CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL parking lot tailgate pre-party -- nominations, discussions, parameters, etc.

not only is "Come Together" the most played Beatles song on contemporary CR radio, the Aerosmith version is played more than the original. it's kind of a perfect emblem for what sucks about the format.

the Aerosmith version is played more than the original.

...ugh, really?

not gonna get in the habit of spilling out the airplay stats i have, but yeah

tbf, Aerosmith's version is just as classic as the film it's from.

otm

some dude, don't hold back on yr stats

I hope to hell he saves them for the rollout.

ooh good point

as you were

that is astonishing! I have never, ever heard the Aerosmith version on CR radio. I can't even hear it in my head.

i hear it all the time

xp

i think the cutoff for the the fully-ossified CR format hits earlier than '86, if only cuz it was familiar to me by the time i graduated (note: not graduated) in '85. and yeah, the stinkblanket of rockist conservatism (if not outright racism & homophobia) hangs over this thread whether or not we care address it, though i'm not sure what might be said here that hasn't been well explored elsewhere on ILM. it's a fucked-up, deeply tainted format, and though that goes w/out saying, i don't suppose it can be allowed to go w/out saying.

Spent the rest of the hour listening to pop/r&b/the new NYC country station. Listened to three tunes on the latter about trucks and chicks and drinking that probly annoy people who live in the south, but sounded great to me, as I think pop music should always have songs about partying and wanting to fuck or fucking chicks/guys but am not regularly exposed to the likes of Florida Georgia Line or Jason Aldean or Miranda Lambert.

I've been listening to 97.9 The Loop all day for this poll and you know what? I knew that "Reach down between my legs, ease the seat back" was about sex, but seriously until just now I though he was telling her to reach down between his legs to the floor where the lever that leans the seat back is located, so she can lean the seat back and they can do it. It's like I couldn't process that David Lee Roth was straight up saying, "Hey, grab my dick!" in the middle of this song, so I just turned it into a vehicle operation instruction.

When I was a kid, I thought Hot Dog & a Shake was about lunch at Hardee's.

Just, you know, speaking of David Lee Roth and his dick...

I never even knew Aerosmith covered Come Together. That's probably for the best

Aerosmith also covered "I'm Down" and "Helter Skelter".

I've been listening to 97.9 The Loop all day for this poll and you know what? I knew that "Reach down between my legs, ease the seat back" was about sex, but seriously until just now I though he was telling her to reach down between his legs to the floor where the lever that leans the seat back is located, so she can lean the seat back and they can do it. It's like I couldn't process that David Lee Roth was straight up saying, "Hey, grab my dick!" in the middle of this song, so I just turned it into a vehicle operation instruction.

It means both those thing, though. Double entrendre.

but speaking of conservative formats & the soundtrack of the american overclass...

country radio??? no way. i mean, it's conservative in the same way that most commercial radio formats are innately conservative, but otherwise, no. it's a relentlessly current and relentlessly pop format that makes room for taylor swift and hunter hayes and florida georgia line and eric church, and still allows for the occasional tim mcgraw or george strait tune while otherwise rejecting its elders with the same enthusiasm and quickness that, say, mtv does.

and it's no more the soundtrack of the american overclass than iggy azalea or lil jon is.

veronica's fantastic post for some reason made me think of kid rock's "all summer long," which took two classic rock staples and wrestled them out of classic rock's usual context. country radio played it. pop radio played it. do classic rock stations ever play it, or any kid rock for that matter?

my hunch is that if any Kid Rock song ever makes it onto CRR playlists it'd be "Only God Knows Why"

I seem to hear "All Summer Long" a lot

but that might be a BOB/JACK format thing, I dunno

FCC: I think that not living in the, ahem, flyover parts of the country like you and I do prevents us from understanding how prevalent country is (or do you hear modern country in the wild in LA?) Your average self-identified music fan, which for this purpose includes Wilco-ites/pitchforkites/ your smug Dero substitute at the bar as well as the ILM-erati, encounters country all the time, and I think associates it with the very worst of suburban thoughtlessness—maybe people who think the World Cup is for foreign faggots, for instance. Me, I just look at all those country videos with hot white chicks and…um really like it. that the country radio format is being recognized as being dynamic in pop-ist nests and by Jody Rosen probly does not short-circuit the resentment people who live in the south, west, midwest and shit probly everywhere except the Northeast feel for what it represents.

Are you guys sure that classic rock is not the soundtrack of the American proletariat?

Yeah calling country music and classic rock the soundtrack of the "overclass" whatever that is is some sort of sub-Berkeley freshman thesis crap.

Or somebody who's never been to the Midwest or the south.

