In the wake of the 1,600-guitar performance of “Smoke On The Water” in Kansas City, Deep Purple is touring the U.S. behind its 2005 album Rapture Of The Deep, and apparently the fact that they’re now in the Guinness Book of World Records has caused lead singer Ian Gillan to speak out about the radio landscape in this country, specifically as it pertains to the “classic rock” format:
You have this thing called classic rock radio over here,” says singer Ian Gillan in a recent phone call. “It’s been a death sentence for all sorts of older bands. They don’t play anything of ours other than Smoke on the Water and Highway Star. “
Gillan even addresses the problem with a song on Rapture of the Deep, called MTV. The song was inspired by a real-life incident in Buffalo, N.Y.
“I heard (Purple bassist) Roger Glover doing a radio interview, trying desperately to talk about a record we did in 2003 called Bananas. I was listening to it and my jaw just dropped, as this deejay ranted on about 1973. She wasn’t the slightest bit interested in what he had to say, or anything that had happened in the last 30 years,” he says.
Now, of course part of the problem may be unimaginative titles on the level of “MTV” (seriously, where were all these people when their writing teachers gave the “don’t tie your writings to a time too closely, because things might sound dated” lesson), and another part of the problem may be the scourge of the brain-dead DJ, but I do think that Gillan has a shred of a point; when I was in high school, I read a piece claiming that classic rock may be “the most conservative radio format out there,” and I still think that writer has a point. After all, “classic” implies “canonical,” and you don’t get much more canonical than focusing exclusively on rock that was played before the guys with funny haircuts and patterned jackets started weaseling their way into the rock world. And its super-rigid canon formation is especially apparent now, when relentless playlisting among the format’s stations–and the near-complete decimation of the DJ who wasn’t afraid to play a deep cut or two–do, in a sense, rewrite music history for listeners, particularly the casual fans who flip around the radio while in their car.
In a sense that playlistism almost turning the classic-rock (né album-rock) landscape, which did have its traditional radio trappings but was, at its core, all about enshrining the album and going deeper, into a weirdly singles-driven genre driven by mostly one- or two-hit wonders and a few “tentpole” deep-catalog artists–Led Zeppelin, the Stones, um, Led Zeppelin,–much like the rest of radio. More evidence behind why the medium’s influence as a whole is dropping like a stone and the album market is drying up? Could be. But watch the powers that be at radio stations say that what they really need is more Lovemarks in their “branding strategy.”
Deep Purple will rock Northwest Valley [AZCentral.com, via Antimusic]
Without classic rock radio, we’d have no one making daily afternoon attempts to “get the Led out,” and there would undoubtedly be less celebrations of the most kick-ass month of the year, “Rocktober.”
I have a friend who, for whatever reason, listens almost exclusively to this type of station. And even he is fed up with the repetitive playlists. He wrote the following letter to 93.1 “The Arrow” in L.A.:
Suggestions? Yes, I have several:
1) Stop playing Jethro Tull and Steely Dan. No one likes Jethro Tull or Steely Dan. No one EVER liked Jethro Tull or Steely Dan. There are millions of Americans right now, who are embarrased to admit they ever thought Aqualung was a cool song.
2) Foreigner is not so great that they need to be played every hour. And if they DO get played every hour, it certainly doesn’t need to be “Urgent” every damn time.
3) You guys seem to be under the delusion that most classic rock bands only wrote one or twos ongs, so for future reference, here is a handy tip sheet you can carry with you at all times. Please, refer to it often:
a) Boston wrote many songs besides Peace of Mind, Smokin’, and More than a Feelin’.
b) Queen did not, contrary to popular belief, retire after writing We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions.
c) The Rolling Stones are proud of many songs they wrote besides Shattered and Street Fightin’ Man.
d) Led Zeppelin, wonder of wonders, have many songs besides just Stairway to Heaven in their recorded history.
e) If you’re only going to play Rush once a month, does it always have to be Tom Sawyer?
4. And finally… if you’re going to play bands like Bon Jovi, for godssake committ to it. Play them more than once a week, and PLEASE… play something besides Livin’ on a Prayer every now and again.
In short, stop believing what these computers/marketing nutcases are telling you. I, and many others like me, are rapidly giving up on classic rock radio. But it doesn’t HAVE to be that way!
Is classic rock an unsustainable radio format? Will its core audience start dying off a decade or two from now the way the audience for “music of your life” stations started dying off in the eighties and nineties? I know that The Kids Today still get indoctrinated into classic rock in large numbers, but we’re as far away from Led Zeppelin as Led Zeppelin was to the Andrews Sisters back in the ’70′s, the cultural distance between “us” and Beatles-Stones-Zeppelin is only going to grow with time, at some point it’s all going to seem too old to the majority of music fans. Right? Um, right?
Well said. Deep Purple, of course, aren’t going to get much credit no matter what they do or say at this point. But at this point, it’s nice to see someone saying something. In New York City, we have Q 104.3. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. The same songs every 3 hours. And K-Rock, which just returned, plays the same 20 hits from the 90s all day. This is supposed to be our modern rock station. Radio is sad. but that’s why I started Brooklyn Radio.
