CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL: THE RESULTS

I don't doubt that it was a hit, I've just never heard it on classic rock radio

I used to have some pills that made me smaller, but I decided the weight loss just wasn't worth the night terrors.

http://i.imgur.com/FbUTIq4.jpg

74. Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit
897 points, 14 votes

YES! This song is so smooth and creepy.

― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Tuesday, July 29, 2014 9:49 AM

Yeah -- I was not a fan of it in its first-run days, but I like its bland menace now. A late cut from my ballot though.

Oops, "Games People Play" is actually from the previous APP album.

i love white rabbit

"Eye in the Sky" hit the top five..very much an L.A. pop hangover.

"white rabbit" is great but OLDIES

(also i may blame Grace Slick more than she really deserves for Linda Perry)

APP is good and so creepy. I was most familiar with "Don't Answer Me" and its weird video as a kid. "Eye" is great, and "Time" is probably the most depressing top 40 hit ever but also really quite beautiful in the midst of its efforts to induce suicide in the listener.

Weirdly, "White Rabbit" is by far the most-played Jefferson song on cr, while "Miracles" is all over the oldies station.

78-75 were all on my list!

"White Rabbit" is no "Somebody to Love" IMO

Learning that Grace Slick wrote "White Rabbit" while tripping and listening to "Sketches of Spain" is pretty much the least-surprising song origin story ever.

White Rabbit is probably used a lot as a palate cleanser in the context of CRR.

"White Rabbit" is definitely one of the pre-68 songs holding strongest on classic rock radio, in my experience. Songs like that and "Paint It, Black" get a lot of leeway for being pretty dark for the era.

Interestingly enough, the first time I heard of the Alan Parsons Project was also in Austin Powers 2.

Eye in the Sky is pretty great, not really capital C capital R Classic Rock though.

"White Rabbit" is no "Somebody to Love" IMO

― Lewis - J'Agour (crüt), Tuesday, July 29, 2014

agree, and that's no knock on white rabbit. but "white rabbit" is important but also kinda herky-jerk and shouty where "somebody to love" is a 3-minute pop rampage that deploys slick's foghorn to devastating effect.

"White Rabbit" is no "Somebody to Love" IMO

― Lewis - J'Agour (crüt), Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Also agree, hopefully we'll be seeing it place later

And now, we dispense with another biggie surprisingly early in the countdown...

http://i.imgur.com/O6OsSPA.jpg

73. Lynyrd Skynyrd – Sweet Home Alabama
904 points, 14 votes, 2 first place votes

another excellent photo choice

turn it up

Jefferson Airplane, like CCR, were riiiight at that borderline to Oldies, but they just have so much in common with the core classic rock sound that follows. "Dark for the era" is one way of putting it for sure. I only gave them one vote and this wasn't it, but glad to see this here, it rules.

The last few images have just been stellar. 76-74 could have plausibly been the covers to the albums in question, especially Eye in the Sky - that's great!

In general, loving the kind of weird sideline choices for some of these acts - would never have expected Breakdown to make it here, but don't mind it at all. Also funny to imagine what ILM would have produced for this poll ten years ago or more - would there be so much southern rock?

lord, but i hate sweet home alabama

ha ha 10 years ago ILM would have found some way to nominate every Eno song

Speaking of Southern rock, I'll be sad if "Flirtin' With Disaster" does not beat "Sweet Home Alabama."

Felt compelled to include Sweet Home Alabama in my Skynyrd ROCK BLOCK, felt equally compelled to put it very low, it's no Gimme Three Steps

Two first place votes, one of them was Kid Rock

man i just don't get the hate at all. sweet home is grebt. tremendous hook, great arrangement, slyly funny, slyly honest... what's not to like (other than overplay and maybe dbag fans?)

with sweet home and free bird out of the way it'll be real interesting to see if any other skynyrd places...

Objectively, Sweet Home is a great single. But having grown up in the state of Alabama, where this song flowed as freely as the breeze, I've heard it enough for ten lifetimes.

what's not to like (other than overplay and maybe dbag fans?)

That's it, yeah.

xposts yeah, it may be easier to enjoy objectively if you don't live surrounded by rebel flags.

