Why is Pearl Jam more Classic Rock than Maiden?

July 6, 2008 8:41 PM

[Curiosity Filter] When did Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Soundgarden become Classic Rock?

I was listening to the local classic rock radio station and they started to play Even Flow. Then I remembered that I'd heard Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden played there too, as well as Metallica used on some of the stations promos.

Since I've been essentially radio free for the 3 years I've been to college so far, maybe there's something that I missed. But when did these bands become classic rock?

Are the stations trying to get more people around my age to listen? Is it because they're trying to expand the playlist (which pretty much means they have to get newer)? Were listeners requesting these bands so much that the stations decided to just start playing them?

And maybe most importantly, why am I hearing these bands but still no Iron Maiden outside of Run To the Hills occasionally and whatever is played on The House of Hair?

posted by theichibun to media & arts (29 comments total)

I don't know when, but they are part of a perfectly linear continuum of don't-rock-so-hard-as-to-be-offputting-to-advertisers white dude rockers that starts somewhere around the Stones, touches briefly down on Lynyrd Skynyrd, and apparently continues on into an indefinite, rockin' future. So to me they work perfectly for a "classic rock" radio station.
posted by serazin at 8:54 PM on July 6, 2008 [3 favorites]

This is completely anecdotal, but I distinctly remember flipping around my car radio in late 2001 and hearing the local (Tulsa, OK at the time) "alternative" rock station play Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage". The DJ introduced it as a "Flannel Flashback". I briefly considering driving headfirst into a telephone pole, but thought better of it.

Anyhow, that's roughly the time I realized that the music of my late-middle school and early-high school self was getting oldish.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:55 PM on July 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Previously: What is the date range of classic rock?
posted by ludwig_van at 8:58 PM on July 6, 2008

For me it was around 2005 when Howard Stern left K-ROCK. They didn't switch formats really, they just stopped getting new music.
posted by meta_eli at 8:58 PM on July 6, 2008

The wikipedia article on classic rock makes for interesting reading on this subject. From the article;

"Some classic rock playlists also include some of the hard-rock and heavy metal bands of the 1980s such as Guns N' Roses, Metallica and Van Halen as classic rock; again, particular songs or musical eras from these acts may be more conducive to the format than others, and nearly every station fine-tunes its playlist by adding or deleting songs and artists to differentiate itself from competing stations. Similarly, more modern material in the same style is seldom included unless it is by a recognized classic rock artist; such music often gravitates to top 40 or adult album alternative stations.

Furthermore, some radio stations have began to implement certain "alternative" acts of the late 1980s and 1990s, including bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2 and R.E.M."
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:01 PM on July 6, 2008

You know you're getting old when you hear the music of your youth playing in elevators.
posted by Class Goat at 9:03 PM on July 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'd say it probably concedes with the rise of the internet--young people have a greater influence on language. "Classic Rock" is a also very vague definition for music invented by radio DJs, who naturally want to widen their variety of music in order to snag more listeners.

I first heard Nirvana referred to as classic rock a few years ago, from some kid around my age my dad naturally assumed I wanted to hang out with. What with one of his songs being used in advertising, poor Kurt is probably shooting himself in his grave.
posted by Citizen Premier at 9:30 PM on July 6, 2008

You know you're getting old when you use the word "implement" in reference to Soundgarden.
posted by staggernation at 9:35 PM on July 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Some of those songs are almost twenty years old. If you fudge the math and round down to fifteen, well, would a 1976 song have been considered a classic when Pearl Jam broke big? Yup.

(I don't think I've ever heard a rock station, even those that claim to be "heavy" that had Maiden in its regular rotation. Which is a crime.)
posted by Cyrano at 9:47 PM on July 6, 2008

This might sound goobery, but I think its all part of the quickening of culture. Trends come and go much faster now. Soundgarden might as well be Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Where I live, the oldies station that used to play mostly bubblegum 50s and 60s music morphed into playing mostly 60s-70s-80s music of a certain tempo and feel...and the classic rock station expanded its repertoire to include Soundgarden et al although the focus seems to be still on 60s-70s rock music.

