A totally different genre!

-- Mal

I'm old. :/

I've caught them playing Kid Rock. Kid fucking Rock. And not just any Kid Rock song, but that really horrible one where he shits all over both Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and Lynyrd Skynrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" all at the same time. Which I believe is less than 10 years old.

I guess the thought process was that it somehow played homage to two actual classic rock songs, so it fit the genre. But I just can't see why they just don't play those songs which are infinitely better than the shitty Kid Rock song?

I've also heard plenty of U2, REM, Nirvana and Pearl Jam on the station. Which is fine. I've accepted that the rock music of my youth is now considered old and can fit into the classic rock genre. What drives me crazy, however, is that I think I've heard Smashing Pumpkins a grand total of once on that station. If 90s rock is now classic rock, how could you just dismiss the Pumpkins like that? Meanwhile, they'll play far lesser bands from that era like Bush multiple times.

Sampling can be done creatively, but just putting a classic riff on repeat and plopping your crappy song on top has never been cool.

Plus, if you really want to write a song about how much you love Lynyrd Skynrd, here's how you do it:

Good point about Smashing Pumpkins. I was never a fan, but they certainly huge and influential through the 90s. Maybe it's because Nirvana and Pearl Jam had a straightforward sound that deliberately evoked core mid-70s classic rock, while bands like the Pumpkins and Radiohead had more elaborate arrangements and more complex harmonies. (and of course, U2 and REMs catalog stretches back to the early 80s).

Its intro is literally just the exact same opening as the Zevon song. So you get all excited when you think you are going to hear "Werewolves of London", only for Kid Rock's shitty voice to come on singing about how he liked to listen to Sweet Home Alabama in growing up in Detroit. And your heart just sinks.

Ironically, this morning going to work on that very station, I heard "Sweet Home Alabama" immediately followed by "Werewolves of London", with nary a Kid Rock to be found in between. It's like someone at the station was reading my rant from yesterday.

I understand what you mean about bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead not translating to traditional classic rock radio. Astonishingly, I've heard their songs being played on Adult Contemporary. Granted, it was "1979" and "Fake Plastic Trees" respectively--not exactly the most hard core on their albums--but it was a welcome relief from Celine Dion.

Still, any time I hear early 2000s songs played in Classic Rock stations, I just get shocked.

Even late 90s ones.

to the best of us. Can't remember the precise moment, but when I started to have to tune to classic rock stations when I wanted to hear "my" music, I knew some ship had left the port. So I switched to classical music. That way I didn't have to face the fact that my college music was "old." Bach has been old since before I was born.

with the intention of putting a song into a commercial
Rock&Roll is about sticking it to the man
but every song can eventually be used to sell useless crap
it's depressing

I will love them forever for that; even though I lost interest in their music after Green.

You have a few mainstream acts come up during those years that more or less fall under the rock category that I do enjoy...The Killers, Arcade Fire, and a handful of others. And you've had indie bands always on the periphery.

But rock music as a whole has almost vanished from the mainstream radio scene. The 2000s were just brutal to the industry. First you had the god awful NuMetal. Then came the whiny, unremarkable Emo Rock. None of those subgenres produced any bands remotely close to anything you'd want to consider classic or memorable.

So rock music as a tour de force essentially ended in the late 1990s.

Not so coincidentally, this coincides with the rise of MP3s and the digital download. Those were a death knell to the music album, and rock music--more than any other genre--relied on the idea of the album. Pop music and hip hop has survived because you have so many one hit wonder type of artists out there who can bank on a profitable single. But the rock band going into the studio to record an entire album has become something of an anacrohism.

It's very likely that classic rock as a genre will have a terminating point of the late 1990s.

For me, at my age, the likes of U2 and REM are not classic rock. I cringe when I hear South Central Rain in the grocery store. But someone a lot younger doesn't have the same perspective. The term classic rock is for marketers, and isn't dependent on the music itself.

Commercial rock music/musicians that's been out there for over 20+ years usually falls into that category. Bands like Priest/Maiden/Dio get the Classic Metal tag.