On every AOR classic rock FM radio station ever

1. "Get The Led Out" daily radio block of Led Zeppelin
2. Rocktober
3. "Be caller number #15 and win a pair of tickets to see Tom Petty at the Anonodome!"

please add more GO!

4. Car-repair ads. Endless, endless car-repair ads.

(also including oil changes, emissions tests, etc.)

5. Twofer Tuesday!

Annual countdown of the greatest songs of all time with "Stairway to Heaven", "Hotel California", or "Comfortably Numb" at #1

(#6)

Car repair ads was a good call!

7) You might hear "Stairway" one other time during the rest of the year but will hear "D'Yer Maker" at least once per week.

8. Morning Show DJs telling you to stay tuned for their "big interview with the legendary..." who always turns out to be Eddie Money, Tommy Shaw, or the drummer from Night Ranger.

In Canada, there's a good chance it will be Rik Emmett.

9. "Eric Clapton recently released a new album entitled Old Sock, released on Gary Hoey's label. [30 additional seconds about the recording of said album.] Here's an older one from him." *plays "Cocaine"*

hahahahaha yes, totally

OTM

10. "Breakfast With Beatles" program neatly tucked away @ 7AM on Sundays.

11. ...followed by Sunday Morning Over Easy, 8:00-10:00

12. One of these bands every hour: Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Loverboy, Triumph, Journey, Styx

triumph?

Perhaps they're less of a staple in the US.

13. Station IDs implying that DJs, far from being interchangeable figureheads grafted onto standardized playlists, are distinct and vaguely rebellious individuals who play the music they like and that you want to hear.

14. Zepptember

13a. Said IDs are soundtracked with appropriately-themed clips, one of which must be "Born to be Wild."

15. Oddly compiled "classic" rock tracks that they never would have played when the song was new; see "Cult of Personality" or "White Wedding".

16. The Friday Song played every Friday at some pre-destined time (Jonathan Edwards, "Shanty")

(The Ottawa and Toronto stations both played Triumph today. Just checked.)

Definitely an Acoustic Sunday syndicated program.

17. Regular Sunday night syndicated retrospective program ("Tonight... 1973...")

18. Saturday night "In Concert" series, featuring Frampton Comes Alive every six months.

19. Weeknight request show with every song already assigned to the log three days ago.

20. Traffic liners rotation of "Drive My car" and "Crosstown Traffic".

21. Frequent mispronounciations of "D'yer Maker", Aja and Jim Croce.

22. Playing that Beatles birthday song for listeners on their birthdays.

23. plays the same two songs by popular artists despite the fact that these artists have an entire catalog of music spanning decades containing equally good or better songs.

15. Oddly compiled "classic" rock tracks that they never would have played when the song was new; see "Cult of Personality" or "White Wedding".

"Don't You Forget About Me" between "Aqualung" and "Jane."

24. Two songs by black artists w/in 24-48-72-hour period: "Superstition" and "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay."

25. repeats the same exact playlist of songs in the morning and the afternoon, and every other day so if it's on the radio where you work you'll hear the same songs in the same order at least 6 times in the span of four days

Do they still do Get the Led Out?! I listened to classic rock radio a lot when I first moved to the US in 98 but barely since then. Was the "7th day 6-pack" a universal thing also? (6 entire albums played on Sunday night).

I've never heard anyone mispronounce Croce. I'd probably call the station and ridicule the dj for it, and I don't even give much of a shit about Jim Croce.

26. "We were just in ZZZ vault and discovered a dozen copies of EC's seminal box set Crossroads on cassette. Remember those, folks? The first 12 callers who phone or text us with the name of one other famous Yardbirds guitarist will win a copy and a $25 gift certificate to Chili's."

27. "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse" must never be separate.

28. the existence of something called "rock blocks"

... where they play the same two songs of a popular artist in a row.

Frequent mispronounciations of "D'yer Maker"

V. OTM!

Was the "7th day 6-pack" a universal thing also?

Never heard of this.

Two songs by black artists w/in 24-48-72-hour period: "Superstition" and "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay."

I'm not sure if I've ever heard these on classic rock stations tbh. A lot of Hendrix, though, of course. Thin Lizzy, Lenny Kravitz, maybe Living Colour. (Don't know if the Allmans count.)

29. [Average release-year of songs played during Flashback Lunchbox program is two years earlier than average release-year of songs played during day's other 23 hours.]

27. "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse" must never be separate.

28. See also: "We Will Rock You"/"We Are the Champions"

Andy K = on fire

Was the "7th day 6-pack" a universal thing also? (6 entire albums played on Sunday night).

