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

I remember when "Take It On the Run" appeared in the top 40 and Casey Kasem said that REO were a band that young people lo9ved but if you were over 25 you'd probably never heard of them.

No, you can vote off-list. xp

I cut my list down to 100, haven't ranked them yet. First cut was "Do I even like this song?", second cut was "Have I heard this song on the radio?", third cut was "OK, how excited am I when I hear this song on the radio?" and when that still wasn't enough I had to limit myself to two songs per artist.

Oh and I wasn't gonna vote for "Breakin' the Law," but then I remembered Beavis and Butthead.

a song that to me exists only and entirely within the confines of Classic Rock. An indigenous species

yes!!! this is the most classic rock of all classic rock species. "hold your head up" is a perfect example of this. also, the collected works of foghat, rainbow, uriah heep and iron butterfly.

The first several million times I heard Hold Your Head Up, it was in the context of Phish, as the intro music to the part of their set where the drummer comes to the front of the stage and did various cheeky, horribly-rendered cover songs (Syd Barrett's Terrapin, Purple Rain, and Sexual Healing were common). I finally heard the original version years later on classic rock radio in a van on a field trip to Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in college. To be honest, I've only recently started to get over the Phish stigma attached to this song.

I first heard it through Girl Talk if that makes you feel better...

first cut 483!
i'm feeling compelled to make sure i have enough tempo variety in my list -- if every song is "smoke on the water" then the jams don't sound quite as sweet

Almost! xp

i had never heard the argent version til this poll

only version I knew was by aussie rock 'supergroup' The Party Boys :D

argent's other big moment, a one-time rock staple that apparently didn't survive the transition to classic rock: "god gave rock n roll to you."

^^ Unrest do a great cover of that

emil.y, join me in the voting for Mr. Blue Sky club. I'll also support Blue Sky those those affected by that injustice.

It might get a vote from me too. I don't think I've ever heard it on the radio but it epitomizes some elements of classic rock for me (fussy arrangement, Wurlitzer (I think), laidback guitar solo)

I think I've decided to vote in this, even though I don't know anything about classic rock. Apologies in advance.

First serious attempt at winnowing the list gets me to...194 songs. Ugh. Next step I guess is really seriously purging stuff that I like but don't 100% consider part of this radio format - the new wavier entries, the more overproduced 80s things, and the few mid-60s hangers-on that I let slip through. Still, this is going to get ugly soon. Ironically, I'm reproducing the very narrowness of concept and playlist by which these stations rankle! But I had always imagined this poll was basically going to be ranking the top 100 songs that they play into the ground anyway, so I'm fine with that.

Jeff, I'm with you! I guess it's also quite pop, but it definitely fits with some of the other stuff nominated here, and is *the classic* ELO song.

I'm thinking about doing a very short ballot and ordering it as I would my own imaginary rock radio show.

Like a lot of what I'll be voting for, it's a song that to me exists only and entirely within the confines of Classic Rock. An indigenous species. I think I'll end up cutting lots of things that I love but that to me have their own separate lives outside of CR...

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Thursday, July 3, 2014

i'm 100% on board with this approach btw. i just see myself putting more wood behind "lunatic fringe" when the tough cuts come.

If I include two 38 Special songs on my ballot, I think the second one will be Rockin' Into the Night. I love that "Waitin'...Anticipatin'..." part so much.

when I got down to 105 I considered handing Mr Veg my ballot and getting him to do the cuts for me.

Like a lot of what I'll be voting for, it's a song that to me exists only and entirely within the confines of Classic Rock. An indigenous species. I think I'll end up cutting lots of things that I love but that to me have their own separate lives outside of CR...

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Thursday, July 3, 2014

And that's why I didn't include any Beatles

when I got down to 105 I considered handing Mr Veg my ballot and getting him to do the cuts for me.

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, July 3, 2014

^^
AND WE WERE
VOTIN
VOTIN
INTO THE NIIIIIGHT

BALLOT SENT

I included a couple of Beatles songs, but really kept them to a minimum. Ditto, to a slightly lesser degree, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young. Like a lot of voters, I'm sure, that would easily be 100 first-tier songs right there. They probably accounted for 20 on my final list.

life was easier when I decided that Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan, Sly, the MG's and Archie Drell won't fit with the rest of my list and should therefore be excluded. but yeah, I shamelessly voted for the Boz and Stones disco tracks cause I love them to death and it FELT GOOD!

