CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL: THE RESULTS

For reasons that make no sense even to me, Gerry Rafferty is simply awful, but I'd be delighted to listen to some Al Stewart.

"Baker Street" is awesome - totally forgot to vote for it but it's super solid.

"I Can See For Miles" I do like, moreso when it's playing than when I'm thinking about and can just hear the chorus. This and "White Rabbit" must be the chronologically earliest songs to chart so far, yes? For me it's just barely past the limits that define "60s rock" versus "classic rock" - the opening menace parade is very CR, as are the trippy fire-alarm guitar notes on the chorus. But it's a little too..airy? Too much space? Drums mixed too low and vocals too high? The recording feels "cleaner" than the song itself is.

"Born To Run"...I should try harder to like this, I guess. Get what it's going for, appreciate it and all, but it's always been more SNOOOOOOZE than BROOOOOCE for me.

P. sure this is the only 'heartland' song I voted for. It's great imo.

Today's run is slightly disappointing because it means that some of the bands who only have the one shot at CRR fame are more likely to get shut out in favor of bands we typically talk about all the time (too often, even?).

h8 Baker Street. Though I've just realised I'm going to be on the actual Baker Street on Friday as our top twenty hits up, I should mark it somehow.

I've been trying to like Springsteen for my entire life, but man find this dude's dreary working man schtick to be such a drag.

back to THE WHO for one minute!

the who are THE QUINTESSENCE of classic rock radio for me. when i was a little kid, like ages 6-12 or so, i can think of numerous examples (as I'm sure we all can) of when i would hear a song, try to figure out who was playing it and over and over again it was THE WHO. my ballot started off with every who song and i had to cut some but they appealed to me in basically every single way and i totally got into them via no other manner than classic rock radio. i got attached to them in a way that i did not get with zep, floyd, lots of others.

long live the who

OTMFM

Didn't vote for Born to Run, but voted for other Springsteen songs I like more. The opening lines are still classic.

Is/was there a radio format at least somewhat focused on '70s AM gold? I don't remember hearing some of this stuff (like "Baker Street") on CR radio but it also seems like it would be out of place on oldies stations. I'm probably too young to have been exposed to most of it at the time it came out, but I swear I've heard that stuff a lot, and way before I started my own AM gold deep digging.

time-life is still selling their 70s sampler via informercial

the who have a similar appeal for me as the beatles - four incredibly distinct personalities all of whom are constantly pushing beyond the limits of their talents, endlessly inventing like mad scientists... and so full of joy for music that they almost burst through the speakers

like i can't picture hearing the Who & not feeling that buzz of electricity that comes off the four of them

re: Born To Run, the whole instrumental section culminating with him counting off that last verse and then "highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive" is such an emotional high for me

also, "I Can See For Miles" was my sole Who pick

give the saxophonist some! shoutout to raphael ravenscroft ("baker street") and clarence clemons ("born to run").

woops - infomercial
donny osmond is the talking head and it's full of garbage

VG otm
beyond magnetic, like combustion

way to go saxmen!

I'm out at lunch, but I just remembered laughter and decided to come back and post this:

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

53. Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven
1040 points, 14 votes, 2 first place votes

I didn't think I knew what "Baker Street" was, but I pulled up the video and realized its that horn song I thought was by Chuck Manione or Kenny G

FM, and AOR didn't just displace AM overnight. AM radio itself was still going strong through most of the 70s. As a kid in the 70s, I don't recall Baker Street particularly on FM, but I definitely recall stuff like 10cc The Things We Do For Love on AM.

Wow! The (arguably) most CR song of all time at 53!

looooooool

Two first placers, keeping in the spirit of the poll.

Looking at most CR station polls, choosing anything but Stairway is objectively wrong.

I didn't vote for it, so I'm wrong I guess.

Love love love Zep (occasionally think they might be my favorite band ever), okay with "Stairway" although I almost always skip it (which is the only way I can stay okay with it after all of the overexposure). But this is pretty much the cornerstone of CR radio, yeah?

Stairway was a tough one for me to place. Probably should have went higher but it settled in to number 30 for me.

We threw "Born to Run" on our wedding-party dance mix, in the middle of a lot of current pop and hip-hop, and I didn't realize until just then that it's actually a great dance track. It's easy to lose sight of Bruce's R&B roots in all the epic posturing, but the band sure doesn't.

