There’s another thread out there on songs you hear too often on the radio that should be retired. I disagree with 2/3 of the songs listed. But I think it would be fun to list the songs you don’t hear on your local classic rock station. What are the songs that get you excited just because they are so rare?
I’ll start off with I’d Love to Change the World by Ten Years After. Alvin Lee is a heckuva a guitarist but he never gets any love.
(apologies for the awkwardly worded thread title. Now go!)
I don’t think they play Gloria by Van Morrison or Crimson and Clover by Tommy James nearly enough on the radio.
Anything by Traffic (other the “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”) or the Band (other than “The Weight”).
Atlantis by Donovan. Enough with Season Of the Witch!
Pink Floyd, Learning To Fly. Their earlier album cuts deservedly get plenty of play, but I really love this song.
Similarly, Jimi Hendrix songs get plenty of play but somehow not so much for If 6 Was 9, which in some ways is the quintessential Hendrix song. “I’m the one who’s got to die when it’s time for me to die… So let me live my life, the way I want to. Sing on brother, play on drummer!”
Hard to think of any underplayed Led Zep songs on a Classic Rock station’s rotation. I mean, I recall reading or hearing that there was even a radio station in Florida or something that went on an "All Zep Format’ for a weekend while the DJs were all on vacation (I may be spreading an Urban Legend here but so what). Maybe “Boogie With Stu”?
Same thing for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I’ll go with I’ve Got A Feeling as a great Beatles song that I don’t hear on the radio much, if at all, and for the Stones, Monkey Man.
I think they should just chuck every song that they’ve played into the ground over the past thirty years, then dig through the best of what’s left and play that.
I will never understand people who genuinely get something out of hearing Takin’ Care of Business for the sixteen billionth time.
Anything off “Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire”, by the Kinks.
I vote for Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood by The Animals.
What I hate about classic radio stations is that they will play only certain songs.
My example -Steppenwolf - I guarantee they will play Born to be Wild but never Magic Carpet Ride
Strange—I gave up on listening to classic rock (and commercial radio) years ago, but back when I did, I used to hear almost all of the songs mentioned here (except maybe “Atlantis”).
Really? I never hear Born to be Wild. Magic Carpet Ride is played way more often. I’d like to hear The Pusher.
Yeah, I forgot about the song until I heard Donovan himself parody it in an episode Futurama, in a ballad about the lost sunken city of Atlanta.
Then I remembered how awesome the song is! (After the clip shown, the episode continues with Fry frolicking with his mermaid girlfriend to the chorus of the song Atlantis: “way down, below the ocean, where I wanna be – she may be…”)
Classic playlists become self-perpetuating. There are only actually a small number of playlists as big companies provide the same playlists to dozens of different stations. And one of their big marketing tools in random listening surveys. They pick some random listeners in the right demographic, play them some songs, and ask them to rate how much they like the songs. And a lot of people base their rating of how much they like a song on how familiar it is. Songs that are already on the playlists and are already played a lot become familiar so they get higher ratings which means they get moved up on the playlist and so it goes.
That’s exactly the song I thought of when I saw the thread title.
This is not really a bad idea at all; there’s a ton of so-called “deep cuts” that don’t ordinarily get much airplay but are as good as (if not better) than their more-famous brethren - although I do understand the thrill of hearing a favorite, especially if the song in question is for one reason or another not in one’s own collection.
Yeah, as others have noted, I’ve heard both “Magic Carpet Ride” and “Born to be Wild” on the local classic rock station (Q104.3). Don’t really hear “Sookie, Sookie” or “The Pusher”, though.
Much of this might be down to the station’s Program Manager or even the individual DJ’s personal taste. Certain DJ’s definitely have favorites, and will play more from their favorite’s catalog than others. In the NY metro area, you can always count on Carol Miller to play Zeppelin, you used to be able to count on Scott Muni to play The Beatles, and Pat St. John to play The Allman Brothers (going back a few years - dunno where Pat is these days, actually).
There’s really quite a few songs that deviate from the established cliché choices but would represent the bands equally as well. How about these:
AC/DC:[ul][li]There’s Gonna Be Some Rockin’[]Live Wire[]Overdose[]Sin City[]If You Want Blood[/ul][/li]The Doors:[ul][li]Take it as it Comes[]You’re Lost Little Girl[]My Eyes Have Seen You[]Shaman’s Blues[]The Wasp[/ul][/li]Led Zeppelin:[ul][li]Your Time is Gonna Come[]Out on the Tiles[]Four Sticks[]Ten Years Gone[]Hots on for Nowhere[/ul][/li]Black Sabbath never seems to get much play at all other than “Paranoid” and maybe “Iron Man”, which is a shame, because their albums are absolutely stocked with great Classic [del]Rock[/del] Heavy Metal AOR sound:[ul][li]Wicked World[]Children of the Grave[]Supernaut[]Sabbath Bloody Sabbath [“You bastards!”][]Sweet Leaf[/ul]Not to mention the first Dio album post-Ozzy, which had gems like “Neon Knights”, “Lady Evil”, and “Heaven and Hell”.[/li]
You used to be able to gauge from a couple of songs on the radio whether or not a band or artist was worth an investment in an album; it’s a completely different paradigm now. I’m not about to start yelling at the kids to get off my lawn, but somehow it seemed a more rewarding experience to hear the flow of an album, especially when artists sequenced them with some care (like Pink Floyd, for example). Nowadays, “Money” might sell well via iTunes or Amazon, but nobody would ever even hear “The Great Gig in the Sky”. And I’m not sure if it’s better or worse for the industry (does every song on a current collection have to sell well for the release to be considered a success?), but it sure does make me nostalgic (and I’m not that bleedin’ old, dammit!).
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
Uncut.
I prefer **Snowblind Friend **myself.
The Time-Warner cable company plays music on the TV program guide, right now it’s all Christmas all the time of course. And most of the time it’s instrumental easy listenin’ for the old folks at home to have on in the background. But son of a gun, the last few months they have been alternating the snoozy generic music with oldies from the '50s, '60’s, and '70’s. I have heard songs that I haven’t heard in DECADES! I heard Peter & Gordon - “Knight In Rusty Armor”. WTH??? And like the B-sides of more famous songs, and great Motown and obscure British Invasion bands. It’s great! I almost don’t mind their raising the cable bill every single year…
What a great idea for a thread. There are so many great songs that never get played on the radio.
If I’m lucky enough to catch Rush on the radio at all, it’s invariably going to be either Tom Sawyer, Freewill, Limelight, or Working Man.
Mix it up a little - play Red Barchetta, Natural Science, Countdown, The Body Electric, or Something For Nothing.
Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell, See Emily Play, Set The Controls for the Heart of The Sun
Zeppelin - Unless some station is having an all-Zep weekend or something, they’ll never play great songs like Gallow’s Pole, That’s The Way, Custard Pie, or Hey Hey What Can I do.
The Who - The Relay, Sister Disco, My Wife, Pictures of Lilly, Don’t Let Go The Coat
CCR - Green River
The Kinks - Destroyer, Celluloid Heroes
Deep Purple - Lazy, Burn
ELO - Fire on High
Warren Zevon - Anything but Werewolves of London