CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL: THE RESULTS

We threw "Born to Run" on our wedding-party dance mix, in the middle of a lot of current pop and hip-hop, and I didn't realize until just then that it's actually a great dance track. It's easy to lose sight of Bruce's R&B roots in all the epic posturing, but the band sure doesn't.

"Stairway" is fine, I don't hate it, but the parts I like best are too short and the parts I like least are too long.

it's no "Hey Hey What Can I Do"

every time "stairway to heaven" comes on the radio i think, "oh, this, again, i will change the dial ... right after this part," and then the drums kick in for the first time and i vow to change the dial right after that part, and then before i know it i have listened to all of "stairway to heaven," again, and i am very very thankful for its existence.

I found room in my ballot for 2 Zeppelin picks. Eliminating all the Zep choices was tough because they are all such an intrinsic part of classic rock radio. Like every fifth or sixth song is LZ right? This one and Ramble On seem like the most obvious picks, but I have a strong suspicion that at least one of mine will place higher.

Feel like it's the cornerstone of your standard "Top 500 CR" list, but my hometown CR station played Black Dog, D'yer Maker, and Whole Lotta Love a lot more than Stairway when I was a kid.

my hometown CR station played Black Dog, D'yer Maker, and Whole Lotta Love a lot more than Stairway when I was a kid.

mine too. but i like "stairway" more.

Love this song to death, and love gr80's choice of image.

Even by its own mushy mystical standards, "Stairway" has a really terrible lyrical pay-off. All of that work and all you leave us with is, "To be a ROCK -- and not to ROLL"?

I'm sure I'd heard others, but I'm pretty certain that "Stairway" was the only Zep song I was familiar with as a Zep song until I became formally familiar with Zep.

voted for a bunch of Zep, but not "Stairway". I actually love it quite a bit, but it became such a CRR cliche that I felt it didn't need any extra help from me.

Stairway is funny to me, since by the time I even heard it it was already a joke song, the song you play to fill time, the song everyone's heard too many times - and then I finally heard it and it's like, well, this is fine, I guess... that band have way better songs, why's this one a big deal? Like, if it was not called "Stairway To Heaven" and not an installed piece of canon I could hear it as just be some Led Zeppelin album track, maybe a little drippy with Plant's oversold vocal on "she's buy-ing," but pretty rockin' in the rockin' parts. There's nothing about it that would make me want to turn off the radio and go OH UGH THIS HURTS MY EARS, so its only claim to the joke song spot is being a long song that was overplayed for years by AOR and CR DJs... and I would hazard that it's completely lost that in the nearly 25 years since Wayne's World. The next generation will probably "hear" Stairway pretty differently.

The next generation will have forgotten laughter.

I have no idea what a "hedgerow" is, but thanks to this song, I know not to be alarmed if it bustles.

xp I had the opposite experience: When I got into classic rock radio at the age of 11, I heard a bunch of other Zep songs over and over and over, none of which were Stairway.

But I knew Zep had this legendary song that, for some reason (probably length), my station never played. I remember the first time I heard Plant sing "and she's buying a stairway to heaven" and thinking, "THIS IS IT! FINALLY!"

does this mean no "Get the Led Out!" at 7 this evening to start my weekend out right??

I may have mentioned this on the noms thread, but the way I remember it, "Stairway" was played on CRR constantly up through the mid-80s, at which point it pretty much disappeared entirely and was replaced with a whole bunch of Zep greats.

Yeah I would def rather here "the ocean" or "the rover" or "in the evening" or "no quarter" or freakin' "kashmir," but there's no denying the ur-CRRitude of "stairway" the only reason it racks up fewer plays than others is it's 8 minutes long.

tbrr that "bustle in your hedgerow" business gets a little twee for my comfort

Yeah, I think Stairway was a song that just persisted from its release in 1971 well over a decade before people got sick to death of it.

xp it's just a spring clean for the May Queen

I thought it was the devil worship thing that gave Stairway its edge

Actually, reflecting upon it now, I think "Stairway" is a little lower in my esteem not so much because of overexposure but more because it just feels too long. I mean, yeah, of course it is long, but I think it just takes way too long to get to where it's going (even if where it's going is pretty great). Most of Led Zeppelin's other long songs are amazing and easily keep hold of my attention for +/- 10 minutes.

