CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL voting thread -- deadline July 15 -- VOTING CLOSED

I'd just like to note that the Donnie Iris song (which I will be voting for, high up) is actually called "Ah! Leah," not "Oh! Leah."

http://youtu.be/YH5Arbm47IQ

(Technically there is also a second exclamation point after Leah.)

actual bumper sticker seen in the wild:

https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3849/14372504148_25694fa696_m.jpg

aka Pittsburgh

Sorry I got the title of that song wrong! That was my fault. I never knew what that song was called until I was grading papers (in a bar lol) and Ah! Leah! started playing and i realized that i had no idea who sang it but it was super familiar. I thought and thought and googled and googled (I thought he was saying Alía?) Finally I found it and I entered Donnie Iris territory.

True fact: It was the first 45 I ever bought.

Took me about an hour to generate a list of 100--about 60 from the nominations, the rest my own picks. Pretty easy. Ranking them, though, would take forever...Can we just send in an unranked list and split the points evenly?

Sorry I got the title of that song wrong! That was my fault. I never knew what that song was called until I was grading papers (in a bar lol) and Ah! Leah! started playing and i realized that i had no idea who sang it but it was super familiar. I thought and thought and googled and googled (I thought he was saying Alía?) Finally I found it and I entered Donnie Iris territory.

― La Lechera, Wednesday, July 2, 2014 4:39 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think you called me at work when that happened! Or shortly thereafter. I remember you calling me at work years ago about this song.

does anyone else on here think that the Classic Rock format underwent a pretty big change somewhere in the late 80s/early 90s? I seemed like Classic Rock radio back in the 80s was much more heavily tilted towards tracks from the 60s, including many that would now be considered Oldies. 70s rock was only represented by the abosolutely most popular bands like Zeppelin, Floyd, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller, and not a lot of the more obscure tracks you hear today. It seemed like this changed to a more 70s tilt somewhere along the line.

Am I just imagining this or did it really happen?

The James Gang's 'Walk Away' should be officially named SEEMS TO ME because I never, ever think of it by the song's title, and I always forget about it til I hear it and then I'm like THIS SONG IS THE BEST

"the immigrant song" should also have its name officially changed because when i was growing up i had no idea what that song was or how to find it. unfortunately, i don't know what the proper spelling of AAH-AHH-AAAAAAAAAHHHHH is.

lol

oh snap just saw this thread

this is going to be awesome

also going to be hard

Totally gonna do the write-in thing for "Junior's Farm" - would have seconded/thirded the nom if I'd known it was in jeopardy! Not so sure about Shambala but maybe... that song is awesome so if there are definitely CR stations that play it somewhere I would happily rank it really really high. I was very much in favor of a fairly curtailed list of noms so I think it's a good thing that we have to whine about exclusions. I gotta get back on my listening schedule though - pretty stoked to have already discovered a new favorite ("Flirtin' With Disaster") since this whole crazy party got started.

First pass is just anything I don't really consider classic rock, even if I like it - Zombies, U2, Turtles - and any familiar songs that just jump out as "probably not gonna make it on a ballot of 100." I like "You Better, You Bet" on a greatest hits, but it wouldn't make my top fifteen Who songs even.

Major write-in contender and I think legitimate candidate: The Sweet - Fox on the Run.

Also: Paul Simon - 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. Actually always thought that was in the original list! Jimmy Buffett - Cheeseburger in Paradise presumably has no chance but I swear I hear it - though maybe that's just mixed up memories of the "yellow album."

sorry, sorry, i know we had a noms thread, just doin' the write-in campaign thing.

Huh, how was Fox on the Run not on there? It wouldn't have been one of my votes, but it was totally on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack.

Really though, those, and Bob Dylan - Hurricane (CR loves this!) are the only omissions that really jump out at me going through the big list that's pretty great.

Got my list down to, uh... 660. Might sit there for a while, I have some listenin' to do, though realistically I think only a few new-to-me wildcards will probably slip in, 100 is only so many! But this is gonna be pretty cool, programming a dream station. Think it's gonna be midway between "most classic rock" (gradually purging or down-balloting stuff that doesn't have the right 'feel' though this isn't necessarily sonic - again I think "Drift Away" is super key), "best" and "favorite by that band" in terms of representative-ness, which crosses A and B: a classic rock station would have to play certain bands at least once in a hundred songs, so what would their token be in my dream world?

