comparing the evolution of 'classic rock' between uk and usa

jesus my minds blown by the Adult Contemporary spin offs of spin offs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_adult_contemporary#Hot_adult_contemporary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_adult_contemporary#Soft_adult_contemporary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_adult_contemporary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmic_adult_contemporary

im going down a neverending rabbithole now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_CHR

Termed "the acoustic equivalent to Prozac",[38] soft AC, a more adult-oriented version of AC, was born in the late 1970s and grew in the early 1980s. WEEI-FM in Boston was the first station to use the term "soft rock", with ad slogans such as, "Fleetwood Mac ... without the yack" and "Joni ... without the baloney".

lol wtf

a couple of d/n in there for anyone who wants them

but.. the baloney is the best part!

Modern adult contemporary can be a variation of hot AC, and includes modern rock titles in its presentation. In 1997, Mike Marino of KMXB in Las Vegas described the format as reaching "an audience that has outgrown the edgier hip-hop or alternative music but hasn't gotten old and sappy enough for the soft ACs." The format's artists included Alanis Morissette, Counting Crows, Gin Blossoms, Bon Jovi, Train, No Doubt, The Script,[48] The Cranberries,[49] Lifehouse,[50]Sarah McLachlan, Jewel and Sheryl Crow.

Unlike modern rock, which went after 18-34 men, this format appealed to women.

I wondered what radio was aimed at women

Adult Top 40 URGH

Most weeks at number one

25 weeks

"Smooth" — Santana featuring Rob Thomas (1999-2000)

23 weeks

"Wherever You Will Go" — The Calling (2001-2002)

18 weeks

"Unwell" — Matchbox Twenty (2003)
"Photograph" — Nickelback (2005-2006)

17 weeks

"Iris" — Goo Goo Dolls (1998)

16 weeks

"Complicated" — Avril Lavigne (2002)

15 weeks

"Don't Speak" — No Doubt (1996-1997)
"How to Save a Life" — The Fray (2006-2007)

14 weeks

"Torn" — Natalie Imbruglia (1998)
"Everything You Want" — Vertical Horizon (2000)
"Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" — Train (2001)

Artists with most number-one singles

9 - Pink
8 - Maroon 5
7 - Katy Perry,
5 - Nickelback
4 - Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry, Train, Matchbox Twenty
3 - Goo Goo Dolls, Adele

maybe UK radio isn't as bad as I thought!

man it's a hot one

if anyone is interested in cable rock radio in the UK these are the 2 best known ones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Rock_(radio_station)
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerrang_Radio (you wont hear any metal on it just like you dont read it in the mag

The station's format mixes modern & classic rock with speech programmes targeted at young people and an adult rock audience. The station is connected with the Kerrang! print magazine in name, ownership and style, although the radio station has a more mainstream adult rock output than the magazine, featuring more indie and alternative rock.

Basically its more like xfm but with more emo and whatever gets played on america's modern rock radio

i would give undying loyalty to a radio station of any genre that played at least 50 minutes of music an hour and didn't have DJs that speak

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Rock_%28radio_station%29

hahaha NV otm

Since 2006 Planet Rock has featured an array of rock star presenters who have either fronted limited run series or hosted long running weekly or monthly shows.

The syndicated Alice Cooper radio show was edited in the UK for a breakfast audience as the Breakfast With Alice Cooper show, which ran in the 6-9am slot until 17 January 2011 when his show became Nights With Alice Cooper and broadcast at 9pm each weeknight and on Saturdays at 7pm.

Current star presenters include Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott, who has presented a weekly Saturday evening show at 6pm since June 2010 and blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa who presented a weekly show on Sundays at 6pm left at the end of March 2013.

A number of other star presenters have hosted shows on Planet Rock: Rick Wakeman hosted a Saturday morning show for five years until December 2010; Gary Moore hosted the award winning Blues Power series in 2008; Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi presented two series of Black Sunday for the station; Jethro Tull singer Ian Anderson presented a series called Under The Influence; Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera presented two series for the station in 2007 and 2009 which looked at influential guitar players and guitar playing styles; Former Marillion frontman Fish hosted two series of the award winning Fish On Fridays; Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham hosted one series which aired in 2010; Europe singer Joey Tempest hosted a series on Sunday evenings until early 2011 and Francis Rossi of Status Quo (band) who hosted a thirteen-part series until June 2011.

NV check the one in the middle here

Nights with Alice Cooper (Monday 7pm-1am, Tue-Fri 10pm-1am)
Al Murray (Sunday 10am-1am, Tuesday 7pm-9pm)
Joe Elliott (Saturday 6-7pm, Tuesday 9pm-10pm)

i don't think classic rock is more negatively defined than most other radio formats, tbh.

Yeah, this is part of my issue, too. Don't think it's more narrow or negatively defined than e.g. "not too hard, not too soft" music@work stations, for example. Also, while it's restricted in a way, it actually plays a fairly wide range of music and imo, despite its flaws, also plays some actually artistically ambitious and experimental popular music by the standards of what can be commonly heard on commercial radio, even if it does play some of those things to death, so I sometimes feel like I need to defend it a little. (In markets with decent urban/R&B stations, you might hear some on those stations too. I don't live in one.)

seem to remember Fish hosting the Friday Rock Show one time

musicians are probly better DJs than DJs but still i put music radio on to listen to music i don't give a fuck who you saw in some shitty club last night

if "classics" formats have any problem it's the recycling of the obvious and over-familiar - ought to be easy to use the same format to play less repetitive stuff and i wonder if the target audience really care which Zep/Stones/Free tracks get played

i would give undying loyalty to a radio station of any genre that played at least 50 minutes of music an hour and didn't have DJs that speak

Right up until last weekend I would have fervently agreed with you but then for the first time ever I had random spotify playlist on all day and after a few hours I was thinking "enough of this relentless music give me a human voice!"

bet you weren't thinking "this relentless music could do with 20 minute intervals of some gobshite gossiping about Z-listers"

There's a lot of formats around in the US radio market

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_radio_formats

bet you weren't thinking "this relentless music could do with 20 minute intervals of some gobshite gossiping about Z-listers"

oh god is Zoe Ball back on radio?

not if its always the same songs surely?

