CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL: THE RESULTS

I like the dumbness of their premises but not the dumbness of the detailing - sorta like how Seger lets me down on ''Old Time Rock and Roll'' - just spend a little more time on these things, man. Foreigner's always give the sense of a rough draft, just teenage garage band stuff that fits the syllables and marks the time, but without wit or subtlety. Maybe that's what they mean by 'feels like the first time' (though actually I think that song totally works and had it in my ballot til maybe the third or fourth round of cuts). My complaints with UHRgent have been marked elsewhere - it's got some cool ideas sound-wise, just lacking IMO in songcraft, needed a strong producer to muscle the band and demand some changes in the arrangement or something. But since being forced to pay more attention to it I can say it's not the dullest thing in the world.

''I Want To Know What Love Is'' is another animal entirely but I excluded it as Not Classic Rock.

Hey, here's an average AOR/Classic Rock song that's nothing much except for the BLISTERING RED HOT SAXOPHONE SOLO THAT SOUNDS LIKE AN AMBULANCE SIREN PERFORMED BY THE GUY WHO DID 'SHOTGUN', but yeah, I guess it's just some cold crap that doesn't come close to Boys of Summer.

It definitely rocks wayyyy more than Boys of Summer, which IMO had no business being here at all but whattayagonnado.

thompeckham3 days ago

Well, Neil Young sang, "...rock and roll will never die," but it appears it has. Today we have a house beat and undifferentiated warbling. Where is the inventiveness of America, the Doobies, Eagles, CSN, Bob Seger and dozens more ??
Reply · 1

I like the dumbness of their premises but not the dumbness of the detailing - sorta like how Seger lets me down on ''Old Time Rock and Roll'' - just spend a little more time on these things, man. Foreigner's always give the sense of a rough draft, just teenage garage band stuff that fits the syllables and marks the time, but without wit or subtlety.
like i said, they lack imagination! if you want to write a song about a sex-crazed woman who is so hungry for your lovin that she calls you in the middle of the night, that is a-ok but try to not be such a fucking dolt about it

fervent
fervent
insurgency

lol

I think Foreigner 4 is a classic rock titan and they got shafted!

What do fucking .38 Special have that Foreigner don't?

a 38 cent breakfast special

Lou Gramm is fantastic. "I Wanna Know What Love Is"! I want him to show me!

"Hold on Loosely"!? LOOSELY? what imagination! what an ear for the vital rhythms of the American vernacular!

dude, I'm slipping! grab my hand--no, not like that, a little more loosely.....

What do fucking .38 Special have that Foreigner don't?

At least 2 good songs

.38 Special is a good case in point, in that they're mining similar territory. "Rocking into the Night" is exactly the type of gloriously dumb song that Foreigner doesn't pull off.

At least 2 good songs

Three, even!

However, Foreigner has about 15 or 20 (and one REALLY terrible one called "Dirty White Boy").

If it weren't for "Hot Blooded," we'd have no "Funky Cold Medina".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LrHfxW4XOg

(and one REALLY terrible one called "Dirty White Boy").

Oh man, I'd forgotten about that one. Yeah, fuck Foreigner.

At least 2 good songs

Three, even!

However, Foreigner has about 15 or 20

Must be deep cuts.

here's some more fun with stats

Artist Point Totals (and total songs voted for)

