A few weeks ago, as an aside to his post on R.E.M., Danny included a bit of conjecture about what an updated classic rock station might sound like:
But a tangential question that he raised was, “I’m very interested in seeing who ends up being remembered as our Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, or Beatles” when it’s time for us to have some fogey-friendly, lowest-common-denominator, deep-cut-enabled classic rock that’s widely popular but still reasonably interesting. I can’t remember what I wrote in response, but there are some pretty good examples I can think of now. Wilco. The White Stripes. Radiohead (Ed notwithstanding). Foo Fighters. Creed1. A few of the longer-lived grunge-era bands would qualify: Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, STP for some.
I had a long response drafted in my head, and so I thought I’d write my own post.
What is classic rock?
I think the way Danny framed the question is close to perfect, because it deftly avoids some thorny side issues. But I think those side issues are worth thinking about. The obvious question is how do we define classic rock radio: is Classic Rock a genre that evolves to contain more recent artists? Or is it oldies station format that’s stuck on “The Best of the 60s and 70s and 80s?” This is an existential question, but for most program directors / media behemoths, answering it will not lead to adventurous results. For them, we can rephrase: When is okay to start playing Guns n’ Roses and Metallica? Will it ever be okay to play the Black Crowes?
As a heavy listener of Houston’s Z 107.5 in my youth, I remember hearing the station occasionally work Guns ‘n’ Roses into the playlist, beginning around 1991 or 1992. And I’ve since heard more than one classic rock station spin the Crowes’ version of “Hard to Handle.” But I wonder whether most self-styled classic rock stations evolve even this much. Because my guess is that most of them look and sound a lot like this one.
Consistent with the above, here’s how the New York Radio Guide (via Wikipedia) defines the Classic Rock format:
A station which plays rock music released during the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s. These stations recreate the sound of Album Oriented Rock stations of that period (although often with a much more limited playlist) and appeal mainly to adults rather than to teenagers. Some Classic Rock stations play a limited amount of current releases stylistically consistent with the station’s sound.
What this means, sadly, is that Classic Rock, as it’s commercially known and experienced, is not growing old with us. From what I’ve heard recently, they’re slow to include even bands with broad popularity like R.E.M. or U2 (although, I’ve at least heard some U2 on America’s classic rock stations). Certainly, they’re not branching out to include Nirvana or Pearl Jam.
Does this make Danny’s query an academic one? I don’t think so. Radio is only one way of defining the classics. There are two other ways to approach the question, and I think Danny’s formulation combines them. But it’s worth thinking of them separately, because they result in markedly different answers.
1. What Rock music from our generation will be repackaged and sold back to us in soft-focus nostalgia?
2. What vintage tour shirts will the kids want to wear in 10 – 20 years?
The future of our past looks bleak
Danny jokingly includes Creed in his list. But that, my friend, is no joke. Arguably, there’s not much that’s both “fogey-friendly, lowest-common-denominator, deep-cut-enabled classic rock that’s widely popular” that is also “reasonably interesting.” If we’ve had a band as good as Led Zeppelin or AC/DC in our own, post-Nirvana generation of musicmakers (sadly debatable), they never enjoyed the kind of wide popularity those bands did. Instead, our idiots were listening to this:
That’s actually a worse collection than I’d come up with. Because when I say, “sell it back to us” I don’t just mean these cheesy K-Tel-like collections. I’d also include music that will inevitably be licensed in movies and TV shows and commercials. And tracks that are given decent play on the broader satellite radio playlists and niche stations. In our not-so-classic-rock Hall of Fame, I’d put the following bands (minimum 2 albums + 1 maybe one hit, 90s and onward, that managed to somehow puncture the zeitgeist):
- 311
- Beastie Boys
- Beck
- Belly
- Ben Folds Five
- Better Than Ezra
- Blink 182
- Blur
- Blues Traveler
- The Breeders
- Jeff Buckley
- Bush
- Cake
- Counting Crows
- Cheryl Crow
- Collective Soul
- Cracker
- Creed
- Dinosaur Jr.
- Everclear
- Flaming Lips
- Foo Fighters
- Garbage
- Gin Blossoms
- Green Day
- Hole
- Jane’s Addiction
- Live
- Matchbox Twenty
- Mazzy Star
- Metallica
- My Bloody Valentine
- Nickelback
- Nirvana
- Oasis
- Offspring
- Pavement
- Pearl Jam
- Pixies
- Lemonheads
- Radiohead
- Red Hot Chili Peppers
- REM
- Screaming Trees
- Smash Mouth
- Smashing Pumpkins
- Sonic Youth
- Soul Asylum
- Soundgarden
- Stone Temple Pilots
- Sublime
- Matthew Sweet
- The Sundays
- Supergrass
- Third Eye Blind
- Three Doors Down
- Tool
- U2
- Weezer
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a few favorites of mine that don’t qualify under the criteria:
I also want to mention my favorite one hit wonder of the 90s, whose videos are “disabled by request”. Marcy Playground’s one huge hit and one minor track were two of the best mainstream moments radio had in the 90s. Coincidental side note: at our most recent band practice, friend-of-NAP Johnathan Sage mentioned it was damn near unheard of to say “mama” as a musical reference to a “foxy lady” anymore. It’s quite possible that Marcy Playground was the last group to do this in a rock hit of any size. This might also be a reasonable proxy for determining what gets played on a classic rock station.