I think that by definition an oldies (classic rock, whaetver) station has a bigger and more diverse playlist than any contemporary format. Any mix of music from a 20-40 year period is always going to be more diverse and more interesting to me personally than a batch of songs that all came out in the past 6 months.

But I suppose it's a different story over a longer period of time. If you listen to the same station every day for 20 years then the top 40 station will have gone through a lot more songs than the classic rock station. But at any individual point in time, the top 40 station is inherently less musically diverse.

if "classics" formats have any problem it's the recycling of the obvious and over-familiar - ought to be easy to use the same format to play less repetitive stuff and i wonder if the target audience really care which Zep/Stones/Free tracks get played

Not trying to be captain save-a-clear-channel here but actually I don't think it is easy at all. And the audience does care! They want to hear the same familiar songs that remind them of 1973. This stuff is all focus-grouped to death isn't it? Which is why radio is so boring now. But they do seem to have it down to a science in a way. Playing Maggot Brain really would get more people to change the channel than playing Free Ride for the billionth time.

but its radio; you dont need to tell the audience its by black men on drugs!

just out of interested with country music sounding like 80s radio rock for the last 20 years or so how much influence has classic rock had on that (if any)?

sund4r do you listen to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EZ_Rock ?

country music doesn't really sound like 80s radio rock nowadays. it sounded like 80s radio rock in the 80s.

ahh ok

what does it sound like now?

like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPUDC46P66w

ugh

Maybe I understand the appeal of classic rock radio to everyone now

But what I hear on New Country radio, which is usually Tim McGraw or Blake Shelton or Carrie Underwood or Lady Antebellum or Band Perry and not Big & Rich, DOES sound like 70s and 80s radio rock (the softer end of classic rock) to me. More so than most modern rock, by far.

And I think there's a lot of crossover, AG. Taylor Swift has done a whole collaborative concert with Def Leppard and a duet with Stevie Nicks. Bon Jovi has been more of a presence on country radio than rock radio this milennium.

i did not expect big and rich to sound like that or to write lyrics like this

Some stupid video posted as a joke, somebody's life gets ruined
Out of everything we can create
Where is the cure to keep the sick from losing
Babies having babies 'cause their parents are always gone
Somehow we have forgotten how to make a house a home
How to make a house a home
Oh! Oh! Yeah! Yeah!

I'm begging for forgiveness, I wanna make a difference
Even in the smallest way
I'm only one person, but I can feel it working
I believe in better days
That's why I pray, yeah
That's why I pray, yeah

Taylor Swift has done a whole collaborative concert with Def Leppard

haha what?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5WQjPwumw

there is absolutely no doubt that for the listenership of classic rock radio, Prince is no different from Michael Jackson. No matter how many guitar solos he plays, he's a faggy black guy that wears make-up, full stop. He was booed off the stage when he opened for the Stones in '81.

Seems like these are acts that have graduated to the classic rock canon:

Nirvana
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Pearl jam
Stone Temple Pilots
REM
Metallica
Black Crowes (one could surmise they were designed to get on classic radio immediately)
Guns and Roses
maybe the Foo Fighters?'

no green day?

Black Crowes (one could surmise they were designed to get on classic radio immediately)

yeah I guess stuff like this is the US equiv of Oasis?

I hope green day never get played on classic rock radio. that would be where I draw the line.

but its radio; you dont need to tell the audience its by black men on drugs!

there is absolutely no doubt that for the listenership of classic rock radio, Prince is no different from Michael Jackson. No matter how many guitar solos he plays, he's a faggy black guy that wears make-up, full stop.

not to deny that there's an element of racism, sexism and homophobia deeply embedded in the classic rock radio demographic, the artists themselves, the radio programmers, or the nation as a whole, but I think it's weird to pretend like there isn't a huge aesthetic chasm between these things. Does classic rock radio play any songs by white artists that sound even remotely like Maggot Brain?

I mean apart from that one dj at that one station who played it at 1:30 am

pink floyd?

If they play Hendrix then they could play this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVHrvx-Ua68

the weirdest thing I ever heard on a rock station was at 1am. I guess they had some sort of technical difficulty because things went dead silent for a minute, followed by two minutes of this:

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

then they switched back on and everything proceeded as if nothing had happened. I'm just wondering why on earth the only backup music they had on hand was a Moby album cut from 1992. what sort of rockists are these guys??

yeah forgot about Green Day…and for sure Oasis and Black Crowes fulfill identical functions w/r/t to their cultures, but Black Crowes did not get to be the defining popular music act of their country for their particular decade…

yeah, I feel like that "heritage" kind of thing they get into in the UK is fulfilled by country over here rather than classic rock.

does hendrix even get played much on classic rock radio these days?

I don't think I agree with that. xp re: country

I don't even think a lot of early Zep is worlds away from "Super Stupid".

But yeah, if BTO and Bryan Adams are more central to classic rock than Hendrix is these days, then it may be true that Funkadelic is more different than I was thinking.