I like to think I have varied interests when it comes to music. I like music that could be considered from many genres. I do have a soft spot for classic rock, but I also appreciate modern bands that would make many kids today run away, like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum or Stolen Babies. Does classic rock end up being the kiss of death? I keep hearing that stupid Usher song that sounds like a soccer chant (oooh oooaah ooh oohaaahooha or whatever) and I’ll admit it’s catchy and easy to remember (no lyrics!) but really? That is it just because there’s more of a dance vibe that makes classic rock uncool?
I think the problem is that so much of the dreck is filtered out of nostalgia radio. I remember someone here pointing out that the fake band The Archies charted higher than Hendrix did. If this chart is right, there’s some stuff that could really be left in 1967: Chairborne Ranger: Dennis Mansker's Transportation Corps Vietnam Website Featuring A Bad Attitude a Novel from the Vietnam War
My theory though is that there is also a distance now of too many steps between many of the current artists and the more foundational songs that were from melodic traditions in blues or jazz or standards. Some of my favorite songs are things like Mike Ness covering Bob Dylan. I think Ness’ foundations in Dylan, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, and blues players make Social Distortion a real band, and not just some punk thrashers.
OTOH, I think Never Mind the Bollocks is a classic…
I vote for: classic rock is timeless goodness. Of course, I’m biased because I love classic rock. 
It’s a time filter thing: some people like particular music because it’s the current fashion. Personally, I couldn’t give a flying proverbial if something is old or new it’s just a question of whether I like it or not. Probably only a percent or two of all music production (looked at across all time and all releases) is going to be that great. If I’m going to listen to something I haven’t heard before and don’t know to be to my taste, why waste my time listening to a large percentage of new stuff most of which is just going to take time out of my life (which I am never going to get back) without reward? If I’m going to listen to something that I haven’t heard before, it’s much more efficient to listen to something that people are still talking about which is 20 years old (or much, much more) because it’s been filtered by time. The chances that I will find something that I really enjoy are much higher.
It’s more than just the “90% of everything is crap” resulting in that other 10% comprising classic rock playlists when top 40 radio plays both the good and the bad.
Gerald Casale of Devo recently said this:
In other words, 90% of top 40 music in the '70s may have been crap, but now it’s more like 99%.
My favourite bands are Pink Floyd, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and The Police, so guess where my vote goes. OTOH, I love Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree, so I’m not* totally* an old fogey (at the age of 32!), but like Princhester, if I’m buying music, I’ll either buy classic albums (e.g. I bought both Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Van Halen’s 1984 recently) or new albums by veterans.
I love classic rock and still have all my vinyl, but I’ll probably never play my Lynyrd Skynyrd debut album again because my husband’s favorite radio station ceaselessly plays Free Bird. (And Hotel California. And Smoke on the Water…)
I don’t see it as an either/or situation.
I still listen to the old stuff. I also buy a lot of new music. The way the distribution system works (on the internet) makes it easy to listen and see what I like. I’ve found several new bands I enjoy (Gogol Bordello, Avett Brothers, MOFRO) and have even managed to see them live during the past year.
I love classic rock.
The Beatles, Queen, Aerosmith, Rush, Heart, The Knack, The Cars, Bat Benetar…
…timeless goodness. It must be timeless, because I discovered it in the 90s (with the exception of Rush, which I discovered in 2002.)
Put on something like ‘‘Workin’ Man,’’ it moves through time.
I like both classic rock and 2000’s “indie” rock (in the sense of rock that isn’t played on commercial radio, whether or not it’s on a big label). The point up above is a good one, that probably even less great rock achieves mainstream label backing, but I think it’s not because A+R aren’t backing them or doing research, but because the labels back rock music less in general. They throw all their support behind rap and dance-pop.
Classic Rock has a smaller percentage of “good” songs and a larger percentage of “great” songs than 2000’s rock. Granted, around the same percentage of classic rock stuff that gets played now I would consider good, but like was previously mentioned, the really lame ones have been filtered out already. But there aren’t as many hit-out-of-the-ballpark mega-great “life-altering” great tracks as there were in the Classic Rock era. The closest thing I can think of in the 2000s that has more than a handful of these is Coheed and Cambria, and they’re basically classic rock anyway (despite the emo and nu-metal influences on their first two albums), so there you go.
My sense is that people who grew up with classic rock are generally more emotionally invested in it than the current generation. For a lot of the audience these days, rock music is just part of the overall soundscape, rather than something to be listened to with any intent. How many albums these days are dissected song by song, word by word, like works by The Beatles or Pink Floyd? You could say that anyone devoting that much attention to (for example) DSOTM is wasting their time, but there are plenty of people who are happy to continue those kind of discussions.
