If you can't understand the point I'm making, I guess too bad for you. I am not discouraging listening to classic rock. All I'm suggesting is there are a large portion of people who only listen to classic rock, and it would be great if they could open their minds to some new music, with classic rock roots in it, like The White Stripes

What rock stars aren't full of shit as human beings and artists?

Well that's really only a part of the "star" equation. Take that out of your musicians and you'll find most of them to be relatively normal.

I'm just having some fun with you, nothing personal. I just like to see clearly articulated posts, that's all.

I understood what you meant, I only found the point to be a bit limiting. People of all ages should be listening to more music, and well beyond "rock" music and most certainly beyond trendy, retro-styled pseudo-stars like the White Stripes. (( All that said, I still think they're absolutely incredible next to a lot of the junk that gets promoted these days. ))

I have one very close friend that is stuck with a very small CD collection - well it's big by anyone outside of Radiomute's standards, but in reality it's just a bunch of the same thing. There is most of the major classic rock, and also some grunge-era stuff, which came out in his mid-late teens.

He is a musician, and does possess a good working knowledge of rock music. However, he applies values that are identical to those applied back when classic rock was, well, something other than "classic." These same values are what lead people to dislike so much new music. It doesn't "sound like" that other stuff, and so it gets tuned out immediately. Any new band he gets into he justifies by using all of the same old measuring sticks of yore. This is how he ended up getting Phish and Widespread Panic CD's, and partially why Radiohead and Green Day are the only new bands he likes. He justifies Radiohead because they remind him of Pink Floyd, and Green Day because they are a tight band with a decent drummer (I'll give him that). The music that he largely ignores includes some of the more accessible groups like Mr Bungle and Stereolab. Bjork? Melt Banana? Forget it. These bands don't remind him of ANY of those great old bands like theAllman Brothers or Led Zeppelin. And I won't even bring Uz Jsme Doma or the Ruins to his house...

Country music, or more specifically the southern-fried bubble gum that gets called country music, had something of a renaissance in the early 90's, when people woke up one day and realized they weren't playing John Camp Cougarmelon on the radio anymore. Rather than actually look around and see what's out there, they settled on the closest thing they could find to that style of rock music. People stuck in classic rock mode often look for "sounds like" bands, and, not finding any, throw in Houses Of The Holy for the 75 millionth time.

Now the White Stripes are certainly along the "rock 'n' roll" lines that might appeal to a classic rock listener, but more importantly it may get them to realize that good, even great music is being made now. Ideally they'd become more open to the newer styles and new thought processes in time. Just so long as they don't say "I only like classic rock...AND the White Stripes."

On a related note, I've never really appreciated / understood the concept of "classic" anything. At what point does something receive classic status? It seems that most people think of the '70s as being the "classic" decade right now for Rock music, but is Chuck Berry more or less classic than say, Pink Floyd? We're 20+ years since the start of the '80s -- is early hardcore and Post-Punk undeserving of "classic" status? For that matter, it seems that only certain artists from certain decades receive classic status at all, meaning that I seriously doubt that most self-professed "classic" rock fans idolize Faust or Magma. It makes no sense to me at all, and certainly makes me wonder just what they are referring to when they bring up the term.

Who knows, this might make a good thread topic.

No worries, nothing personal takin.

Yes people of all ages groups should be listening to more music. The truth is that the older some get, the less adventurous many become.

Yes, it would make a great thread topic.

Here in Toronto, where I live, we have a classic rock station called Q107. They have over the year incorporated some 80's and 90's music into their classic rock rotation, but it's mostly from the classic rock artist's from the 60's/70's who recorded music in the 80's and 90's (although they will occasionally play some older U2 and such, therefore incorporating an 80's band into the classic rock mode).

The local "classic rock" station has updated their playlist. No, they didn't wake up one day and realize that if they honestly and truly played all the good rock music from the 65-75 decade then they wouldn't actually have to repeat a song for almost a month. They HAVE to get 65 Beatles/Stones songs in a day still.

What they have done, is to include Def Leppard and Guns and Roses. U2 was in the mix for a while, mainly because of that damn Joshua Tree album that is apparently every bit as classic as Don Henley's "The Boys Of Summer." The Joshua Tree was voted highly in the Top 100 Classic Rock Albums of ALL TIME, in fact. So there we go. Pyromania is classic rock and so is War. It could have been worse - imagine if Kip Winger had managed just one more hit album.

In a very real sense, the music prominent in the 80's - at least half of which is now more than 20 years old itself - is getting its own due in the form of "retro". "Classic" now seems to refer to a set of rock styles as opposed to actual age. By slipping in a few more recent bands, they are now sure to capture at least some of the now-30 market that maybe don't do Foreigner but really dig a little Axl with their Zeppelin.

I would think that ther bands they choose to slip in will have to have qualities that appeal to the younger crowd they are in danger of losing with each passing year but not too horrid to turn off for the people that are anxiously waiting for their daily dose of "Smoke On The Water." In 5 more years we may hear "Jeremy" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit", two songs that will ALSO be near the 2-decade mark. Ye gods.

I don't know how it came to be that everything before the Beatles is "oldies" while everything is the years that follwed it can potentially qualify as "classic." The easiest theory that baby boomers are rather numerous, have been running the show for a while, and collectively, perhaps even subconsciously, have chosen not to acknowledge the fact that like it or not, they are actually getting old. I touch on this all the time, so maybe it's just my own conspiracy theories :P

ahh. its 'goodbye cruel world'. if you take the piano from 'changes' and some of the singing parts of 'goodbye cruel world' and put it together, you've got 'im lonely'