BACKMASKING! xp

tbrr that "bustle in your hedgerow" business gets a little twee for my comfort

Pretty sure that's a reference to crabs.

Or at least it is when I say it.

like as a kid I'd heard about the "occult" in rock, "Reaper", AC/DC, "Stairway", "Mr Crowley"; and then when I finally heard these songs & these bands, it was like, you people were worked up about this?

crue circa "shout at the devil" fit right into this

Yeah, having grown up in the church and then leaving and actually figuring out how things take place in the real world, the church's view of "the occult" is pretty damn comical.

"we have assumed control" at the end of 2112 was supposed to be "I sing for Satan" backwards.

but def part of the identity of classic rock, at least circa 1985 or so. like it was funny when I heard Metallica and Slayer a couple of years later, like, ohhhh ok I see now, like, you were worried about Van Halen?

Pretty sure if you play Stairway backwards, you can hear Page repeatedly whisper "I ripped this off from Spirit"

There was a book in my church's library about satan's influence on rock music, and it was a handy resource for me as a young sheltered person to seek out interesting bands.

the music video has candles in it = occult imagery
the album art has a figure wearing a cape = occult imagery
there is a woman = occult imagery

http://i.imgur.com/6afgj0t.jpg

52. .38 Special – Caught Up In You
1041 points, 17 votes

doctor casino otm, i remember hearing "whole lotta love" and "ramble on" far more but would take them over stairway in a heartbeat. it kinda takes itself too seriously for the choolgin good times vibes i really want when i turn the dial to CR radio

I'm caught up in those peach fuzz mustaches.

come for the chooglin, stay for the devil worship : 107.7 WILX "The Aorta"

oh fuck if the name of the station means we're heading toward Heart as #1

I've grown to love "Caught Up in You" so much.

Can we have a favorite rollout image poll after this poll wraps up?

placement bodes well for hold on loosely

speaking of which... we're close enough to #50 to say the top half of the poll has been a blast so far. Lots of stuff I voted for that I'm happy to see place. Lots of stuff I didn't vote for that I'm happy to see place. Good times out at the lake.

It's about to get real up in here though. We still haven't seen any Boston/Foreigner/Cars/Queen/Eagles/Heart, barely any Zep/Stones/Who, let alone Free/Bad Co/Kansas/REO Speedwagon/BOC/Steve Miller et al. And we could fill 50 slots with just those guys easy.

It's gonna be a lot of sacred cows bleeding in the streets by the time the last card's turned over.

THIS POLL RULES

Assuming "Hold On Loosely" is somewhere higher up, this seems like the right placement.

And yeah, what roger said.

rogermexico OTM

Hold On Loosely will be the highest placing 38 Special track for sure, but if Caught Up In You makes it instead of Rockin' Into the Night then a pox upon you all.

oh fuck if the name of the station means we're heading toward Heart as #1

oh fuck YES if the name of the station means we're heading toward Heart as #1.

that's better.

Today's run is slightly disappointing because it means that some of the bands who only have the one shot at CRR fame are more likely to get shut out in favor of bands we typically talk about all the time (too often, even?).

― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 16:23 (1 hour ago) Permalink

I intentionally skewed my ballot towards bands that would never get their own poll for this reason

anyone hear a "Just What I Needed" influence on "Caught Up in You"?

I have a really good feeling about Barracuda perhaps taking the top spot, but this whole poll is mysterious. xps

I am flabbergasted to realize that people like 38 Special enough to want one, let alone three of their songs in a list of only one hundred great classic rock songs. I mean....they're fine, filler bar band stuff of their time, but c'mon!

Dunno why, but I could never get into .38 Special. They just sounded so stiff and clinical next to Skynyrd and...well, pretty much everyone else. The songs never really lift off, and the singer sounds afraid to let his freak flag fly. Presuming he is in possession of one in the first place.