Anyway, who’s on your re-issue T-shirt 10 years from now?
A much shorter list, right? Two pals of mine, both Houston music vets, came up with a good litmus test they apply to almost anything (not just music): Tony Balls and Jordan Graber ask “Is it better than Soundgarden?” Having been first massively awesome and then massively popular (not at the same time, sadly), Soundgarden’s metal and hard rock blend is squarely in the sweet spot of what you’d have to call “classic alternative”. Along with Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins they’re fairly close to actual classic rock. I’d not be surprised to hear this trio on one of the more progressive classic rock stations. They certainly meet the t-shirt test I’m suggesting here.
So let’s start with these three and create our smaller list. For an example of what I’m proposing, Bush is the “buzz band” equivalent of Soundgarden, perhaps even more popular for much of the 90s, but I don’t see a $9.99 retro shirt at J.C. Penney in their future. Nor do I see future hipsters seeking out their vintage gear. So they don’t make the list. That said note that Sublime will be all over t-shirts forever. They make the list, despite being much, much worse than Soundgarden. Note also that having an iconic logo matters, just like it does for Zeppelin and Van Halen. At this point in Weezer’s career, that might be the only thing keeping them on the short list.
- Beastie Boys
- Beck
- The Breeders
- Dinosaur Jr.
- Flaming Lips
- Foo Fighters
- Green Day
- Jane’s Addiction
- Metallica
- My Bloody Valentine
- Nirvana
- Oasis
- Pavement
- Pearl Jam
- Pixies
- Radiohead
- Red Hot Chili Peppers
- REM
- Smashing Pumpkins
- Sonic Youth
- Soundgarden
- Stone Temple Pilots
- Sublime
- Tool
- U2
- Weezer
About the Flaming Lips
I should respond to what Danny said in the comments of his post:
The Flaming Lips are an interesting case. They have an extremely deep discography with a lot of great music, but really only one hit single, so most people (i.e. my friend Sanjeev) wouldn’t recognize any of their songs. They aren’t a mass-culture touchstone like Zep or the Beatles or even, much as they’d love it, Floyd. They’re more like Deep Purple, another great band beloved by people who know about music but a one-hit novelty band to casual listeners.
Their buddy Beck, on the other hand: classic rock all the way.
Danny seems to say the Flaming Lips don’t quite make the grade as classic rock of the future. Perhaps, using his informal metric, neither would the Pixies or Dinosaur Jr. But each of these bands has a deep discography and at least one song everyone would recognize. The Flaming Lips had three: “Vaseline”, “Bad Days”, and “Do You Realize?” Licensing that last one will probably make them more money than the rest of their discography combined. When our grandkids are hearing that song play the credits of 29th Air Bud movie, there will be no denying the Lips their place as perhaps the weirdest classic rock band ever.
Excellent work Marshall. I applaud your thoroughness.
A few comments. First, I want to make it clear that my attempted formulation of neoclassic rock was, initially at least, solely directed at finding stuff that was good that Sanjeev’s coworkers would be willing to listen to. Since the output of my Snob-O-Matic (TM) Subjective Music Evaluation Unit for Creed, Sublime and Bush is “Bad,” I chose to pretend they don’t exist except as the butt of a joke. I feel like I sort of got sidetracked (my own fault) into updating the playlists of classic rock radio stations, and in that context, you’re right, and you sadly would indeed have to include those terrible, terrible bands.
Second, I’m not sure I agree that classic rock playlists are not updating with the times. I could be wrong, but I feel like when I would listen to these stations in the ’90s, you wouldn’t really hear stuff from the late ’70s, like the Police or the Talking Heads, and you definitely wouldn’t hear stuff from the ’80s. I’m pretty sure that “Rock the Casbah” and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” like “Tainted Love,” were on the new rock stations as throwbacks in the ’90s; now they’re on the classic rock stations. The Cars get play on classic rock stations now; not the case in the ’90s. Again, I could be wrong, but I think the fact that we can imagine program directors asking about Metallica and the Black Crowes is a sign that bands from their generation are destined for addition to the classic rock format.