This sounds great! Playing whole albums would be something actually useful these stations could do. (Similarly, actually playing the "Old Sock" singles - if anybody should be eager for new material, it's classic rock radio fans. Almost makes you wish payola would make a big comeback. I did hear Joe Walsh's new single once, six months ago, but I think he was also going to be appearing in concert and maybe on the station, so they may have had to cut some sort of deal.)

Saturday night Metal show.
OTM about the "rock blocks"

Yeah, I'd love it they played entire albums, or even more albums more often.

On my station "rock blocks" were commercial-free stretches.

29. "All of the ROCK [*Queen snippet*]...and none of the CRAP [*Vanilla Ice snippet*]."

30. late night weekend show where they play one different song by an artist, like Achilles Last Stand instead of Stairway to Heaven or Kashmir. song is never played again.

hahahah yesssss, I think some version of that came up on a racism thread recently

31. Motley collection of still-touring acts is COMING TO THE ARENADOME in three months and every third time a DJ speaks it's in reference to this (tickets you can win, the upcoming interview with a bassist for the band, the next song is by the first band to ever play the Arenadome back in 1974, etc.).

er, xpost re the racism thread

our classic rock station plays these horrible racist promos that are like "would you rather listen to... THIS?" *plays clip of Inner Circle "Bad Boys"* "...or THIS?" *plays clip of Steve Miller Band* "We thought so too!"

― loosely inspired by Dr. Dre (crüt), Thursday, July 25, 2013 10:43 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What a weird choice -- I don't think I'd even bat an eye if a classic rock station played "bad boys"

― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Thursday, July 25, 2013 10:45 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the sunday albums thing was on klbj in austin, starting at 10pm or so and going into the morning with the albums being played uninterrupted, probably some ads inbetween each. it was great - i remember hearing goodbye yellow brick road on there. definitely something i couldn't imagine on radio now.

Motley collection of still-touring acts is COMING TO THE ARENADOME in three months

always includes 38 Special

xpost A ha: http://www.fcc.gov/guides/obscenity-indecency-and-profanity

The classic rock station I used to work for completely Bowdlerized its catalog after the Justin/Janet Super Bowl thing. Even the Eagles now sing things like "We've been up and down this highway / Haven't seen a Zchwap-Zham thing..."

So that means that even campus stations and NPR can't broadcast 'obscenity'?

The FCC is a tricky bitch. Community standards play a big part, so if you're doing a college radio show on a 10K watt transmitter broadcasting to dorms and frat houses near and close, you're not going to face any huge fines.

(Except maybe you will, who's to say.)

News and education programming can get away with a lot. Show Saving Private Ryan on a Sunday afternoon and dare the FCC to fine you for showing the trials and tribulations of Amercia's Greatest Generation, DARE THEM.

the community station i volunteer at got hit when a listener claimed they heard the swears in "working class hero" even though the dj played an edited version. the station now records everything they broadcast, along with having a five-minute delay.

I worked in radio for almost 20 years and had it drilled drilled drilled into me to be ready for the FCC Inspector who would show up at the station unannounced one day to demand that I demonstrate that as an official operator on duty, I knew how to check transmitter readings, turn the station on and off, conduct myself during a national emergency.

Twenty years I waited for this boogeyman. For 20 years, watching the jugulars of program directors throb as they went over each rule in the handbook, bulletpoint by bulletpoint.

Finally, in the last month I was in radio, He showed up. Dude didn't look like Agent Smith or one of the FBI guys from the Sopranos. He was this paunchy grey-haired guy in a Southwestern dress shirt and bolo tie. He would've fit in better as a mysterious figure standing on a desert highway somewhere, screaming at the tumbleweeds with a bible in his hand, than as the Government Ops Man Who Could Ruin Your Career we had all heard about.

I showed him the transmitter readings and the button I could push to turn it off. He looked at my logs to see where I had signed in for the day, and that was that. Most anti-climatic event ever to happen to me in radio.

12. One of these bands every hour: Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Loverboy, Triumph, Journey, Styx

haha. but here in LA, it's more like:

One of these bands every hour: Boston.

75. Classic rock anthems, stoner Baby Boomer DJs and ads for bars like Cool Daddy's only to be interrupted by sixty-second completely square PSA featuring the usually unheard General Manager on a generic music bed of 80s brass inviting listeners to come down to the station's offices any time between 8 and 5, Monday through Friday, to inspect for themselves the Public Files for KILX, 97.7 FM, owned and operated by Dallas Radioworks Incorporated of Lake Arlington, Texas.

74. Late night show with a name like "Dave's Vault," supposedly featuring forgotten obscurities but actually populated with big hit songs that by right would be in the regular rotation if they hadn't skimmed it down to tracks that peaked at #5 or higher.

