As rock radio flourished and floundered its way into the Classic Rock radio format, the constant complaint in my time as an adult has been that the format continually has a smaller catalog of songs each year. It’s absolutely a fair cop. I have lived my enitre life within radio distance of a fairly large radio market, and by the time you were down to two stations that played rock recorded in the 70’s, 60’s and possibly 50’s, you could fit the entirety of both of their playlists on one CD filled with radio-level quality mp3s (which would be the format of the era).
Today, you’d barely need four 90 minute cassettes to program everything but the commercials and music beds to play under chatter for most classic rock radio stations. A copy of Rumors and four mix tapes. Rotate one side of a tape out for who died last, and get the hell off my lawn.
So, in that spirit. I want to know that song you miss that classic rock stations used to play that they really don’t play anymore after they dwindled and became the Classic Rock station, singular.
I’ll give a couple examples of what I’m thinking of.
The James Gang. Funk 49. Either as a bass player or a guitarist, I could get my punk rock friends to consider a cover of that by playing the main riff. They’d heard it, everybody had heard it, it rocked and grooved, and they already knew half of it. Don’t hear it on the radio much anymore.
The song that really made me think of this thread is Never Been Any Reason by Head East. Some several years ago, I had a co-worker across the room say, “hey <insert my last name>, would know that”, then holler, ‘hey who did the "Woman with the sweet lovin’, better than a white line" song?’ Obviously, I knew the answer. Tonight it got stuck in my head, and I realized how long it had been since I had heard it without listening to my wife’s satellite radio and intentionally torturing her with it. She’s just young enough to not have had it pummeled into her brain to where she enjoys it.
The other song I think of is Cheap Trick’s cover of Ain’t That a Shame. I last heard it on the radio around '99 on a classic rock radio station as we were traveling through somewhere near the Arkansas/Tennessee border. My wife was surfing stations, and I heard the intro kick drum, and told her to “Stop, wait. I can’t place this, but it is good.” Even though I had shown things that would point to my Head East habit, she trusted me and waited. I think she felt rewarded for her trust that time.
But enough about my nostalgia, indulge in your own. Dig deep. What’s the song that you miss from terrestrial rock radio that used to get played all the time?
(And apparently again around midnight on Sunday.) Other old-school Aerosmith they play includes “Back in the Saddle” and “Toys in the Attic.” But Aerosmith is another band this station has a love affair with. It’s fairly evenly divided between old and new stuff, probably 60-40 to the new.