Amph What is "classic rock"?

I've noticed over the past couple of months that my local classic rock radio station has started playing Smells Like Teen Spirit fairly regularly. It's the signature song of a decade two decades gone, so of course it's a "classic" "rock" song, but is it a "classic rock" song? I highly doubt said station is going to be playing, say, Nickelback alongside Led Zeppelin as well in 2026, so what's the distinction that makes the difference?

(I'm not complaining; I happen to like Smells like Teen Spirit. I just found it interesting, because there's no way in hell the station would have been playing it, say, ten years ago)

 

Terrible.

 

Zing.

 

No.

 

Um when I was in my early teens, SLTS came out. And "classic" rock was 70s rock music. You know, from 20 years prior...

 

I'd say classic rock as a pseudo-genre is limited to ~1963 to 1979 at the latest, though it doesn't necessarily include all rock produced within that period.

Look at me, giving a serious answer like an idiot.

 

Right. What I'm saying is, if I'm on vacation in a city and I ask someone what the local "classic rock" station is, they know I'm not asking for the "station that plays songs that were popular 20 years ago station;" I'm asking for the "station that plays Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Pink Floyd etc." as its main rotation. But at the same time, something like Nirvana obviously sorta makes the cut now over other popular music contemporary with it. So is "classic rock" actually just a certain "kind" of music? If so, what is it, in musical terms?

 

Who even listens to terrestrial radio anymore? This could all have been avoided with Spotify.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

No. It literally just means rock from a certain time period whether it's 20 years ago, 30 years ago, etc. It's not a genre or, as Guy said, a pseudo-genre at best.

 

For radio stations: Yes. It is mid 60s to late 70s guitar-based rock with the traditional guitar/bass/drums/vocal setup. Sax or some other instrument can be thrown in as a bonus.

My local classic rock station does play 80s songs though(AC/DC on constant rotation). Nirvana's Teen Spirit and Lithium too.

 

That genre name used to mean something because there was this trajectory from the 60's to the time when punk, new wave, etc. came on the scene and changed everything. As this ever expanding category it's stupid. Nirvana is not Classic Rock.

 

Guns N' Roses has generally been considered the last popular "classic rock" band, in my experience.

 

Now that's classic rock.

 

Well, categorizing "classic rock" as a style is difficult. In fact, it's not really one when talking about a music genre. With radio stations it's more of a band format and the instruments. For instance, I never hear Motown classics on my classic rock station. I might hear a Prince song or two like 1999 or When Doves Cry. But it is mostly the makeup of a band. They don't really play dance music or disco. They play rock band formatted music(trio/quartet,quintet,etc).

For many people it became a format because those people grew up and wanted to hear the songs they grew up with, which were largely 60s and 70s rock songs. So that's how Classic Rock stations came up with the label. By the time they had labeled it, Punk/New Wave had come on and it was something new. Everything that went before those styles somehow seemed cut off from the new stuff and so people labeled the older stuff they were familiar with "classic" rock and put them into rotation at their stations.

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s no one called their rock stations "classic". They were just rock stations. There were some that played hard rock. Some played MOR or AOR, and some, metal. "Classic Rock" as a radio format came when the baby boomers, who grew up with rock, started their own nostalgic look back at their own music.

 

That's why I find the gradual inclusion of Nirvana interesting. Either it's a closed canon of an "era," and you can't add anything to it, or it's a "type" of music, and, if that's the case, why not play new Wolfmother and Silvertide singles right when they come out?

 

It's not really a sound or style. If you listen to my classic rock station you will hear AC/DC, Foghat,ELO, Floyd,and The Eagles. Now how is that a style? It's not. It's more of a look back to a specific time. Now you might find some inclusion in small bits of 80s pop rock bands like U2 and 80s/90s hard rock like GnR and Nirvana(I also hear an occasional Pearl Jam and Soundgarden song). But, it's still largely 60's and 70s focused. I suspect it will remain so as long as the radio format is around and pushed by baby boomers. Kids today love to choose and radio playlists(rotations) are way too confining for most(me included).