Last time there was a good oldies station in town, they would actually play garage rock obscurities late at night, but they also had a thing during the day every hour or so that was "Obscure B-Sides" and the DJ would take the time to really hype it up how this was a great lost track and stay tuned for this rare song! Then eventually they'd get around to playing it and it would be something like the B-side to Tony Orlando's first hit.

76. "Roll The Bones" weekends (DJ "throws" the "dice", number that comes up is how many tunes by whatever band gets played. Funny how when it's Blue Oyster Cult it's always a "1" but when it's Pink Floyd or The Who it's generally a "6".)

By the by, on the swearing tip, seems like it took decades for classic rock stations to finally ditch "funky kicks going down in the city..."

at what point did stations of this kind (and not just classic rock format) start going by "the wolf" "the fox" "the mountain" "the arrow" or whatever? seems like a newish thing in the last ten years or is it?

76. "Roll The Bones" weekends (DJ "throws" the "dice", number that comes up is how many tunes by whatever band gets played. Funny how when it's Blue Oyster Cult it's always a "1" but when it's Pink Floyd or The Who it's generally a "6".)

The Buffalo station did something like this, which I liked, especially since they rolled a pair of dice. Once they played 10 Journey songs in a row.

TS: "The Fox" versus "Joe FM"

15. Oddly compiled "classic" rock tracks that they never would have played when the song was new; see "Cult of Personality" or "White Wedding"

fwiw "white wedding" got tons of play on both of the stations that would have been considered "classic rock" in my neck of the woods at the time.

Canada is pretty anal about 'hate speech' but I don't think there's much regulation of swearing: http://www.thefreeradical.ca/television/crtcOnProfanity.html

You can hear all kinds of profanity all day on campus/community stations.

xposts Yeah, I was hearing "Cult of Personality" a lot on rock radio at the time.

The Buffalo station did something like this, which I liked, especially since they rolled a pair of dice. Once they played 10 Journey songs in a row.

They also played some more interesting earlier Pink Floyd songs when they did this.

48. All of punk rock represented by "Train in Vain" by The Clash

Unless you count stuff like the Police and the Cars, who do get heavy-rotation airplay, punk rock was mostly a cult phenomenon in the US/Canada until the 90s, without many big hits other than the one or two Clash singles. I'd sooner question why hugely popular album-oriented rock artists like James Brown, P-Funk, Stevie Wonder, and Prince are left off these stations, when their music could comfortably fit in.

Because those artists were slotted into "R&B" and there are other stations for that. If you're suggesting they should retrofit black music into a format that never played it when it was new, I think that would be too audacious a break with tradition for programmers to be comfortable with.

AOR doesn't need James Brown because Led Zeppelin did "The Crunge." AOR doesn't need Stevie Wonder because Led Zeppelin did "Trampled Under Foot." Led Zeppelin did everything, so it's just easier to play them all the time.

The whole point of classic rock is retrofitting! There were no classic rock stations when Zep IV was released!

Maybe they played Danny and the Juniors

76. More Smashing Pumpkins than anyone asked for. In lieu of that, Silversun Pickups.

wrong radio format dude

77. Station uses "Foreplay" as part of their station identification message.

not in my town

xp

i mean...i'm pretty confident none of the first 75 items in this thread described a station that's ever played the Silversun Pickups.

The whole point of classic rock is retrofitting! There were no classic rock stations when Zep IV was released!

There used to be a thing called AOR, mentioned in the thread title, which began the tradition that the Classic Rock format evolved out of. Classic Rock was really just a new name for AOR that reflected an abandonment of any pretense to being contemporary - which was the road that AOR had been going down anyway. You could argue about precisely when AOR started - it may have been just after Zep IV appeared, but even then there were free-form FM stations that would've played Zep, and a lot of those same stations became the first AOR stations when they accepted the restricted playlists.

Maybe they played Danny and the Juniors

Well, sure, but freeform/progressive is a different format from AOR/classic rock. Many things have been left out in the transition, at least as I understand my history (and especially when you compare contemporary AOR/classic rock stations to contemporary freeform stations). I mean, I'm being a little difficult. I think I'm reasonably aware of the history of American rock radio formats and recognize that the roots of radio re-segregation predate the current classic rock format. My point is more that this seems like the more significant issue to me than whether or not bands that did not reach a mainstream audience in the first place are getting airplay, even if the roots of the problem go back 40 years. (400 years?) Admittedly, it might seem less problematic if I lived in a place where ANY stations play those artists.

Actually, Jack FM stations do seem a little less segregated in this way.

xpost

Actually, it would be pretty interesting to have a WFMU-style freeform station that still played Zep and Tull album sides alongside everything else.

