Rock n' Roll Rant...

I've hinted at it, and I think I'm going to come right out and say it.
I don't care for the classic rock format.
Oh, I'll listen to it from time to time, but I really just don't care for it. I think the problem is that the commercial stations that play it seem to be catering to an image that didn't really exist. In the 1970's, as a teenager, I was introduced to some college stations, notably WQUE out of Gainesville. The selection they played was unbelievable; you'd hear The Beatles followed by the Boomtown Rats with a helping of Al Stewart. You'd here some funk occasionally, maybe some Jimmy Cliff or other island singers.

Here in Jacksonville, though, FM radio was dominated by WIVY, Y103. When I received my first FM radio (late summer 1978), it was a poorly built SETICO radio from Pic-n-Save. There was a little bit of looseness where tuning was concerned, and because of the strength of Y103's transmitter, all of the frequencies from 101 to 104 were washed out. This was the height of the disco era, and while I liked some of it (Heatwave, some Bee Gees), most of it was mind-numbing. WQUE, on the other hand, was barely there at the best of times, and if the weather turned it was simply gone.

One day, during the summer of 1980, it... vanished. Fortunately, disco was waning and Y103 began to play New Wave as well. It was different, new... I liked a lot of it. Before long, though, a new station emerged and it was simply a rock station, simply Rock 105. It played... rock. Rock rock. Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones (they had a new album, and it was in serious rotation), AC/DC, KISS, every southern rock band... Rock 105 was rock. A little bit of new wave, but mostly rock.

This was perfect for a testosterone laden 17 year old, and I really liked it. They played a real variety, though again most of it was aimed at 17 year olds like myself.

By the end of the summer of 1981, I started hearing more college music, and early in 1982 was introduced to MTV. At that time, they played really good music and some of the most unusual acts I had ever seen. Rock 105 seemed suddenly irrelevant, but they too caught on and started playing pretty much the same mix with their standard fare.

Jump forward 25 years, and now radio has fractured into many different genres. What I used to consider rock doesn't quite exist. When the first classic rock stations began to appear (the first one I listened to was in south Florida), I noticed a tremendous lack of diversity in their playlist. Some bands simply weren't being played. I also noticed regional differences. I hardly heard southern rock in south Florida and New England, but it gets plenty of airplay in Jacksonville (pretty much the de facto home of that genre). Some bands get only scant airplay when they used to be heard a lot. Other bands get entirely too much airplay.

I decided to dig into this; why is that Yes or Todd Rundgren and Utopia get hardly if any airplay? Oh? They're not classic rock? Uh, didn't know that. But they used to get... oh, they're progressive rock. Okay, right. Got it now. How about the Talking Heads? Oh, they're new wave... or maybe progressive. But they aren't classic rock. Hmmm. But didn't you play them... oh, you had a different format then. What was it? Oh, right... rock.

Like middle-aged businessmen buying overpriced Harleys, the classic rock station is catering to an image of a memory that is simply not the truth. It tends to cater to middle-aged men who can sit around and say "oh, yeah, I remember when they played Van Halen all the time! Right on!", when in reality the old rock stations played a lot more and the typical middle-aged man was into pop and disco just like the vast majority of Americans when he was young. These stations are just illusions, playing from computerized playlist songs from a synthesized reality.

Perhaps it's fitting that most of these stations are pretty much automated, lacking any real human presence or soul. There's more to music then just "Stairway to Heaven" again and again and again...