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What constitutes classic rock?


Batman

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My complaint is that there's a wealth of really exceptional music in the rock genre that only comes out on New Years Day when the local classic rock station puts out the top 500 songs of the era. The other 364 the playlist is standard and repetitive. I don't find Boston's "More Than a Feeling" especially memorable and I'd rather not hear "Stairway" segue into "Free Bird" every hour ad nauseam.

Let's try to forget the rock legend Phil Collins....

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so if it's not classic rock (or classic rock-sounding), it's only done for the money and the bands are posers? you are really biased!

The majority of today's music, yes. There is no creativity now.

Look at Billboard's top ten for today. There will be at least 5 rap songs, some of those simple 'oohhh baby lets do the horizontal twist' slow ...ahem..r&b songs. I looked last week, and one of those American Idol manufactured for TV people was in the TOP FIVE!!!!

Come on, Rach, what's out there today is watered down cut and paste cookie cutter crap, all aimed at turning a buck,

We're not biased. We just like music, and that ain't it.

BTW, I just went and looked at today's top ten on the Billboard charts.

Other than Green Day, you know how many of the...ahem... artists ....play an instrument? Zero. None. Nada Zip. T

Nine spots in the top ten are singers. Not so much as a harmonica between them.

Please.

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What, you ask, constitutes classic rock?

Thrown like a star in my vast sleep

I open my eyes to take a peep

To find that I was by the sea

Gazing with tranquility

Was then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Came singing songs of love.

Histories of ages past

Unenlightened shadows cast

Down through all eternity

The crying of humanity

It's then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Comes singing songs of love

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The majority of today's music, yes. There is no creativity now.

Look at Billboard's top ten for today.

First of all, I looked at the billboard chart, it was terrible. 2 in the rock genre, 3 in the "rock" genre.

And about the no creativity, I agree. What's popular today is not creative. I don't think todays radio-people (as I call them) can count as musicians, or even recording artists, if they don't play their own instruments. Even if what they are playing is a computer, at least make your own computer-music! These stars get famous these days singing songs someone else completely made for them.

Keep in mind though, that I don't mean all new radio-people. There are some good bands out right now, and I'm not referring to them.

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I used to comment on a rock board over at Yahoo. this same question came up and I defined classic rock very specifically...my opinion anyway...I said it was from 1964-1973 with a spill over two years in either direction and it had to be guitar based. I knew I would get creamed for that, and I did.

How can you be so narrow-minded? How can you ignore the 50's? What about Elton John//he's piano based?

Well, I can be narrow mined because it's only my opinion, everybody else can use their opinion. I don't ignore the 50's, I consider that the lauching pad into the classic rock era. I was "Born Late 58" as the Mott song goes. My frame of reference started in 1964 listening to what my older sister was listening too (Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Beatles, Herman's Hermit's, Dave Clark 5) that's where my musical life started...that's why it's classic to me. Most people think the music of their youth is classic and the music of their parents youth is oldies...most people.

Finally, Elton's music is guitar based, he happens to add lot's of piano, but the guitar work is pretty darn good.

So I'll stick with my narrow-minded definition and keep on enjoying my classics.

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sorry, i should have quoted the post i was referring to

There are a lot of newer bands that can fall under the umbrella of "classic rock"....Guns 'N' Roses, REM, Pearl Jam, Matchbox 20, Foo Fighters...I'll go as far as to say Nirvana and Green Day.

But the majority of the bands nowadays only care about making money and being on MTV. Every song they write sounds exactly the same as their other songs and the other bands' songs. Some will try to mix in a few classic rock tunes amid their rapping and their "hardcore" (). For instance: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kid Rock, Third Eye Blind, Live. I like some of these band's stuff, but you can't really classify them as "classic rock". These guys are out to corner the market on brooding male teenagers who think they're able to take on the world by themselves. And the bands attempt this by brooding, themselves, just to appeal to the masses. Or, as the kids these days, call it....POSING!

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Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. When they pretend to be something that they are not, they are posers....period. Those bands I named, I actually do like, but they are posers. It's not the music that's fake; it's the attitude. It's designed to make them look tough, when I'm sure most 16-year-old girls can b*tchslap Kid Rock or Flea or Eminem, and all three would go crying home to their mothers. And anyone who changes their name to something stupid like Flea, or Fifty Cent, or Eminem, etc, is doing it only to try to impress young, impressionable minds.....POSING!!

:afro: :afro: :afro: :rockon: :rockon: :jester:

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i totally agree with you, in fact i can go even further because RHCP pissed me off with "californication" cos suddenly everyone liked them so much but if you played them something older, no one know what it was.

maybe i just misunderstood what you said. your post gave me the impression that if it's not classic rock (however you want to define it) or any of the bands you mentioned, then the music is made for the money. whereas i think there are lots of bands that do not sound anything like classic rock and i don't believe they make the music for the money, in fact most of them are never even shown on mtv.

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I'm sorry but I don't think 'classic rock' has a period. You trying to tell me that Chuck Berry, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis etc aren't classic artists? There is modern rock and classic rock, modern is today, classic is all the best music from all of rock history, which is the latter half of the 20th century.

Guns 'N' Roses had a significant impact on rock history 15 years ago and some of their stuff is classic rock, in 2040 do you think people won't label it as this? It is ever changing. By the way 'oldies'?!?!?!? I thought this was a Britney-free environment, you sound like 12 year olds people!!

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An interesting question, what constitutes classic rock? Music is actually a continuum, not a series of unconnected events. 'Rock' as I understand it was conceived in the late forties, when bluesmen came up from the Mississippi delta to industrial towns like Chicago and started playing electric guitars and adding drums to what was basically a genre of acoustic 'folk' music before. Rock was actually born in the 50s, with artists like Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and, yes, even Elvis Presley, who added a bit of white country music to what was called 'rhythm'n'blues' or 'race music' at the time. It matured during the 60s, when the so called British Invasion, led by the Beatles, added a touch of European finesse to the hitherto exclusively American mix. And it died at the end of the 70s, when punk rock became a commercial enterprise for record company executives, as far as I'm concerned. After that it's all been rehashing old themes and attitudes.

At the moment about the only modern music I'm listening to is African music, which has so far managed to remain very vibrant and alive, in spite of the Western influences that are starting to creep in.

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  • 1 month later...

So you guys are saying, that if anything Pre-1980 is Classic Rock and anything after it isn't? Then Eric Clapton's repertoire from 1979 is classic rock, while a song he wrote in 1980 isn't?

I think of Classic Rock as any music written by an ARTIST AROUND BEFORE 1980. That way it still retains your definition for the most part, but it is somewhat broader. Maybe this explains DJ's reasoning for playing modern Plant songs on Classic Rock radio.

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