OK I see your point.. I think we can agree that the classic rock format is stupid in many ways. It's designed to be reductive.

whether or not bands that did not reach a mainstream audience in the first place are getting airplay

The fact that they didn't reach a mainstream audience has a lot to do with the fact that they didn't get airplay in the first place on the self-described rock stations.

it would be pretty interesting to have a WFMU-style freeform station that still played Zep and Tull album sides alongside everything else.

that's pretty much what glen jones' long-running sunday show on wfmu is!

AOR doesn't need James Brown because Led Zeppelin did "The Crunge." AOR doesn't need Stevie Wonder because Led Zeppelin did "Trampled Under Foot." Led Zeppelin did everything, so it's just easier to play them all the time.

in its time, AOR was also known, not unfairly, as apartheid oriented rock. alternative rock stations weren't any different or any better. lots of dance music by white british people and not a lot of dance music by anybody else. lots of beastie boys and not any hip-hop whatsoever by anybody else. the continuing racism of classic rock is self-perpetuating. the longer they don't play james brown or stevie wonder or p-funk or prince, the more they'll cement an audience that doesn't want to hear it.

Please tell me that "Roll The Bones Weekend" used Rush's "Roll The Bones" as the theme song.

They don't! They use a sound-clip loop of rolling dice (die?), which sounds a lot like eggs frying.

^^Just the facts? That sucks some gluteus max!

I've never heard "The Crunge" on any radio station ever.

Heard "Achilles" exactly once on (non-satellite) radio, at 2am on Detroit's "WRIF Rock Cafè" (where they'd nightly play true "deep cuts" for about three hours.)

Portland, Maine's "classic rock" station WBLM goes by "the Blimp." They play the Trout Mask clip "The blimp! The blimp!" constantly but never any actual Beefheart music (not surprisingly).

78. drivetime 'comedy spotlight' where they play 5 minutes of some HBO standup special from the early 90s or that "Jack Nicholson working the drive-thru at Jack In The Box" skit

wblm played "abba zabba" on their psychedelic breakfast show!

and isaac hayes "walk on by"!

Portland, Maine's "classic rock" station WBLM goes by "the Blimp." They play the Trout Mask clip "The blimp! The blimp!" constantly but never any actual Beefheart music (not surprisingly).

― Shart Week (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, August 12, 2013 2:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha, I'm reminded of how one time our station had a GUITAR WEEKEND (not like all those other, guitar-free days) and the ads for it included clips of "My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama," a song that would never be played on the station in a million years.

more:

The Mothers Of Invention - "Call Any Vegetable"
Manic Street Preachers - "Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky"
Amon Duul II - "She Came Through The Chimney"

wow!

having begun listening to the radio in the early 80s, tis true that AOR would play the fuck out of radio tracks from corporate rock cats. I grew up in Louisville KY, so you would get lots of ZZ Top, 38 Spay-shull, Mellencamp, Bad Company (post Paul Rodgers version was HUGE) and stuff that had a vague southern shit-kicker quality. I never ever heard Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Dylan and the Grateful Dead, in that I doubt their research told them that the mid south males they wanted to not change the dial liked those acts. Mellencamp was played cuz he was the springsteen of the region. Rolling Stones, The Police, def Leppard passed muster, as did a few MTV acts like duran duran and the romantics very briefly, before MTV became associated with Michael Jackson. The point is that Led Zeppelin or washed-up, pre-comeback Aerosmith or Kiss (at any point) was not played on WQMF or WLRS, but new radio tracks from active acts like Van halen, Rush or Journey or Loverboy or the Trevor Horn-Yes or pre-Invisible Touch/"pop star Phil" Genesis. and yeah, no black music EVER. Not even Hendrix. I remember when the rock station DJ said "OK. we're not so sure about the following," and then dropped the needle on Metallica's "One."

that changed when AOR yielded to Classic rock. Sometimes "forever man" or the new song from the Stones or McCartney, but the eternalcanon that at least for me drove me towards record collecting and the extremely fertile punk rock scene in Louisville was in place.

Which it still is, but I've noticed that certain artists have graduated to the canon that pitiful gasbags who ruin the Rock stations on Sirius for me offer hosannas to:

U2
red hot chili Peppers
Nirvana
Metallica
Pearl Jam
stone temple Pilots

have the Foo fighters graduated to this? who else?

Stunned (at WBLM). Never heard anything along those lines when visiting, and friends there long ago gave up on the station.

xp

well that show is only on between 8-10am on saturday. more surprising stuff on their playlists: http://www.wblm.com/page.php?page_id=391

79. DJs whose patter is basically based around stuff they saw online ("Did you see that literal video for 'Friday'?") Or on TV ("Last night's Breaking Bad...man!"), topped off with "Oh by the way, here's Aerosmith!" <plays "Rag Doll">

In case anybody here's missed it, some dude's poll is gearing up: CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL parking lot tailgate pre-party -- nominations, discussions, parameters, etc.

Carry on my wayward son