"Stairway" is fine, I don't hate it, but the parts I like best are too short and the parts I like least are too long.

it's no "Hey Hey What Can I Do"

every time "stairway to heaven" comes on the radio i think, "oh, this, again, i will change the dial ... right after this part," and then the drums kick in for the first time and i vow to change the dial right after that part, and then before i know it i have listened to all of "stairway to heaven," again, and i am very very thankful for its existence.

I found room in my ballot for 2 Zeppelin picks. Eliminating all the Zep choices was tough because they are all such an intrinsic part of classic rock radio. Like every fifth or sixth song is LZ right? This one and Ramble On seem like the most obvious picks, but I have a strong suspicion that at least one of mine will place higher.

Feel like it's the cornerstone of your standard "Top 500 CR" list, but my hometown CR station played Black Dog, D'yer Maker, and Whole Lotta Love a lot more than Stairway when I was a kid.

my hometown CR station played Black Dog, D'yer Maker, and Whole Lotta Love a lot more than Stairway when I was a kid.

mine too. but i like "stairway" more.

Love this song to death, and love gr80's choice of image.

Even by its own mushy mystical standards, "Stairway" has a really terrible lyrical pay-off. All of that work and all you leave us with is, "To be a ROCK -- and not to ROLL"?

I'm sure I'd heard others, but I'm pretty certain that "Stairway" was the only Zep song I was familiar with as a Zep song until I became formally familiar with Zep.

voted for a bunch of Zep, but not "Stairway". I actually love it quite a bit, but it became such a CRR cliche that I felt it didn't need any extra help from me.

Stairway is funny to me, since by the time I even heard it it was already a joke song, the song you play to fill time, the song everyone's heard too many times - and then I finally heard it and it's like, well, this is fine, I guess... that band have way better songs, why's this one a big deal? Like, if it was not called "Stairway To Heaven" and not an installed piece of canon I could hear it as just be some Led Zeppelin album track, maybe a little drippy with Plant's oversold vocal on "she's buy-ing," but pretty rockin' in the rockin' parts. There's nothing about it that would make me want to turn off the radio and go OH UGH THIS HURTS MY EARS, so its only claim to the joke song spot is being a long song that was overplayed for years by AOR and CR DJs... and I would hazard that it's completely lost that in the nearly 25 years since Wayne's World. The next generation will probably "hear" Stairway pretty differently.

The next generation will have forgotten laughter.

I have no idea what a "hedgerow" is, but thanks to this song, I know not to be alarmed if it bustles.

xp I had the opposite experience: When I got into classic rock radio at the age of 11, I heard a bunch of other Zep songs over and over and over, none of which were Stairway.

But I knew Zep had this legendary song that, for some reason (probably length), my station never played. I remember the first time I heard Plant sing "and she's buying a stairway to heaven" and thinking, "THIS IS IT! FINALLY!"

does this mean no "Get the Led Out!" at 7 this evening to start my weekend out right??

I may have mentioned this on the noms thread, but the way I remember it, "Stairway" was played on CRR constantly up through the mid-80s, at which point it pretty much disappeared entirely and was replaced with a whole bunch of Zep greats.

Yeah I would def rather here "the ocean" or "the rover" or "in the evening" or "no quarter" or freakin' "kashmir," but there's no denying the ur-CRRitude of "stairway" the only reason it racks up fewer plays than others is it's 8 minutes long.

tbrr that "bustle in your hedgerow" business gets a little twee for my comfort

Yeah, I think Stairway was a song that just persisted from its release in 1971 well over a decade before people got sick to death of it.

xp it's just a spring clean for the May Queen

I thought it was the devil worship thing that gave Stairway its edge

Actually, reflecting upon it now, I think "Stairway" is a little lower in my esteem not so much because of overexposure but more because it just feels too long. I mean, yeah, of course it is long, but I think it just takes way too long to get to where it's going (even if where it's going is pretty great). Most of Led Zeppelin's other long songs are amazing and easily keep hold of my attention for +/- 10 minutes.

BACKMASKING! xp

tbrr that "bustle in your hedgerow" business gets a little twee for my comfort

Pretty sure that's a reference to crabs.

Or at least it is when I say it.

like as a kid I'd heard about the "occult" in rock, "Reaper", AC/DC, "Stairway", "Mr Crowley"; and then when I finally heard these songs & these bands, it was like, you people were worked up about this?

crue circa "shout at the devil" fit right into this

Yeah, having grown up in the church and then leaving and actually figuring out how things take place in the real world, the church's view of "the occult" is pretty damn comical.

"we have assumed control" at the end of 2112 was supposed to be "I sing for Satan" backwards.