2 Zeppelin (didn't want to vote for them but hey, what can you do)
1 Beatles
1 Neil Young
0 Stones
0 Who
0 Dylan

Actually jumped at the chance to vote for Sly. I think he gets some play on the classic-rock station here, not a lot, but my favourite songs were a very manageable three, all from the nomination list. (Realize now I could have added a fourth in "Everybody Is a Star.")

But yeah, Archie Bell didn't seem to fit.

Will totally join the Mr. Blue Sky write-in campaign.

i have no Who, no Def Lep, i don't know how to feel

I have to vote for the Who/Stones/NY songs I heard on CR radio because otherwise I wouldn't have pursued those artists any further because i wouldn't have heard them*. I did, and I'm glad i did thanks to CR radio. I can live without Low Rider, tbh. I cannot live without Heart of Gold. I did cut a bunch of stuff that I really like but basically feels 80s to me rather than classic rock.

*my parents had some records, and i bought records and tapes from the age of 6 or so, but there was a point where i was trying to figure out what kind of sounds i liked (hence all the turtles/raspberries/zombies confusion and lord knows what else). i had no one to play sabbath/skynrd/iron maiden songs for me, and i don't think they had them at my local library. if not for classic rock radio, my musical diet would have been severely limited and frankly i prefer it this way!

otm re cutting stuff that feels 80's vs classic rock, I'm totally the same way

xxp ha! those are the two omissions from my own list to baffle me the most too. must be that I prefer the Hysteria singles and the Who's sixties period (which felt out of place here even if it was nominated)

same wrt 80s stuff though i'm really struggling with "missing you" :(

Generational, unless any 50+ voters feel differently: ignoring Def Leppard was the easiest thing in the world. (I did like "Two Steps Behind," and included it on a decade-end Top 40. They and it are far, far from the way I conceive of this poll.)

clemenza bringin' on the heartbreak itt

(I'm always too quick to put things down to generational differences. Just remembered a well-known book by someone my age that used Hysteria as its starting point.)

i think it's just the classic rock radio I'm most nostalgic for kinda happened before any of the hairbands really took hold, idk

can't/won't/don't wanna imagine my classic rock radio without rock blocks of scorps/priest

Even though I nominated "Missing You," I might not vote for it because I'm drawing my 80s dividing line between things that were more often heard in the AOR format than on Top 40 radio. Something like "Working for the Weekend" actually did hit #29 on the Hot 100, but it was more of an AOR staple throughout the eighties before it fully crossed over into the culture in more recent times.

But even with that methodology, it's still a case by case basis.

I just really like Photograph and F-f-f-foolin'.

I made a Spotify playlist of my ballot using this - http://www.ivyishere.org/ivy/

It took some fiddling, but I got 98/100 of songs. Two weren't on Spotify. Anyway, listening to my ballot now and it makes for a nice classic rock station.

I'm totally out of step with a lot of y'all. My top 30 is pretty much all 80s stuff. I have a feeling very little of it is going to end up showing up in the results.

Oh there will definitely be a good chunk of eighties music on my ballot. That's my childhood!

for sure. As much as I love most of the "real" classic rock, I didn't really experience it when it was new so it just doesn't have the same immediacy for me as the tracks of my childhood.

I think the other thing in the back of my mind is I'm saving all my bitchin hairbands for hows life's ultimate hairband poll :D :D

can't/won't/don't wanna imagine my classic rock radio without rock blocks of scorps/priest

not hairbands imo

I'll probably be the dufus voting for Joe Jackson "Stepping Out" in the hairband poll too, and that dude is bald as fuk

also - a lot of my memories of classic rock were classic rock in australia, which didn't really include much in the way of hair bands, the bogan rock stations would usu play that stuff. i was kinda blown away when I moved here that they were playing judas priest and def leppard on the classic rock station, in amongst the eagles and hendrix, i'd never heard that!

(note: on the Spotify playlist of my ballot, I included the 22 minute Live at the Fillmore East version of Whipping Post because in my heart, that's what I voted for on this poll.)

next up: a bogan rock poll

My ballot is entirely Who. And I think some Sly.