It's really bizarrely satisfying to be able to hit "delete" (or mark for later worst-ballot contention) annoying songs that have been part of the inescapable "beloved classics" background my entire life.

"the immigrant song" should also have its name officially changed because when i was growing up i had no idea what that song was or how to find it. unfortunately, i don't know what the proper spelling of AAH-AHH-AAAAAAAAAHHHHH is.

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, July 2, 2014 12:51 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark

same, and you can't sing it to people because it's too embarrassing
thus it remained a mystery for a really long time

^^^ same story with "In The Air Tonight" when I worked in a record store.

I'm going to be off-piste voting for Chris Rea - Josephine and Chris Rea - On The Beach. He's probably got no US profile but I don't care. Can't believe I forgot to nominate the guy - for me, he is Classic Rock.

If only Road To Hell had been five years earlier, oh man

A few somewhat-less-familiar tracks (or just things with unhelpful titles) from the list:

Donnie Iris - Ah! Leah, just discussed above - this has such a great chorus with those "ahhhhhh"s but just enough muscle to be a claimant to the format and not just your basic power-pop song. Also Iris had a legit classic rock CV (lead guitar/vocals in the Jaggerz, as Dominic Ierace). My stations never played this but it would be cool if they had.

Aerosmith - Mama Kin - never heard this before ILX but it rocks. Doubt it'll survive to 100 in my ballot but it deserves a few scattered votes.

The Guess Who - Clap For The Wolfman - charmingly dopey bar-band filler where the protagonist loses his girl's interest to the compelling radio presence of Wolfman Jack, who guests on the track in order to mock Burton Cummings. A little googling indicates it was originally "Clap For Napoleon" (??) and that the Wolfman left his radio gig for a time in order to join The Guess Who on tour, wow.

Billy Joel - Miami 2017 - In Praise Of... Billy Joel's "Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Down On Broadway)"

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - wasn't til recently that I realized it was the "Doo doo doo doo doo, DOOT DOOT do doody doo" song. It's pleasant. If you like their other songs you'll like this. If you don't, you'll hate this as it is like ten minutes long.

The Box Tops - The Letter - this is ILX so I probably don't need to say this, but this is that "Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane, ain't got time to take a fast train" song. Just saying because I was well into my twenties before I ever pinned an actual title on the thing. I think of it as more 'oldies' than CR but it's kinda cool.

Nazareth - Hair of the Dog - everyone knows this but, title obscurity: this is the "now yaw messin' with a (donk, donk), a SON OF A BITCH!" song. Obviously belongs in the top half of every ballot here.

James Gang - Funk #49 - same deal, this is the song with the "Devil With a Blue Dress"/"Footloose" rhythm, the killer riff, and "I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DO-INNNN" screeches. You must vote for this.

Steve Forbert - Romeo's Tune - Got this off the AM Gold thread recently, and it's great AM gold - the "Meet me in the middleoftheday, let me hear you say, everything's okay..." song. #11 in 1980, don't think I've once heard it on the radio in any format. It's not very 'rock' for much of its running time, but it is pretty fine stuff for the genre. Apparently he had some significance in early ILX that escapes me now: The Steve Forbert Game STUPID NEWBIE QUESTION ALERT: steve forbert

Fleetwood Mac - Hypnotized is another off-menu killer, it must be CR

I loathe "Money For Nothing" with a passion, so I'm swapping in its brother-in-arms, Dire Straits - So Far Away. I have no idea what kind of recurrent CR presence it has, hard to separate out vague memories of hearing these songs when they were still recent hits in the late 80s. Hell, "Walk of Life" was used in a video yearbook that some kid's dad made for our elementary school in 2nd or 3rd grade.

I could vote for pretty much anything they did tbh; I'm going to ration them strictly.

I think I dig "So Far Away" here cause it touches that chord of escaping into the idea of being a youthful dreamer with a big, romantic quest (possibly related to being on the road in a rock and roll band) - essential in classic rock songs, especially 'quieter' ones. It also somehow evokes, at a sonic level, being a Reagan-era boomer enjoying financial comfort and a really nice first-generation CD player, discussing Mark Knopfler's technical proficiency over some Perrier at the condo, as the sun sets. Which is just as essential to "classic rock" in terms of it becoming a thing that had its canon and its criteria and its token latter-day entrants. None of which detracts from the prettiness of the song for me - just saying it feels very much of this format.

