s and 70s. everything was bumped up a decade! can't listen to KQ myself.

The abject dreadfulness of "Here I Go Again" is surpassed only by its even more loathesome sibling, "Is This Love?" And to think that this came from the same band who sang "Slow'n'Easy".

Q104 has its moments, for better or worse.

The real debate is Q104 VS K-Rock.

I hear those on oldies stations now. I've also heard stuff like "My Sharona". It seems like in the late evening the 1970s gets more of the focus in an attempt to get people in their 30s/early 40s listening, after the really old people who want the 1955-1966 stuff have gone to bed.

Eminem no, Kid Rock and Beastie Boys yes (assuming the station I listen to is representative).

"the mangles" is so good that it has to be done

my buddy got guitar lessons from a guy in a sting cover band (possibly it was called "stung"?) but the sad thing was the guy OD'd.

Manity 6

Some Dude on a roll. I got as far as trying to make something clever out of Manfred Womann and gave up.

Ladyohead?

Dicks On Speed

on the same level

Chixie Dicks

John Jett

Womanfred Womann

I wonder if there are any gender bending bands with both sexes? Like a Fleetwood Mac tribute with women on bass, drums, guitar, and the Buckingham vocals, and men doing the Nicks and Chrstine McVie parts.

Genesisters
Sheely Dan

Allwoman Sisters

I wonder if there are any gender bending bands with both sexes? Like a Fleetwood Mac tribute with women on bass, drums, guitar, and the Buckingham vocals, and men doing the Nicks and Chrstine McVie parts.

― wk, Monday, August 13, 2012 8:17 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i had a Sonic Youth cover band with an old lesbian singing Thurston's parts and a depressed long-haired teenage boy singing Kim's parts and everyone thought it was the real band

lol

"Atlanta has not had a classic rock station for years."

That seems hard to believe. Usually every town of some size has a "Z-rock station", one classic rock station that has been there for decades (and to be fair might play some newer rock) and then one station that does the hits from the 60s to the 80s.

One thing I have noticed over the years is that when you get into those classic rock stations/or at least old battleship rock stations that some of their programming is still a bit programmed to what is popular in the area. They all play the same stuff for the some part, but there are some artists that seem to be more popular than others. Indy's Q-95 is freakin' nuts for Seger and Mellancamp, it's like every third song is one or the other. Double Q in Lexington plays AC/DC every third song and a heck of a lot more 80s metal. XRT and some of the stations up in Chicago always seem to me to be more anglophile and you would say hear stuff like The Who, The Clash and the new wave stuff like Elvis Costello or The Cure alot more.

I haven't heard it in years, but XRT used to play a lot of non-standard stuff by standard "classic rock" artists. They played "Jack Straw" as much as a "classic rock" station would play "Truckin'"; whatever the new Neil Young record was got way more traction than his old stuff ("Over and Over" was in heavy rotation in 1990-91); and late at night you could count on a semi-curveball or two, like "Marquee Moon."

First I was creeped out when the oldies station welcomed in disco.

Now I get eternally frustrated that the latest Tom Petty hit will be on "classic rock" radio, but they'll still only play Sabbath songs of Paranoid. It's not like these stations don't own a Sabbath greatest hits or a copy of Master of Reality.

Clear Channel fucking sucks.

PS - Babes in Boyland

"they'll still only play Sabbath songs of Paranoid."

You would figure you would hear more southern rock in Lexington and they do play the old warhorses, but they play more old metals stuff including a ton Ozzy and Sabbath, including deeper cuts.

XRT was always a bit different, have no idea what it is like now, but back in the 90s it's still the only commercial station I ever heard play Richard Thompson.

WHFS in DC played Richard Thompson before they "went commercial" around '90; by 1993 they played almost exclusively the Billboard Modern Rock 100 but still liked to believe they were "alternative".

Man Hole

haw

Madonnald

sometimes I can't believe that The Yeastie Girlz actually existed

He-art

Nobody mentioned Cheap Chick, right?

(That one's real.)

Atlanta's only classic rock station was replaced by a news station.