Led Zeppelin
11602 points, 27 songs

Rolling Stones
9850 points, 21 songs

Fleetwood Mac
7995 points, 15 songs

The Who
6975 points, 15 songs

Heart
6402 points, 3 top 100

Tom Petty
6138 points, 10 votes

Jimi Hendrix
5784 points, 10 songs

Creedence Clearwater Revival
5961 points, 11 songs

David Bowie
5785 points, 12 songs

Queen
5579 points, 9 songs

Boston
5263 points, 8 votes songs

AC/DC
5182 points, 10 songs

Van Halen
5115 points, 15 songs

Blue Oyster Cult
5092 points, 3 voted

Lynrd Skynyrd
4964 points, 11 songs

The Cars
4339 points, 8 songs

Aerosmith
4034 points, 8 songs, 1 top 100

The Allman Brothers Band
4003 points, 7 songs

Steely Dan
3988 points, 7 songs

Pink Floyd
3805 points, 12 songs

ZZ Top
3739 points, 9 songs

Neil Young
3673 points, 9 songs

Beatles
3461 points, 13 songs, 0 top 100

The Doobie Brothers
3350 points, 7 songs

Rod Stewart
3289 points, 7 songs

Journey
3232 points, 8 songs, 1 top 100

Electric Light Orchestra
3182 points, 8 songs

Foreigner
2702 points, 11 songs, 1 top 100

Thin Lizzy
2678, 3 songs

Elton John
2599 points, 7 songs

Eagles
2595 points, 13 songs

John Mellencamp
2549 points, 9 songs

Black Sabbath
2538 points, 3 songs

Pretenders
2459 points, 4 songs

Cheap Trick
2341 points, 3 songs

.38 Special
2307 points, 4 songs

Stevie Nicks
2305 points, 3 songs

The Police
2303 points, 9 songs

James Gang
1957 points, 2 songs

Paul McCartney & Wings
1699 points, 6 songs

Billy Squier
1585 points, 5 songs

Bad Company
1547 points, 6 songs

Alice Cooper
1546 points, 3 songs

Don Henley
1505 points, 3 songs

would have been great had Journey beaten Beatles

Hahaha awesome some dude. Now I kinda wanna divide point totals by the maximum *possible* points for an artist (given X ballots, Y songs in nom list, and possibility that all X ballots voted all Y songs as the top Y). James Gang's performance above strikes me as particularly notable: whatever it is they've got, ILX seems sure it's the stuff of a classic rock act because they managed to beat Bad Company with only two songs.

BOC making 3 songs land like a tonna bricks too.

"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" has a particular statistical significance to the poll that I will explain later in the week...

― some dude, Monday, July 28, 2014 11:42 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this, by the way, was a reference to:

a) Stevie is the only person with 6 songs in the top 100 (4 Mac, 4 solo)
b) Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers are one of a handful of acts with 4 songs in the top 100
c) with the Heartbreakers tracks and "Boys of Summer," Mike Campbell is one of the only people with 5 songs in the top 100 (the others being Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, unless there's any other session guys I've overlooked)

My step-dad uses the phrase "grab loose" instead of "let go". He blames his Polish upbringing.

I always get Foreigner 4 and J. Geils Band's Freeze Frame mixed up, because those were the two cassette tapes my step-brother played so often. One of them had a song called "Piss on the Wall" and the other one didn't, that's how I keep it straight.

(4 Mac, 4 solo)

oops, 4 Mac and 2 solo obviously

One of them had a song called "Piss on the Wall" and the other one didn't, that's how I keep it straight.

this made me lol
thank you

haha heard "jailbreak" just hours ago and my sister both laughed at the "...somewhere in the town" line

somewhere = probably at THE JAIL iirc

― Sir Lord Baltimora (Myonga Vön Bontee), Sunday, August 3, 2014 12:02 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still chuckling at this. It also inspired me to pull the album out again (it's awesome obv) and, for the first time, I noticed the fucking amazing text on the back cover. Probably well known to most of y'all but just, wow:

THE JAILBREAK The Warrior locked himself into his video scanner and gazed throughout the Universe... until he came upon Dimension 5.

DIMENSION 5 was now in the hands of the Overmaster, whose lust for ultimate power had become an obsession. Religion and the media were all under his control and computer files were kept on all known living persons within the city zones.

Many were arrested and jailed.

It was therefore significant that The Jailbreak represented a freedom for so many yet to those involved at the time it was a series of events, the outcome of which no-one could have foreseen. The plan was simple. By knocking out the alarm systems in a riot, they then would cause an explosion which would blow half the cell blocks away. Outside help came from an organization known as Phono-Graphics, who if the plan was successful would eventually capitalize on the whole project.

The night of The Jailbreak all hell broke loose. A Red Alert was issued by the Overmaster himself. Robot trackers, military police. dogs and all available vehicles were on the hunt. All were caught, except four. who made it to the Rampic Buildings on the south side of the city. It was in these buildings that they broadcast and recorded selected material, some of which still survives today. Through these recordings they built up a follow ing who eventually took to the streets in what was to become the Final War.

The Warrior had become weary and disillusioned with war, but seeing how the people struggled to be free he knew once again he must raise up his sword...

The music sailed out into the night then upward towards the skies, travelling on that thin border between reality and imagination.

Yes, yes, but what about Dino? And Romeo? And where does the emerald fit into this?

I figured they had an Apple iPhone they planned to hack in order to use unauthorized web apps.

One of them had a song called "Piss on the Wall" and the other one didn't, that's how I keep it straight.

― pplains, Monday, August 4, 2014 12:23 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and also has a song called "River Blindness" which is one of the weirdest fucking things ever tracked on an AOR LP

Tonight there's gonna be a City Council meeting...
Somewhere in this town

We built this city council
On Rock and Roll!

I put Jailbreak at #4, god bless whoever put it at #15 and got it into the top 500.
― Man, when I tell you she was cool, she was red hot, I mean she was (intheblanks), Sunday, August 3, 2014 1:30 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have so much goodwill toward whoever that is, that is such an incredible song, I could listen to it forever.
― Man, when I tell you she was cool, she was red hot, I mean she was (intheblanks), Sunday, August 3, 2014 1:31 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sup

inspired by this thread, I checked the "James Gang" section on my weekly record store trip, and picked up a nice best-of LP for 3 bucks. As I was walking into the building where I do my radio show with the record, some guy in his 20's (not part of the radio iirc) pointed and said "James Gang! Cool!"

synchronicities are fun

so gr8080 tell us more about the pics
aloha friday
internet k-hole?
ship fam?

plz remind me to answer this on monday. don't have the time/not sure how i want to go about doing so until then.

i'm djing a wedding for two early 30's art professors tomorrow at a beautiful louisville mansion and despite the carefully curated playlist i've got ready to go, i'm totally fighting the urge to just let our top 100 rip all nite
― °ㅇ๐ْ ° (gr8080), Friday, August 1, 2014 10:22 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

WE DEMAND ANSWERS

I wish I could go back and listen to these songs to where they "feel like the first time." Heck, maybe one day I'll even go back and read this thread from the beginning to see if anyone else had previously made that joke.