[www.brooklynradio.net]
@Audif Jackson Winters III:
I thought Steely Dan’s name has been popping up as a hip musical crush.
Or, in other words, I’m not sure I can recognize Dan-haters as human, sorry.
@Audif Jackson Winters III: Your friend is fifteen kinds of wrong on #1 — Steely Dan are goddamned great. Jethro Tull, not so much, though at least Ian Anderson apparently was cool enough to listen to some Rahsaan Roland Kirk at some point.
Also, while I understand Deep Purple’s gripes, it could always be worse: they could be Blue Oyster Cult, having to deal with Christopher Walken fanboys bellowing “more cowbell” in the middle of “Dominance and Submission”.
I never saw the appeal of Steely Dan. The “but their lyrics are so subversive” argument cannot hold up against the fact that they feature the wuss rock guitar stylings of Jeff Baxter.
Classic rock radio has become something of a catch all format for rock that isn’t popular at this very moment. I remember 5 years or so ago when Q104.3 first played a Pearl jam song. Now this kind of thing is regular — it’s totally common to hear Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc on classic rock stations.
The larger point here is that this attitude of only playing one or two songs from an artist exemplifies the iPod culture we live in. Everyone just wants the hits. It’s what they download. No one downloads albums. And as the “classic rock” market skews younger to encompass bands that are favorites of the mp3 generation, radio is going to become more and more homogenous.
Not that anyone I know listens to radio anymore anyway. Except WSOU.
While not a “Classic Rock” station, the “Modern Rock” station in my area suffers from a similar affliction. Yes, new songs crop up, but the gripes remain the same (e.g. Social D has songs other than “Ball and Chain”, Bad Religion does have albums that were recorded prior to Recipe for Hate, 311 sucks). Sorry, the last one really had nothing to do with the topic, just venting.
Deep Purple got back together? And/or never broke up? Rock.
What is this “radio” you speak of?
Oh, I’m not saying my friend is right or has good taste … but he probably represents the core “classic rock” radio audience better than anyone who probably looks at this site.
I hate Steely Dan, too, for what it’s worth.
Team Steely Dan.
Also, it seems like satellite may be changing this ever-so-slightly,
with their ability to vary the playlists and reach further into
forgotten albums. There’s a pretty respectable crossover between
classic rock listeners and Stern fans, and now that a good chunk of
Stern fans have subscribed, I’m guessing the terrestrial stations are
feeling pinched.
/ uninformed opinion
@Vince Neilstein: As much as I do hate iPods, this is one trend we can’t really blame on them. Big box chain stores have long fed this kind of listening. For any given artist, they’ll only stock the most recent and/or most commercial album and that’s it. It’s as if Bowie only released two albums in his life: Changes and Ziggy Stardust.
I’m going to use this as an opportunity to say that deep cuts and random purchases are more reasons why flipping crates is so awesome.
It would be easy to joke and say that Deep Purple has done nothing worthwhile to hear since Machine Head, but at the Radio City show last week they busted out the title cut to that last album “Rapture of the Deep” and everyone started murmuring trying to figure out what the tune was. It was AWESOME. Its hard out there for a legacy act.
For everyone hating on Steely Dan, check out the Classic Albums episode for “Aja” which has been on VH1 Classic a lot lately. You will probably still hate the music, but you may understand the appeal.
@Bob Loblaw: Yeah, I mean as much as Idolator jokes about the classic rock stations on Sirius, they at least provide some depth that you just won’t find on terrestrial. There’s one that appears to play more or less your standard classic rock radio fare, with a bit more variety because there are no commercials (Classic Vinyl), one that plays stuff from between about ’75 and ’83 (Classic Rewind), and a “deep cuts” classic rock station (The Vault).
@Audif Jackson Winters III: As someone who’s listened to satellite only a handful of times, I appreciate these things you call “facts.”
I have to agree that the average classic-rock listener is not a huge Steely Dan fan, and the only thing that really links that band to Zep, the Stones, Ted Nugent, etc. is the time period the music was made. This is also why it’s a little off-putting every time my local classic rock station plays a Cars tune.
@Audif Jackson Winters III: There’s also Buzzsaw (“Hard and heavy classic rock”). And the boundaries between the channels aren’t hard and fast, i.e., you might well hear a given song on more than one of those channels.
P.S. The Royal Scam FTW
Last time I listened to the radio in Milwaukee, I was unshocked to find that classic rock remained completely ossified, but startled to find out that the “oldies” station next to it on the dial had shifted its year range from c. 1958-1968 to c. 1972-1980.
So the “oldies” format still relies on funeral home commercials, etc., but now they’re playing the Mamas and the Papas up against Led Zeppelin up against the Zombies, and so on.
So I’m laying my $20 down that “classic rock” will eventually spread from 1965-1995 so you can hear Pearl Jam and Jethro Tull back to back.
@dickdogfood:
Didn’t they win a best album Grammy a few years ago? Not that that means anything, except that they’re a counter-example to Deep Purple.
@nonce: New York got its oldies station back, 101 WCBS FM. Recently I drove out with some friends to a wedding on Long Island so we flipped it on, and most of what they played was 80s New Wave as part of regular programming. Not a doo-wop or R&B song in sight. It was terrifying.