Another classic rock supporter here (and, by “classic rock”, I mean from the mid-90s back to the early fifties; rock, blues, R&B, and soul). Say what you want about the bygone days of the music business (and there are plenty of reasons to criticize it, from payola to, say, the sad, sordid story of Frankie Lymon), but for all intents and purposes, the system worked.
I do like the indie bands as well, though I can only think of one band that’s consistently written songs as great as their forefathers: the White Stripes
I think there is a subtle distinction between “music” and “songs.” The 60s’ groups concentrated heavily on songs, because that’s where all popular music went at the time. Broadway, standards, country music, folk, all tried to produce a hummable tune that would stick in your memory. By the early 60s, jazz had veered off into music, which was also the time that it started plummeting from popular acceptance. Jazz albums were huge popular hits in the 50s and marginal cult music a decade later.
Rock music went through some of the same progression. By the end of the 60s, groups started moving away from songs into music. Long guitar solos, the noodling of progressive rock, tracks that covered four album sides. That was much of what punk was rebelling against.
Punk was noise, but New Wave was songs and the early 80s when MTV was exploding had tons of great songs, mostly from a new British invasion. America responded with heavy metal and disco and rap and grunge. British rock concentrated on songs long after the emphasis shifted in the U.S.
What I hear now in modern music is a continued emphasis of music over songs. Catchy hooks and simple arrangements that stick in your head are passé. Even the bands that reviews claim these for don’t have them to my ears. I hear lots of good music, but none of it sticks with me. (Not just rock, of course. Broadway famously stopped turning out songs that became popular hits that everyone would recognize at about the same time in the 60s. I think Hair was the last Broadway show of the era to have multiple top ten hits. If there have been any since, they probably can be counted on one hand.)
The music did change. Classic rock, which is also classic top 40, was designed from the start to accomplish something different in the audience than today’s music. Just as older adults never accepted the change from standards to rock, boomers don’t need to accept the change from classic rock to modern music. Whether it’s good or bad is not really the point. It’s a different genre. You can like both, but you don’t like them the same way or for the same reasons. Two totally different animals.
Another classic rocker here, with some folk added to the mix cuz I said so, dammit. Skynyrd, Zeppelin, Doors, Hendrix, Joplin, Dead, Floyd, Beatles, Eagles, CCR, etc.
<waves lighter, hollers Free Bird>
People who ONLY listen to classic rock, or claim that there is some fundamental difference between new music and classic rock, are… well I don’t want to use the word “hopeless” but it does seem kind of sad to me. If you’ve seen The Wrestler, think of that scene where Randy and his floozy are discussing how great 80’s hair metal was and how “everything sucks now.” It’s just nostalgia for the good times of their youth. I can see not wanting to make the effort to keep up with good new music as you get older and drift farther away from the center of pop culture, but music is music and there is always good music and bad music out there. Thanks to the internet, these days there are millions of bands who cater to every imaginable taste, and several of them are actually quite good.
Yeah, I definitely agree with what you’re saying here; then it goes from “strong preference for classic rock” to “you damn kids get off my lawn” territory.
That being said, I still think that Usher song is stupid.
People’s tastes change over time. There were a bunch of songs that were quite popular in the 80s that I was pretty much meh about. Recently, I’ve gone back and listened to them again and “rediscovered” them - they weren’t so meh after all.
Quick hijack: Can we please bury this meme? It’s long past its sell-by date, especially over at the (increasingly inessential) A.V. Club. Thanks.
The problem with classic rock on radio is that it’s only the most popular songs that get played, so it’s gotten boring. There are so many obscure songs that never get aired.
And there ya have it.
Give a listen to Deep Tracks on satellite radio; it’ll produce many, many virtually unknown jewels.
mmm
That’s the first thing I think of when I hear the term “classic rock” - the ad nauseaum (with nausea caused also by many ads) of “classic rock” radio.
I don’t wanna sleep
I just wanna keep on lovin’ you
I wanna turn off the radio and listen to all the good stuff from the 70s to the 00s that I discovered since the Ipod revolution, virtually all of which never made it to radio, a small amount of which would fit into a “classic rock” style.
The people who like a restricted “classic rock” radio format are direct-line descendants of those who grooved on “oldies” radio. Will there be satellite radio addicts of "the hits’ from the '90s? Who knows? “For the 99,999th time, because you asked for it - Pearl Jam!”
I lived in El Centro, CA for a bit, and the only “classic” rock radio was from Mexicali. The DJs spoke Spanish, but the songs were all in English. Given the market, they had to hit a wide range of listeners (opposite the situation in L.A. or N.Y.) Oh, my, gosh, the dreck they dug up. Insipid songs from Paul McCartney, teeth rotters from Bread, novelty hits that faded within weeks of hitting the top ten. Sometimes I almost couldn’t take it, and lived with just the sound effects from Half-Life with nothing else on, it got so bad.