I dunno, the picture you're painting is almost yacht

True, but there's overlap IMO, there's a suburban dad version of the thing above. In my mind it has vaguely to do with being interested in, and affording, a really nice sound system, while concurrently losing any youthful interest in e.g. going to actually see a new band live. These are impulses to which I now relate as a thirtysomething, mind you!

oh btw another thing about "Ah! Leah!" for those on the fence: a fi-yah/desi-yah rhyme is prominently featured.

This may also be me just never really understanding who it was that bought all those bajillions of Dire Straits albums, then left them for dead in the used bins by the time I was really trawling 'em in the late 90s and early 00s. So I may just be projecting a heavy-duty straw man onto that album.

Anecdote: when my daughter was in the NICU, I rented an Ameda breast pump from the hospital and as Ameda rhymes with "Ah! Leah!" I almost couldn't help but sing "AHHHHHMEEEEEDAAAAA here we go again" every time I used it.

It also somehow evokes, at a sonic level, being a Reagan-era boomer enjoying financial comfort and a really nice first-generation CD player, discussing Mark Knopfler's technical proficiency over some Perrier at the condo, as the sun sets.

brb, applying a no-American-Psycho rule to my ballot

"the immigrant song" should also have its name officially changed because when i was growing up i had no idea what that song was or how to find it. unfortunately, i don't know what the proper spelling of AAH-AHH-AAAAAAAAAHHHHH is.

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, July 2, 2014 1:51 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the AC adapter for my laptop started dying this morning and i swear the weird little whirring death rattle it made was almost exactly in the tuen of Robert Plant's AAH-AHH-AAAAAAAAAHHHHH. unfortunately when i got home just now and plugged it in to see if i could record the sound, it had begun to make a slightly different, un-Zep-like whir.

if my car's engine starts growling to the tune of "Smoke On The Water," i will know that the poll is casting a spell over my life

Revisiting Asia now with a more critical ear. The band had some good songs in the eighties, but "Heat of the Moment" is the least of them.

Not directed at you personally, JF, but I believe that first sentence is the seventh sign of the apocalypse.

Haha

heat of the moment will always be at the bottom of my list because i can only ever visualize that stupid video they had

"the heeeeeeeat (flames) of the moment (clock)" SO STUPID

SO BAD

You know what else is a freaking TERRIBLE video? Foolin'. Also Photograph. What was I thinking when I was 12 years old and not going outside to play in the sunshine so I could wait hollow-eyed before the television for a glimpse of Joe Elliot in tight white jeans, writhing around while handcuffed to a neon triangle.

Wait, I think I just answered my own question.

lol I don't remember those videos thankfully....and i'm not going to look them up because i love those songs so much

Not that the video is any good but for a 12-year-old hetero girl, that was a pretty shall we say intriguing spectacle.

xp No do it! Watch them! It will be super fun I promise.

Foolin' is the ideal Def Leppard song imo. It's got the slow ballady part, the bar band riffing with cowbell and the slick harmony rich chorus. Most of time the band does one of these, or maybe two of these, in a single song. Foolin' is packed with all of them.

pretty sure I thought Toto and Asia were the same band until this poll

Would be funny to hear Asia do Africa.

Foolin' is so awesome. The song has something like 5 distinct sections which is kind of crazy for a pop metal tune.

Right? And it never feels forced. It just moves along exactly the way it should.

I'm really agonizing over whether to include Toto here, all three of their noms here would make a ballot if this was just fave songs, but I'm not sure how CR any of them are. Might compromise and just give 'em "Hold The Line" though it's my least favorite of the three. "Heat of the Moment" is awesome though, that's one whose powers I didn't really hear til adulthood. I keep wanting the verse to wander into "Video Killed The Radio Star" though: And now we meet in an a-BAN-doned STU-di-O! We hear the playback and it seems so long agooooo. Real pre-echoes of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" in the guitar, too.

Don't mind me. Just bringing the mountain (erm) to Vegemitegrrl.

http://hakkwylde.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/1983-Foolin-Def-Leppard.png

!!!

<3

joe wtf are u wearing