At any rate, I think classic rock= anything you might imagine 30-50ish people listening to while they cook out on the 4th of July and talk about how music today sucks.
posted by ian1977 at 9:48 PM on July 6, 2008

It got classic when we got old.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 9:57 PM on July 6, 2008 [7 favorites]

they are part of a perfectly linear continuum of don't-rock-so-hard-as-to-be-offputting-to-advertisers

"And that was back-to-back Soundgarden, takin' you all the way back there, with 'Jesus Christ Pose' and 'Limo Wreck'. Now here's a word from this hour's sponsor, Johnson & Johnson."
posted by Mikey-San at 9:59 PM on July 6, 2008

Some of those songs are almost twenty years old.

Badmotorfinger turns twenty when I turn thirty. Man, it's really not looking good for me and this whole "I can stay hip forever" thing.
posted by Mikey-San at 10:11 PM on July 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

The generation of the day is the teenager. Once that teenager turns 25 the music of their youth becomes classic.

I remember chastising an out of touch older friend once about how I'd never get too old that I wouldn't have heard of any of the bands in the top ten of the Billboard chart. That day keeps getting closer and closer. This week Coldplay is the only thing standing between me and fully entering middle age. I can honestly say I have never heard of 9 of the top 10 bands on this week's Billboard chart...and it will happen to you too!
posted by any major dude at 10:14 PM on July 6, 2008

IMHO, once they start to suck. The good stuff becomes their classic material that gets replayed on the classic rock stations.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 10:17 PM on July 6, 2008

I admit, it was disturbing hearing the music of my youth for the first time in a long time in every. single. Las. Vegas. casino. on my last trip there. And I think that's what it is... when a song becomes friendly to advertisers and fodder for drunken latetwentyandthirtysomethings, that's when it's classic rock.

In other news, objective research proves that popular music reached its peak of creativity and emotional resonance when you were 13 years old.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:45 PM on July 6, 2008

Yesterday, dining on sole stuffed with crab in bearnaise sauce, Led Zeppelin was playing on the sound system. Anybody over 25 considered Zep loud and aggressive--much like the way death metal is viewed today.

Back in the day, when Led Zep was peaking in the seventies, it would have been the height of crudeness to play Zep in a restaurant--or any public venue. The music was restricted to headbangers playing songs through the speakers in their pin-striped, shag-carpeted vans.

A fine restaurant played muzak, or perhaps classical hits from Bach or Mozart. These days, you never hear classical anywhere, it seems.
posted by Gordion Knott at 2:51 AM on July 7, 2008

At no time in my pre-adolescent or adult life could I have named more than one or two bands in the Top 10 any given week, and I'm really OK with that. I doubt the Pizzicato 5 or Geggy Tah ever cracked the top 10, never mind Lords of Acid or the Asylum Street Spankers or the Flowbots or Blackalicious. And here's the kicker, I'm not that far away from the mainstream... my Brother's deep, deep into prog metal. I doubt he could tell you the difference between Amy Winehouse and Amy Mann, and he thinks Jay-Z is some sort of topical cream, despite being very much into new musical genres and acts... as pertains to prog metal.

Using familiarity with the bands on the Billboard Top 10 as a measure of hipster cred is up there with counting the number of famous-designer T-shirts you own.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:08 AM on July 7, 2008 [2 favorites]

At least around here, the market's been segmented a bit: compare "oldies" (easy rock/bubblegum back to the early 60s, just dipping their toes in the 80s now), versus "classic rock" (Pearl Jam now okay, still playing Clapton, some overlap with "oldies"), versus "hard rock/metal" (Iron Maiden okay, Foo Fighters okay, some overlap with "classic rock"). Each with their own station.

My impression: early 90s "grunge" found it's way onto classic rock stations a little faster than previous waves did. By 97/98 or so, a lot of those bands had burnt out or transmogrified into something else. By 2001 or so, there were turning up on classic rock. The process seems faster than it did for bands with a late-new-wave origin (U2, R.E.M., for example).

My also-impression: the "our generation was so special" vibe was particularly strong among the late-60s and 70s set, and they were also particularly opposed to encroachment from the many replacement waves of music that followed, disco, punk, new wave, and so on. There was a lot of Clapton played out before the next generation after that was allowed in. Even then, only a few select artists were allowed onto the playlist (Bon Jovi, for example) who weren't associated with suspect genres. Call it another mark of boomer dominance--it's not about the music, it's about scent-marking and territoriality.

On the other hand, those generations actually were pretty different from what came before them (1972 versus 1962, for example). Nowadays, there's less need to segregate that way, and people have the option to be looser in organizing playlists by style without quite so much regard to what year the music was released.

