The cultural evolution of "classic rock"

Catcher10 wrote: Essentially it's why I stopped listening to the FM close to 20yrs ago, all you hear is the same old stuff over and over on a daily basis.

Same old crap different day and tons of ads.  Not for people who are really in to music.  I enjoy listening to old stuff but I have heard the classic rock stuff that gets played on commercial radio enough times that I never really need to ever hear it again.  I like revisiting the old stuff but I prefer to explore new stuff.  Radio is dead to me.


Edited by Slartibartfast - August 31 2015 at 04:43

I believe so.

Alternative Rock has been the new addition to Classic Rock Stations. It will get weird when you start adding about anything that is rock from the 1990s and 2000s.

my idea of classic rock is roughly between 65 and the end of the 70's and that can include some 70's pop stuff, plus the rock music of the 80's & 90's (but I insist on the ROCK music part, not the pop stuff from those later decades)

In Benelux, I only know of one classic rock station and that's Classic 21 in French-speaking Belgium (Arrow Rock kind of fluttered in the Netherlands into AOR/MOR crap some 8 or 9 years ago). It started mostly as a fairly typical Classic Rock station, though it included a fair bit of French-speaking rock and singers as well (Classic 21 is state-owned). It did really well and even attracted many Flemish listeners, because nothing similar exists north of the linguistic barrier. It also attracted many listeners from Northern France.

A lot of the attraction was not really during daytime (this was wishy-washy Zep/Eagles stuff, though you can still hear Floyd's Dogs at noontime), but dedicated/specialist programmes during the evenings (blues/boogie, metal, etc...) and during week-ends.

Because of its (big) success, pressures went increasingly upwards, because some wanted to be part of the machne and put their grain of salt (footprint), and through the years, the formula got watered down , instead of remaining "pure". 

However, as some marketing idiots decided that the 60/70's music catered only to a certain age slice (to which I belong), they started wanting to attract the following age-slice by opening up the playlist to the 80's - thus breaking the 60/70's domination of playlists. So now, you hear OMD or Cure stuff, at the expense of classic-era  Yes and Genesis tracks. The thing is that the success has actually remained (and even increased to the eyes of specialists, because they take into account web radios' market shares of listeners),  these yukky changes are seen successful, because the audience shares are stable, thus avoiding the so-called "erosion factor".

It's still my choice of radio when in the car, but the excitement is long gone. I'd say that my appreciation slided down fro a 7/10 to a 5/10 through the years, but let's face  it, other radios (99% of what's on the airwaves, not counting the talk-mostly channels or classical radios) are hovering anywhere between 0.1/10 and 2/10. 

In Detroit, the wretched drek played on 94.7 WCSX focuses on Bob Seger, Styx, Foreigner, Aerosmith, Boston, Bruce Springsteen, Rush and specific songs by Floyd, Zeppelin, the Stones, the Who, etc.

^ Yeah, or rock 'n roll

Essentially it's why I stopped listening to the FM close to 20yrs ago, all you hear is the same old stuff over and over on a daily basis.

zappaholic wrote: "When did Motley Crue become 'classic rock'?"  ~  Bowling For Soup

About 15 years ago.

"When did Motley Crue become 'classic rock'?"  ~  Bowling For Soup

On a related note, has anyone else gotten the impression that music from the "classic rock" canon has been taken a nosedive in cultural status recently?

First there was the backlash against the classic rock sacred cows from the punk and indie rock scenes, no doubt powered in part by a generation gap between Generation X and the Baby Boomers. The exceptions going to rock music from that era that only first became really popular with people way younger than their initial audiences: 13th Floor Elevators, The Stooges, Velvet Underground etc.

Then there's how with Generation Y, it looks like how electronically based music genres have taken over the position of cultural dominance from guitar based rock music... where it seems like hardcore punk and heavy metal holds more of the same role of countercultural outsider genres that "regular" rock had in its heyday. 1960s/1970s-style rock music seems to be seen more of a "nostalgia" thing.

That brings us to a development I find rather curious: How being into "real" rock music is now regarded as a conservative fogey thing, when it used to be considered more radical and transgressive than the top 40 pop. Today it's like the complete opposite, where high status music reviewers and record collectors have to show their serious minded appreciation for the latest bubblegum pop as valid art to prove they're not a bunch of stuck-in-the-past rock snobs.

Of course, there's also the recent explosion in retro-1960s/1970s psychedelic hard rock as exemplified around my quarters by groups like Graveyard, Kadavar, Sea, Witchcraft and so on which throws another wrench in the works. Those bands' membership might overlap with the "wrong generation kids" everyone likes to make fun of, though...