Styx. REO Speedwagon. Toto. ELO. What ARE these people?
The title says it all. How to catagorize these bands and others of their ilk. They’re certainly not Metal. They sure as hell don’t have the hips to be Disco. I don’t think they collectively have quite the pretentious wanking bombast to qualify as Prog (though some teeter dangerously on that edge at times). They’re not “Rock” like an Aerosmith or an AC/DC is rawk. I’ll be damned if they’re “alternative” to anything. Punk? HAH! New Wave? No way!
So what are they? I know there’s something that binds these bands together. It’s a distinctive flavor or cheeze. It’s reeking and spreadable and comes in a can. It’s found at many parties, and goes well with “crackers”. But what is it? What…is…it?
I dislike the phrase ‘Corporate Rock’ because, except for Toto, the bands named really did grow up just like most bands do (Toto being a collection of studio musicians who got together and made things work…kinda like the Eagles).
Call them ‘Semi-generic White Male Midwest Stadium Rock’ if you need something.
Rock and Roll with a slight hard edge.
Prone to anthemic songs (for good concert singalong potential)
Mostly non-offensive and non-challenging lyrics
Overly prone to taking it too seriously
Semi-bland image
Other strong contenders
Journey
Night Ranger
Loverboy (but they were Canadian)
Et al…
I once heard a review of bands like this defined as ‘Clever Guy Rock’. Music by guys who majored in the liberal arts and considered themselves ‘well read’.
Man, there’s gotta be some word or words that fit. I mean, you say “Punk” or “Metal” or “Disco” or “Goth” and it just kinda grabs that genre gestalt by the balls and makes it all so clear at an almost subconscious level. You know what Hip Hop is, even if you can’t define it, beyond repeating the name. I know Styx is something. I know REO Speedwagon has a fitting label. Something less inoccuous than “wimp rock”, as that term, while accurate, fails to really convey the unironic depths of cheese that these bands dove headlong into while practicing their art. There must be some fitting descriptor, though damned if I can think of what it is.
An “expert” on 70’s music (whose name I’ve thankfully forgotten) gave a lecture last year and referred to ELO as “art rock” and dismissed their entire body of work because of “Don’t Bring Me Down”.
Groups like Yes, King Crimson, and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis are “art rock”.
I’m a big ELO fan (duh!) and the closest I could get a category would be “melodic pop”.
They got high praise from John Lennon (who called them the “Son of the Beatles”) and Paul McCartney (who said, “Who needs a Beatles reunion when you have ELO.”).
Styx had its moments until Dennis DeYoung went all showy with Kilroy Was Here. I liked Tommy Shaws’ assessment on the stage show (paraphrased), “We didn’t want sing songs about some fucking robots”.
REO Speedwagon was actually Journey before Journey became Journey. The lead singer had that psychotic “I have seen the light” look in his eyes.
Toto was also Journey even while Journey was Journey. Mostly forgettable.
I always think of Journey, Foreigner, Boston, and Kansas (and wasn’t there another city/state named band?) in this same way. They might even be in the same category as the OP but: what the hell are they?
Arena Rock. That’s what it’s called, arena rock. So called because the music’s best played in a huge, 70’s style arena, so you’re too far away to notice how ugly the band members are. Funny, I thought everyone called it that.
“Corporate Rock” is a disparaging term. Although in Vh1’s Behind the Music, Tommy Shaw of Styx said that while he bristled at the term “corporate rock”, he had to admit that the band was run like a corporation – meetings for this, meetings for that, giving cocaine to D.J.'s so they’d play their singles, etc.
Other arena rock bands: Boston, Foreigner, Supertramp, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Black Oak Arkansas, Foghat, Grand Funk Railroad, Nazareth, Triumph, UFO.
Yet, you wouldn’t know it by the crap which gets played on most radio stations catering to fans of these bands. No, seriously, I like some of these bands, but it kills me to hear the same fargin’ songs by them played over and over on the “classic rock” radio station, meanwhile, they happily play commercials advertising the band’s upcoming concert supporting their latest album, which the radio station can’t be bothered to play. :mad:
“Arena Rock” fits, as KGS noted above. Another term that might be used is from the days when the format now known as “classic rock” was cutting its teeth, and called the playlist “AOR”, or Album Oriented Rock.
I think “Art Rock” is the best descriptor. Styx and ELO definitely fall into that category, as do Yes, ELP, Kansas, and a number of others.
I think Toto and REO Speedwagon are not quite pretentious enough, and are closer to “Pop Rock”. Journey, Foreigner, et. al. are too commercial for “Art Rock”, and today simply fall under the generic “Classic Rock” descriptor (as do all of the other bands I’v mentioned).
On a side note, I have coined the term “Adult Rock” for bands like Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan. I have since noticed that the music industry was already using that term do describe a not-quite-entirely-dissimilar type of music, but I don’t care.
The only thing I have to add here is this: I noticed, just from reading this thread, that each of the bands mentioned here have maybe one song that stands the test of time. Everything else sounds horrible in retrospect.
I think this is what sets these bands apart from those classic rock musicians whose music does stand up to age, i.e. Led Zepplin for example. I firmly believe that there is a Led Zepplin song for any occasion and you could sit down and listen to any Zepplin album right this minute and still find relevance in there somewhere.
Journey? Um. No. Not relevant at all anymore.
As for REO Speedwagon… I like “Ridin’ The Storm Out.” I listen to it every time a hurricane is coming my way!
Back in the day, those bands were called Arena Rock, AOR Rock or Corporate Rock in my high school (I know, hard to believe that high school kids read enough Rolling Stone to know about “AOR”). For those of us on the fringe - who were mainstream enough to like the harder songs from these bands, but hated the wimpy stuff - we lumped them all together and called them:
StyxJourneyREO and everybody knew we referred to the whole group.
“I mean, I like some StyxJourneyREO songs, but the ballads just suck, man!”
I’ve heard them put into the category of MOR, which probably fits better as several of the OP’s bands had multiple hit singles. AOR is stuff like Led Zeppelin and early Genesis.
The term I’ve always used has been “Schlock Rock”, implying a certain blah-ness and sacharinne-ness. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I think all of these guys are bad; while I’ll admit Journey has a certain “schlockiness” to them, Steve Perry had a voice that took them to a level above all the rest. And I also like Boston just because they were good enough to produce tight well-produced pop-songs, even if they really didn’t have anything remarkable about them.
Funny, I thought everyone called it that.