Having been through a phase this year of listening to oldies radio in the car, I'm amused that top-40 disco of the late 70s is now being played. Thelma Houston, Maxine Nightingale, the dreaded Bee Gees. It seems a very, very, very long time since any of that's been on the airwaves.

One day about ten years ago I heard Elvis Costello's "Alison" playing on the Muzak in the men's department at Mervyn's, among the old men browsing for socks. It's been all downhill from there.
posted by gimonca at 5:37 AM on July 7, 2008

Very obvious radio isn't doing so well now as it had been in the past; nobody ever bothered buying new records, so people our age get to hear the same 15 goddamn songs over, and over, and over (assuming, that they still listen to radio, or go out to eat or shopping etc.)
posted by shownomercy at 6:50 AM on July 7, 2008

In answer to the Maiden vs Pearl Jam aspect of your question, Maiden are a harder, faster rock and don't sit well amongst the AOR rock format of the classic rock stations. Same reason you won't hear Motorhead on there really. It's a different style of music. Classic Rock as meant by these stations describes a certain mid-paced, somewhat tuneful, more easy listening sub-genre of rock, and those faster, harder bands don't fit into that sub genre.
posted by merocet at 6:51 AM on July 7, 2008

And maybe most importantly, why am I hearing these bands but still no Iron Maiden outside of Run To the Hills occasionally and whatever is played on The House of Hair?

People turn on classic rock stations to hear old music that they already know. Why is Maiden not on lots of classic rock playlists? I think it has to do with how many "hits" a band has, and by hits I mean "songs that a casual listener can sing along to". No matter how much you like Maiden, people just can't name alot of songs by them. People can sing along to alot more of the songs by the bands you listed (even mullet-era Metallica) than they can sing along to songs by Iron Maiden.
posted by 23skidoo at 7:03 AM on July 7, 2008

Reminds me of the George Carlin jingle from his fictional radio station:
"Solid gold! To make you feel o-old!"
posted by tinkertown at 7:10 AM on July 7, 2008

"I remember chastising an out of touch older friend once about how I'd never get too old that I wouldn't have heard of any of the bands in the top ten of the Billboard chart. That day keeps getting closer and closer." - any major dude

I would argue that the jury is still out whether your comment says more about "people getting old" or "new music sucks". (IE = just because something is popular doesnt mean its good and vice-versa)

As others have noted.. musical genres are much more broad and fractured these days, and trends come and go faster. There are quite a few newer artists who I would argue defy categorization. Long ago I gave up trying to fit myself into any particular musical genre and just decided to "like what I like". (the only time this is difficult is tagging genres in iTunes :P
posted by jmnugent at 9:47 AM on July 7, 2008

kdickson: And Justice For All will be 20 in 2 months. Metallica is Classic Rock because the people who were into it when they started up are in their 40s and 50s. Cliff Burton's been dead for nearly 22 years, and the band essentially died with Cliff.

Simply put, you should not feel old for liking a band that made all of its best music before you were out of diapers.
posted by explosion at 11:19 AM on July 7, 2008

My take is they play anything that was or is popular.
posted by xammerboy at 11:34 AM on July 7, 2008

And maybe most importantly, why am I hearing these bands but still no Iron Maiden outside of Run To the Hills occasionally and whatever is played on The House of Hair?

Because Iron Maiden is, even after all these years, still too full of Hellish dark power (from Hell). If it were played regularly, the world would descend into chaos with animated corpses engaging in time travel, involving themselves in aerial dogfights, and having themselves declared sun-god like pharaohs. Most neophytes can't hear "Die With Your Boots On" nowadays without falling into a paralyzing coma of fear.

More specifically, they didn't get a lot of radio play even when they were at their very best, which means that they are somewhat relegated to cult status from the fans that they were able to draw in during their heyday.
posted by quin at 1:47 PM on July 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

Somewhat tangentally: I saw Iron Maiden a couple of months ago and they still *totally rawked!!!*

Seriously. This was not a band mailing it in for a novelty act paycheck. If you ever liked them don't pass up a chance to catch them live.
posted by Cyrano at 9:55 PM on July 7, 2008

Because radio doesn't know what it's doing. Here in Chicago, the oldies station is playing "classic rock" (WLS-FM), the classic rock station is all over the place (WDRV), and the rock station (the Loop) keeps playing Zeppelin. Instead of sticking to their format, which is the reason people tune in, they erode the brand thinking that will increase listenership.
posted by gjc at 6:52 AM on July 8, 2008