CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL: THE RESULTS

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

and Doc otm about its lamentable political/social aspects

xxp

I don't know, I just think hating Sweet Home Alabama is so predictable. Like bagging on Born In The U.S.A.

What does that "Watergate doesn't bother me" part in SHA mean? Is he saying that us Yankees have our own bad stuff going on so don't worry about us electing George Wallace down here?

garbled

I remember first hearing it on my older second cousin (from Sudbury!)'s LP when I was 12 or so. It sounded so spacey and eerie. "Silence and I" is one of my other favourites from that album. APP could be kind of great.

xposts

attn: how's life, i webmailed u

― °ㅇ๐ْ ° (gr8080), Tuesday, July 29, 2014 11:49 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

got it.

Pres. Keyes, I thought he was saying "Watergate does not bother me because at least Nixon's less of a segregationist scumbag than fucking George Wallace" but maybe that was wishful thinking?

Thing is, Van Zant said about the confederate flag backdrop, "That was strictly an MCA gimmick to start us off with some label. It was useful at first, but by now it’s embarrassing except in Europe, where they really like all that stuff because they think it’s macho American."

::two thumbs up:: xxpost

I might be projecting too much on Ronnie Van Zant, but I suspect Sund4r's interpretation is more in line with what I know about his politics.

I DON'T KNOW WHEN THAT ROAD TURNED ONTO THE ROAD I'M ON

"Running on Empty" is one of the JB songs I love.
--guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Because it's great! Speaks to, like universal themes and stuff maaaan while David Linley just rips.

Lindley. damn this phone.

Ronnie was a pretty progressive guy

Me and my boy just put on (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd), such a great album. Incredible band.

A couple years ago, they tried to abandon the rebel flag, explicitly stating that it was to disassociate themselves from racism, but apparently got such a huge fan backlash that they caved and readopted it.

Re: eye in the sky -

"From our upstairs porch I watch my neighbor, a small town accountant with a voice like a toy keyboard, begin his walk to work in his navy blue Botany 500 suit, bought used in an L.A. consignment store while visiting his widower son-in-law and blind granddaughter, and according to my neighbor, formerly owned by Gene Rayburn, the semi-retired game show host whose grotesque aura still haunts the seven o’clock time slots of my body’s internal clock along with Merv Griffin, Don Rickles, Cloris Leachman, Bert Convy, Wink Martindale and the tenants of every Hollywood square, those horrible hucksters, sickening adults/hyenas who seem to have had their proteges on every Main Street, the men with perms, tight gray curls erupting over the alcoholic topography of their oiled faces, a legion of salesmen ruined by bad translations of an already disastrous California ideal, their eyes stinking like boiled cocktail onions as they emerged from “sleek” 1980 Thunderbirds, all marinated teeth and snowplow mustaches, fresh from invigorating divorces, dragging tawny S-shaped girlfriends by the wrist to wooden gargoyle waterbeds where stereo systems built into the headboards played “Eye in the Sky” by the Alan Parsons Project endlessly through the night.

- David C. Berman

Yessssssss Running On Empty. This one just gets better with (my) age. Already rambled about it in the voting thread, but basically I can't imagine a classic rock station that doesn't play this.

re: Watergate, yeah that line seriously needed a little more work - the ambiguity of the "you" is the problem I think. It very easily reads like: ehh, who gives a shit about Watergate, Nixon's not such a bad guy, and anybody who would get all up in arms about it is an insincere concern-troll, and that's the only reason why they criticize SWEET HOOOME AL A BAAM UUH.

Nu-Skynyrd is a complete embarrassment. xps

Eye In the Sky one of those songs permanently sutured to another song, Sirius, or as the listeners on the request line used to call it, The Chicago Bulls Theme Song.

iiiiii hate jackson brown so much

I'd never heard 'Cant You See' before we started polling -- I really love it! Am intending to dig into Marshall Tucker Band as a result, they definitely have a sound that I love

Running On Empty - another victim of the Forrest Gump Soundtrack.

Not really a fan of this one, I much prefer Doctor My Eyes.

This is the only song of Browne's that I like (totally think it's great...actually, "Somebody's Baby" is pretty good, too), but the line in "The Load Out" about "roadies workin' for that minimum wage" always pissed me off. PAY THEM MORE! YOU'RE THEIR BOSS!

I love every Jackson Browne hit, coulda voted for all of em

hey there folks, and happy tuesday to you. some dude had to run, 'cause he was running on empty, but don't sweat it because gr8080's here to run you through the afternoon & hits #'s 70-61.

let me stop running my mouth though and get back to the music, with this hit from the Doobies

http://i.imgur.com/l4fzCJi.jpg

70. The Doobie Brothers – Long Train Runnin’
926 points, 13 votes

YES! Some Doobies, finally!!!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Another act where pretty much every single is golden in my book.

I might have voted for this song if I'd known it was this song.

This was the third of the three DB tracks I voted for, but right after I sent in my ballot I knew it should've been ranked the highest of the three.

Don't get trampled under foot while you're running, gr80s.

I hate the Load-Out/Stay with an unholy passion. Ten minutes of ninniness.

ninnyness?

xp The lap steel on Running on Empty just sounds wrong to me somehow, really grating

Y'all are breaking my heart re Skynyrd, but I can see how the combination of overplay and negative associations with False Nu-Skynyrd damaged SHA in the poll ... I'm hoping we've got a few more Skynyrd tracks to come

My favorite Doobie Brothers song, such a jam.

I was maybe only vaguely familiar with that Marshall Tucker song. It's a jam!

With VG: fucking despise Jackson Browne. But at least it wasn't "The Loadout".

Dithered endlessly about which Johnston-led Doobies cut to include. It wasn't this one, but it easily could have been. Love the sound on this... the strummin', the singin' along. Something very nervous and anxious about it. No idea what it's actually about but always happy to hear it.

xp to Brad C not a huge Skynyrd fan, but there was still a track that's yet to place that I voted in my top 25. Probably more Skynyrd to come.