But I'll say this: I listened to "Born To Run" on the earbuds the other day and it never really occurred to me how similar that stuff and ... wait for it... Meatloaf have in common. The same kind of bombastic theatrical horns and rippin' gee-tars with some wild and rebellious lead singer swinging some swagger.

I mean, Meatloaf happily kept his bar low, beginning with goofy dialogues in between songs about wolves eating fingers and calling himself Meatloaf, for crying out loud while The Boss successfully adopted his persona of somehow being Al Pacino mixed with Brando in The Wild One, but laying all that aside and boiling it down to the E Street Band vs Jim Steinman & Todd Rundgren, it's all from the same cloth.

And I was typing that and double-checking Wikipedia, I notice "Bat Out of Hell is often compared to the music of Bruce Springsteen, particularly the Born to Run album. Steinman says that he finds that "puzzling, musically", although they share influences; "Springsteen was more an inspiration than an influence."[5] A BBC article added, "that Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan from Springsteen's E Street Band played on the album only helped reinforce the comparison."[7]" SO NEVER FUCKING MIND, THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD'S KNOWN ABOUT THIS FOR 40 YEARS. DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT THE TIME I GAVE MICHAEL SCHENKER A LIFT FROM THE BUS STATION?

lost innocence is v. classic rock

does "the dock of the bay" get classic rock airplay? did it in the 80s/early 90s?

no

i love you pplains

mongrel love
it's driving him mad
it's making him crazy

i hate that sonnnngggggg ragh

;_;

HATE

IT

no crate of papayas for you then

good

...and no poem either!

Used to think it was ''a grade-A papaya.'' Also when I first *first* heard it (weekending at Lake Lanier), I got it mixed up with ''Gimme Gimme Good Lovin''' and a DuckTales plotline, yielding ''Gimme gimme the gold, it's makin' me crazy.'' My friend Natalie, I later learned, heard the title as ''Chug-a-Lug.'' ''Jungle Love'' rules.

Grade-A papaya totally unbelievable. Steve Miller is definitely the kind of guy who would scratch the sell by date off a crate of papaya he picked up at the dollar store in Quito.

plz remind me to answer this on monday. don't have the time/not sure how i want to go about doing so until then.

***most links in this post will likely contain NSFW photos if you click/scroll around on them long enough**

my fascination w/ finding old photos of people partying began with this sandbox thread, after which (with the thread-starter's permission) i started a tumblr which i updated pretty furiously for a few years, during which time i started a second tumblr that acted as a depository for all the great stuff i found that didn't have any booze/partying element to it. most of what i found came from hours and hours spent spelunking on flickr, some of the older stuff was from picasa (before google effectively boarded up that goldmine by folding it in to google+, R.I.P.), and some were the result of good old fashioned google image searches. the draw for me was always amateur snapshots, as if i were assembling a facebook feed from the past.

i don't really keep up with either of those tumblrs anymore, but i should quickly note here that it was this new hobby/internet addiction that led me to take up film photography in 2009, and the overall hazy-good-times-house-party aesthetic definitely has influenced a lot of my work (this is a photo album that changes daily with 500 randomly selected photos, and here is my website-website.

when i heard that some dude was not planning on doing images for this poll, i immediately knew that volunteering to use stuff from my "collection" would be a no-brainer. however, i wanted to try and hone the aesthetic of these 100 images to a particular era/feel and avoid stuff that was pre-70s/post-80s/too fratty etc, and i didn't quite have enough to fit the bill. so i went back on the flickr hunt and uncovered lots a new gems, while also poaching more than a few from some other like-minded collectors (the former of those two has gotten plenty of internet fame, the latter is way underrated and would be loved by all itt). i also dipped back in to this MUST SEE WEBSITE for quite a few of what made it in to the 100 images. i tried to keep 100% of the images amateur/not professional/commercial, but did relax this rule for three or four.

also, a hat-tip to pplains, who's work on the steely dan poll earlier this year was a huge inspiration (and for sharing the photoshop files he had leftover, which helped my photoshop-illiterate self get going). seriously, if you for some reason missed that poll, take a minute to look at his images. also a second hat-tip to pp for pointing out how i'd basically copied the opening credits to wet hot american summer without knowing it at all.

thanks again to some dude who kept me supplied with likely contenders up to and after the polls closing so that we could have a short turnaround, and to everyone who voted/posted: this was a shitload of fun and i'm already missing this thread.

it's a well-honed aesthetic