Actually, that might have been the only oldies station, rather. I think classic rock may still live on "The River". But 106.7 used to play classic rock and oldies and then some days it would be alot of 70s soft rock and sometimes it would be obscure 60s garage stuff. And now it's NEWS. Oh the humanity.

Fox 97 is the oldies station i grew up with and i don't think anything can top that. RIP

I just went to check whether The River is technically listed as a classic rock station (personally, I wouldn't call it that), and it is listed as a "classic rock leaning class hits" station. Hilarious. The Z-rock station in Atlanta, Z-93, converted to a Dave station (adult album alternative) probably around 10 years ago, and is now converting into sports talk radio. Hooray.

leaning class?

Yeah, that's "classic-rock leaning classic-hits" station.

Thanks for the hyphens!

I just went to check whether The River is technically listed as a classic rock station

It would be awesome if for bumpers they used the part of "Cities" where David Byrne is all "it's only the river! IT'S ONLY THE RIVER!"

I really like the fake classic rock station in GTA: San Andreas. It was called THE DUST and the promos are pretty spot-on for classic rock radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4DJAlpaVk

Fox 97 is the oldies station i grew up with and i don't think anything can top that. RIP

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 11:47 AM Bookmark

Fox 97 was cool but family-owned OLDIES LAKE 102.3 was the shit in the mid 90s. Your archetypal "50s oldies station that vanished as demographics moved along by a decade." Tons of memories of listening to that on the way to school and my mother turning it up for some weird thing she'd swear she hadn't heard in forty years. I got a lot of my musical taste baseline from that station. It was still pretty good in the early 00's when I was working a retail summer job, but it was trending more 60s, less 50s. The same band is now "La Raza," serving the growing Hispanic community, and former owner "Skipper" Bob Joseph passed away in 2005.

"strutter" is so fkn awesome

XRT was always a bit different, have no idea what it is like now, but back in the 90s it's still the only commercial station I ever heard play Richard Thompson.

Yeah, XRT is still pretty great in terms of playing stuff that you'd be hard-pressed to find on most other commercial stations. These days it even plays a smattering of high-profile "indie" stuff, like Vampire Weekend, Spoon, Decemberists, M83, etc.

we had a cool Classic Indie station for a few months that played popular (yet not found elsewhere) stuff from Bowie thru New Wave and 90s alt to occasional current indie hits. then it became a country station....

There's the classic Classic Rock station that gets the Led out every night, and the Rock station that became Classic Modern Rock by virtue of not updating their playlist since 1998.

The River rules on Sundays.

Fox 97 is the oldies station i grew up with and i don't think anything can top that. RIP

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 11:47 AM Bookmark

otm. this was the station I grew up on. now no commercial station plays anything from the '50s. barely anything from the '60s either.

dudes follow @540WXYG

crazy crazy deep cut classic rock station, like unreal shit doggs

I assume you classic rock heads in Atlanta already know about this: http://stonehengeatlanta.blogspot.com/

WZBA, "The Bay," 100.7 FM in Maryland is a really good station, they do the two-for-Tuesdays and Get The Led Out but also a lot of other stuff like playing a whole side of a different LP every night, deep cuts, occasional airings of local/regional favorites like Little Feat and Crack The Sky, some cool knowledgeable DJs.

I do now, that looks awesome, thanks for the link!

xpost to crut

AM1280 WWTC in Minneapolis used to be an amazing old-school 50s/60s oldies station in the 80s, my first exposure to everyone from The Bobbettes to Diane Ray. They seemed to have NO playlist. They are now conservative talk radio. RIP.

Samples of this are actually available online. Jingle packages! Shouty DJs! April Stevens' "Teach Me Tiger!"

http://www.radiotapes.com/Airchecks%201/Scott%20Stevens%20-%20WWTC%201983.mp3

http://www.540wxyg.com/

recently played:

We May Never Pass this Way Again - Seals and Croft
Happy Hooker - Black Oak Arkansas
Duncan - Paul Simon
California - Joni Mitchell
Earache My Eye - Cheech and Chong

I assume you classic rock heads in Atlanta already know about this: http://stonehengeatlanta.blogspot.com/

― Gurdas Mane (crüt), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In spite of the North Avenue Trade School connection, this show is pretty awesome.