I think classic rock is just a catch-all term for " rock music for baby boomers" just as 'alternative rock' will be (already is?) a catch all term for people my age (20s/30s) who listened to rock. "Alternative radio" is pretty big in St. Louis.

There's nothing more dire than "alternative radio"

I think classic rock is just a catch-all term for " rock music for baby boomers" just as 'alternative rock' will be (already is?) a catch all term for people my age (20s/30s) who listened to rock. "Alternative radio" is pretty big in St. Louis.

i think they're both badges of exclusion.

Yeah, perhaps "overclass" isn't right. More like a proto tea party soundtrack, where it represents a perfected form that appeals to folks that are discomfited by modernity. My peers and myself, scions of the overclass of lville ky, tended to go for sst, Amrep, misfits, skater shit. The very rich kids, tho, thought they were really counter culture for becoming deadheads. Pre punk 60s music was seen by prep school kids whose dads ran the CIA as real rebel music opposed to frivolous false 80s pop music. So the offspring of the overclass did go for classic rock, despite being oblivious to conservative this predeliction is.

relevant post from this thread: So what is this BUTT ROCK, anyway?

"i also think of this stuff as workingman's rock. to the extent the lyrics are about anything other than girls, partying and rock'n'roll, they have a lot of casual references to clock-punching, bossmen, weekends, etc -- the stuff of 1970s blue-collar union-dues life.

― would you ask tom petty that? (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 14 April 2009"

Yeah, I tend to agree. I really don't get the overclass thing.

when I'm watchin' my TV
and a man comes on and tells me
how white my shirts can be
but he can't be a man
cos he doesn't smoke
the same cigarettes as me

It's for people who like life in the fast lane.

...and are not a man or machine, just something in between.

Definitely tons of retrograde and conservative stuff in the classic rock canon, and it's interesting to think of the development/practice of the radio format as related to a specific set of cultural ideas gaining primacy in the 80s and enduring to today.

But I'd stop short of saying that its audience is fundamentally the affluent and powerful, or the impulse/ideology/whatever CR radio serves is somehow miles and miles away from country radio.

Though I think FCC's analysis of the pop orientation of country radio is really smart, willingness to quickly discard elders is only part of the story there, I think. When I listen to country radio, the values espoused therein don't seem that distinct from CR, and tons of observers smarter than me have made the point that a ton of the last 20 years of country would have been called "country-rock" in the 70s.

I will say you're way more likely to hear a female voice on country radio than CR radio, though.

fwiw I really enjoy modern mainstream country radio, not trying to pitch it as some big corporatized evil that's preventing us from listening to Steve Earle or something.

If you mean "conservative" in the sense of "resistant to change", then I could see how the CR format is conservative. I also share some of the criticisms of how the format is defined. I don't really agree that the actual lyrical content of Springsteen or Jethro Tull or U2 songs leans to the political right, though, if that's what you're saying, even compared to what you're likely to find on country stations.

Jesus, what became of this thread? How many posts til someone name-drops Adorno?

lol

"but speaking of conservative formats & the soundtrack of the american overclass..."

country radio??? no way. i mean, it's conservative in the same way that most commercial radio formats are innately conservative, but otherwise, no.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, June 20, 2014 12:46 PM (3 hours ago)

i mean culturally conservative, at the very least generally in line with conservative tastes & values

and yeah, lol

T/S Twofer Tuesdays or Block Party Weekends

Moving on from academic discussion , I heard Molly Hatchets version of Dreams by the Allmans on atlanta's classic rock station (97.1 the river) the other day. Never heard the Allmans version on radio. Both versions are great.

i mean culturally conservative, at the very least generally in line with conservative tastes & values

i'm sure there's a built-in truth to that simply because country stations tend to be more prevalent in red markets than in blue ones, and any radio station is going to reflect the sensibilities of its local market if it wants to survive, and your song about the flyover states is probably more likely to get more traction in nashville than in new york. but most of the songs they play are about partying and/or getting laid and/or not getting laid but wishing you were.

but most of the songs they play are about partying and/or getting laid and/or not getting laid but wishing you were.

like all* the other songs

"but speaking of conservative formats & the soundtrack of the american overclass..."

country radio??? no way. i mean, it's conservative in the same way that most commercial radio formats are innately conservative, but otherwise, no.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, June 20, 2014 12:46 PM (3 hours ago)

i mean culturally conservative, at the very least generally in line with conservative tastes & values

― Pew Nornographers (contenderizer), Friday, June 20, 2014 7:48 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Most tea partiers are too stupid to realize that they are not part of any "overclass".

Friday night research: Stonehenge on WREK