Johnny Fever! I grew up where they love the governor as well!
It made my top 10, there's a resignation that I hear in Van Zant's voice on this that slays me.

What's that? You wanna hear some more southern rock?

http://i.imgur.com/C0eYx0r.jpg

72. The Marshall Tucker Band – Can’t You See
910 points, 14 votes

Overplay absolutely a factor in my placing it so low.
Also, it's no Gimme Three Steps.

attn: how's life, i webmailed u

Saturday Night Special is my Skynyrd jam of choice.

hell yeah

xxxp

key non-tull flute work

I've somehow managed to escape hearing Marshall Tucker Band my entire life, or if I have heard them (which, actually, is likely) they went in one ear and out the other. This song seems...forgettable?

this song is epic

Can't You See is great. Strangely reminds me of Oh Sweet Nuthin'

Saturday Night Special part of my Skynyrd ROCK BLOCK btw

Can't You See was Top 25 for me

I have an uncle whose favorite band is the Marshall Tucker Band. He never tires of telling the story of the band's name.

Re: Sweet Home Alabama - yeah, it's the people and the associations. Yeah, I know now that Skynyrd themselves aren't to blame for those politics but they pretty much are inseparable - the song is the anthem of shithead southern white Republicans, and its jolly good-times feel only cements that: anybody who dislikes our ways dislikes the sweetness of home, indeed dislikes sweetness itself. This is really unfortunate because it would be perfectly good as just a fun song to have on while grilling and enjoying the things that are nice about living in the south, and I'm sure this is a huge part of why it gets played (and why Kid Rock picked it up for his shameless "Summer! Remember summer! Summer!" song). Unfortunately I just can't separate it out, which is my fault and not the song's. I've tried to enjoy seeing it appropriated by others, as a more generic "I sure love the place I'm from!" song (found it oddly popular in Ohio for example), but it hasn't worked, and the state-love thing always feels like it's just a few steps (three steps, let's say) from blood-and-soil proto-fascism to me anyway, unless it's married to more specifics or some other reason for writing the song, e.g. "Don't It Make You Wanna Go Home" where environmental destruction and urban sprawl threaten the home of childhood.

Maybe this is also why I'm finding I accept road boogie joints from these bands more easily: the Breeze is explicitly refusing roots in any particular place, which strikes me as a good idea if the place you're from is draped wall to wall with the stars-n-bars. Basically I just never ever need to hear this again. In appreciation of its craft I did leave it off my 'worst' ballot but that's as much as I'd give it.

It's noon, which means it's time for our "live lunch" at The Aorta, where we bring you a classic live cut. Today, it's the title track from Jackson Browne's 1977 album Running On Empty, which was recorded at one of our favorite venues, Merriweather Post Pavilion. Jackson will be back in Maryland next month for a solo show at the Hippodrome in Baltimore, and you can bet we'll be there, waiting to hear this one. Stay tuned for more nonstop rock with gr80, who's got some really great stuff ready to go for you this afternoon.

http://i.imgur.com/kSz8155.jpg

71. Jackson Browne – Running On Empty (Live)
921 points, 15 votes

fuck yeah, "Can't You See" is a monster. ought to be my karaoke standard

Hm, I don't think I know these last two, at least not by name. I voted for 73-75. I think I prefer "Eye in the Sky" to any post-Meddle Pink Floyd, which my ballot shows!

Sweet Home Alabama is a terrible song - just that endless carnival loop of three chords going around and around and around forever, it's psychosis inducing, makes me want to kill myself

"Running on Empty" is one of the JB songs I love.

I had never knowingly heard "Eye In The Sky" before this poll, I'm a little mystified by its placement

― some dude, Tuesday, July 29, 2014 11:04 AM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This.

74. Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit
897 points, 14 votes

― some dude, Tuesday, July 29, 2014 11:10 AM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I could have sworn there was an ilx post from a few years back where a poster described humming white rabbit under their breath as their preferred method to signal that a drug story had gone on too long. I can't find it in search though, so maybe it was somewhere else? Anyway, I've deployed this method once or twice myself.

love this song