 

A worthy starting point answer the question is to look at the difference between "Rock" and "Rock and roll".

From memory, by "roll", Keith seems to refer to the "swing" type quality that is within "rock and roll". It would certainly be consistent with his criticism of Led Zeppelin when he described their sound as heavy handed. I'm guessing he would describe Led Zeppelin as a band that simply "rocks", but it never rolls despite a very well known hit by the band which adopts the same of the said genre.

So, is "rock" therefore to "rock and roll" what "alternative rock" was to "rock in the early to mid-1990s?

 

An AV Club piece I read blames the Telecommunications Act of 1996 for the monotony of radio playlists today. I don't know how accurate that assertion is.

I remember getting a satellite radio trial with my car. The classic rock station (which had an upper limit of 1975 or something, which was nice) had a bunch of famous DJs and all they did was talk. They didn't seem to have any choice at all in what played.

 

DebonaireNerd
Well Zep could boogie but they did many other things too. That wasn't really their trademark. They were versatile. I kind of look at the Stones as more of a purist band in that regard. Zep had already worked out their covers and blues standards in earlier bands like The Yardbirds and in sessioning with numerous other artists years prior to meeting up as the last touring incarnation of The Yardbirds.

Darth Guy, I'm trying to think back to the 80s. I'm not sure stations rotations became more monotonous or restricted post telecomm act or not. They might have become more consolidated but I'm not sure if that changed the playlists or not.
I do remember things were really walled off in terms of genre in the 80s. There was the hard rock station and the metal station, top 40 pop station, college new wave, etc. The college ones seemed to have a bit more leeway on the playlists because they were more independent. The bigger stations seemed to play the same rotation of songs

 

Well, there's two version of the Stones: Mick's version and Keith's version. The latter, I would agree, is the purist version. If Mick Jagger weren't in the band, I would say that the most adventurous thing the group would ever do would be something like "Paint it Black" or "Sister Morphine".

Mick's Stones, alternatively, is probably closer to be a rock group because after the 1960s they would move beyond being the Muddy Waters influenced band to embracing disco, soul, r'n'b, hard rock, and stadium rock. That's the version which exists now.

I agree that the Stones are purists, at least in the sense that they have not forgotten their roots. But, with Mick in the band, there's also a desire to sound "fresh" which is where some of the more modern elements of the sound comes in. Case in point:



This is their "latest" "hit". Artistically, it's pretty much Mick and Keith meeting each other half way.

 

The thing I like about Zep is that everyone contributed in a large way to the band. Even though today I sometimes get the feeling that Page and Plant have tried to marginalize JPJ, his influence on the sound of the band, and his production on the last few albums, can't be denied. Stones always seemed like a Jagger/Richards vehicle like so many other rock bands.

But yes, the Stones rolled in ways Zeppelin never did. I guess I was suggesting that,at their outset, the Stones were more purist in ways that Zeppelin never were. By the time Zeppelin formed, they were already entering a very experimental phase. Stones started out as a cover band essentially. That's what I meant by more purists than Zep. They started in an earlier era when blues covers was still what you did. Zep never really had that. Too late for them. So it's not altogether surprising that they might not have the boogie or "roll" like the Stones.

Is Darryl Jones still Stones' bassist?

 

Ugh.

Take a genre: rock music.

Add a descriptive qualifier:

- Classic (chronology)
- Progressive (sub genre)

etc

 

But if "Photograph" and "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" are the same genre in 20 years, then genre has no meaning.

 

I met someone who thought the lyrics to "Good Golly Miss Molly" read "she sure likes to ball" which is a surprisingly functional update/modernization of the song.

 

Please, genres are like cells, replicating and dividing. Right now I'm listening to "blackgaze", which is an amalgamation of:

Black metal; a subgenre of extreme heavy metal; a subgenre of heavy metal, a genre of rock.
Post rock; a subgenre of alternative rock, a genre of rock.
Shoegaze, a subgenre of punk rock, a genre of rock.