Here’s another way to think about it: it’s been asserted the the subjective age at which pop culture, including pop music, reaches perfection is 12. Let’s assume, based on nothing much at all, that the target age of a classic rock listener is 30-50. Based on this, in 1993, the year range of classic rock was 1955-1975, though since AOR didn’t really exist until the ’70s, there’s necessarily going to be a shift forward in time- say 1968-1977, or everything that happened between Sergeant Pepper and punk rock. Today, that unadjusted age range would be 1972-1992. The median date would be 1982, and assuming a normal distribution around that date, I don’t think that’s a totally out-of-whack representation of what you would hear on a classic rock station today. As a demonstration, I looked up the recording date for the song I remember hearing recently more than any other on Houston classic rock radio, Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac.” (*shudder*) First recorded 1982, first released 1984.
Another good example would be Van Halen’s “Panama,” certainly among their most-played songs at this point; also released 1984.
By this metric, we wouldn’t expect most of the bands on either of these lists to receive heavy airplay on classic rock radio until 2020 (!), though they should be starting to trickle into the rotation now.
Third, while Dinosaur Jr., the Pixies and the Breeders would meet my original test of “good stuff to play at the office-” well, except the Breeders- I can’t see any of them getting much play on classic-rock stations of the future. The Pixies had a number of tracks on the modern rock charts, but this was before Nirvana, when nobody gave a shit about those charts except college radio. I watched a lot of MTV and listened to a lot of radio between 1992 and 1996, and I had never heard of the Pixies until I got to college. Dinosaur had two modern rock hits post-Nirvana, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hear “Start Choppin’.” The Breeders had one enormous hit off a very weird record. If those bands are on classic rock radio in 2020, I’ll expect to hear stuff like The Reverend Horton Heat and Rancid and the Toadies too, not that that would be a bad thing.
Bands that IMO should be on the first list: Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dave Matthews, and *sigh* Hootie. DMB would be on the second list too for sure. The baby boomers may have bankrupted our country and destroyed the earth’s environment, but our generation has its own crimes to answer for.
I just don’t see the Flaming Lips. “Jelly” is the only Lips song that charted, and even it was not a monster hit. Even if “Do You Realize” is popular for licensing, which is news to me- I mean, do you hear a lot of other songs by Foghat on classic rock radio?
MBV I don’t see meeting any of these tests. They’re too weird to play at the office, and they were only popular in the UK. Loveless didn’t even make its money back. Seems to me that they’re more of a cult band in the US. I’d like to hear your reasoning on them.
Re: Dinosaur, Pixies, Breeders, Lips- reading back over this I realize that you anticipated my take, so I really just needed to say that you’re right about my opinion- I would be surprised if a deep discography and one minor hit single were enough to make the grade for classic rock radio. I think two hit singles is the minimum.
You guys are in danger of writing way too much upon the question of: what inoffensive fairly generic band who I have not been paying attention to in the past twenty years will I be suckered into shelling out money for on the HSN when I’m halfway to senile?
I felt over the hill when I heard a Buzzcocks track on an AARP commerical.
Oh we totally are. I want to make it clear I have no intention of listening to our mythical classic rock station of the future.
Not digging my SEO strategy, huh?
http://twitter.com/gregarious/status/12522291582
So let’s get this straight. You’re trying to say that Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, STP, AIC, Live, Offspring, Collective Soul, RHCP, Foo Fighters, Fuel & their ilk from the 90′s do NOT belong on a classic rock station, eh? That’s gotta be one of the most absurd remarks I’ve ever heard in my entire life. These bands were all over AOR stations throughout the 90′s. You must be a hair band fanboy that you had to say that. You’re regurgitating the same thing that Vince Neil & Don Dokken have said, as they were just plain sour grapes that a brand new subgenre of rock came along. Not all hair bands were all that good. I don’t like Nirvana all that much but to say they don’t belong on classic rock radio is just wrong. You’re blaming these artists for the collapse of hair metal. Classic rock is evolving so deal with it. American classic rock stations have embraced these 90′s alt-rock bands anew. I believe it was Bobby Kimball, ex-Toto singer, via “Rockline” who said instead of blaming these bands for the collapse of rock, “these bands should be praised for opening a brand new generation of fans to the classics and keeping the rock flame alive.” A lot of these artists cite classic rock artists as their major influences. Why the hell not include them in with the current classic rock legends? It took a while for classic rock stations to embrace Metallica now they’re is a CR mainstay. More and more CR stations are recognizing the great accomplishments of 90′s alt-rock artists and they’re listening to the audience who want to hear these artists alongside their Beatles, Zeppelin, Floyd, Stones, Who, AC/DC, Hendrix, Ozzy/Sabbath, Purple, Doors & VH classic rockers just to name a few. I couldn’t disagree anymore with your crazy philosophy.
Not sure who you’re responding to here dude. The upshot of this discussion is that all the bands you mentioned are/will be classic rock soon.
Big Dave, while I agree that they all pretty much classify as CR, I wouldn’t care if I never heard about two-thirds of them ever again.