Ghost Rider
Footballguy
If this is the album I think it is going to be, I will have a lot of good things to say about it.
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Classic Album Discussion Thread: The Kinks-Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Pt. 1 (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter timschochet
- Start date
Ilov80s
Footballguy
I was born in 82 so I missed all these bands initial runs so my take on what is classic rock is entirely based on what 94.7 the local Detroit classic rock station played. They played The Cars.
zamboni
Footballguy
I think it goes back to the longstanding futile effort to define what “rock” is. Defining it as AOR stuff of the 60s/70s/80s is too narrow IMO and ignores many influential artists that don’t fit the narrow mold. So called New Wave bands like The Cars, The Talking Heads, The Police, and countless others are examples. And that’s just New Wave per se - we could go back decades and genres that also deservedly should be called rock. We’ve covered this in past years though and always creates interesting debates.
rockaction
Footballguy
Oh, I agree that it's futile. And that The Cars do not fit a narrow mold. I just want to know why the Cars fit into the behemoth that was AOR in the seventies/eighties. To cite authority, Rhino Records had them in new wave and power pop in their DIY comps. It's not traditional classic rock. Or maybe classic rock just isn't what I think.
Ghost Rider
Footballguy
All this does is remind me that labels suck. 
But it helps bands to be part of some kind of genre, that way they are easier to market and/or aim for a target audience. Take a band like XTC again. They were impossible to pigeon hole. They were very punk influenced at the start, but their songs were too long and complex for punk fans (OMG, a 5 minute song!!), and then they bounced from style to style (going from power pop to art rock to pastoral rock to orchestral pop), not just from album to album, but from song to song, to where good luck putting them into a box. I know Virgin records pulled their hair out trying find ways for them to sell more records, and of course the fact that they stopped touring in 1982 sure didn't help. The Cars were certainly more rock than the average new wave band, but given their sound and the time they came out, throwing into the new wave category just made more sense.
But it helps bands to be part of some kind of genre, that way they are easier to market and/or aim for a target audience. Take a band like XTC again. They were impossible to pigeon hole. They were very punk influenced at the start, but their songs were too long and complex for punk fans (OMG, a 5 minute song!!), and then they bounced from style to style (going from power pop to art rock to pastoral rock to orchestral pop), not just from album to album, but from song to song, to where good luck putting them into a box. I know Virgin records pulled their hair out trying find ways for them to sell more records, and of course the fact that they stopped touring in 1982 sure didn't help. The Cars were certainly more rock than the average new wave band, but given their sound and the time they came out, throwing into the new wave category just made more sense.
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HellToupee
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
Here’s how I look at it: the Cars’ first two albums sound like classic rock from the time period. After that, they kind of merge with the new wave sounds of the early 80s.
I guess that’s kind of simplistic but that’s the way I looked at it.
I guess that’s kind of simplistic but that’s the way I looked at it.
Zegras11
Footballguy
Cheap trick is rock. Never understood why u2 is considered new wave. And to a lesser extent David Bowie.
timschochet
Footballguy
Might as well post the next album and start the discussion:
Heart- Dreamboat Annie
Side One
Magic Man
Dreamboat Annie (Fantasy Child)
Crazy On You
Soul of the Sea
Dreamboat Annie
Side Two
White Lightning and Wine
Love Me Like Music (I’ll Be Your Child)
Sing Child
How Deep It Goes
Dreamboat Annie (Reprise)
OK this album is very derivative of Led Zeppelin. But is there anything wrong with that? I don’t think so. It’s hard to find songs from the era (or any era) that rock harder than “Magic Man” or “Crazy on You”. And “Dreamboat Annie” and “Soul Of the Sea” suggest that these women can match Joni Mitchell’s singer-songwriter skills. But my favorite song on the album might be “Love Me Like Music (I’ll Be Your Child)” in which Ann and Nancy demonstrate great harmony.
This album doesn’t make anyone’s list of greatest of the era but I think it’s very underrated.
Heart- Dreamboat Annie
Side One
Magic Man
Dreamboat Annie (Fantasy Child)
Crazy On You
Soul of the Sea
Dreamboat Annie
Side Two
White Lightning and Wine
Love Me Like Music (I’ll Be Your Child)
Sing Child
How Deep It Goes
Dreamboat Annie (Reprise)
OK this album is very derivative of Led Zeppelin. But is there anything wrong with that? I don’t think so. It’s hard to find songs from the era (or any era) that rock harder than “Magic Man” or “Crazy on You”. And “Dreamboat Annie” and “Soul Of the Sea” suggest that these women can match Joni Mitchell’s singer-songwriter skills. But my favorite song on the album might be “Love Me Like Music (I’ll Be Your Child)” in which Ann and Nancy demonstrate great harmony.
This album doesn’t make anyone’s list of greatest of the era but I think it’s very underrated.
timschochet
Footballguy
Roger Fisher, who was the lead guitarist for Heart until 1980, deserves some of the credit here and on subsequent albums.
Binky The Doormat
Footballguy
Spring of my senior year - it was cranked at all parties ...especially Crazy On You. Also saw them at the Columbus Agora (also Aerosmith) - front row view of Nancy with her long skirt - split to the hip is favorably etched into my mind 42 years later.
Oh, and the show was pretty good too.
Oh, and the show was pretty good too.
HellToupee
Footballguy
Hated this up until a few years ago. It was always just filler for me on the classic rock station until they played the Stone, Bowie or The Who. Anyhow something clicked and now I really like Crazy On You. Not much a fan for the rest
Eephus
Footballguy
Teenage Eephus and his friends used to debate the virtues of the blonde vs the brunette. We all know how that turned out but Ann is undoubtedly the heart and soul of the band. Heart has had many guitar players over the years but Ann's voice took even a more dominant role when the band became power balladeers in the 80s and 90s.
"Dreamboat Annie" was originally released on Canadian indie Mushroom Records. The story of Mushroom impresario Shelley Siegel and the battle between the band and the label is interesting if you like that sort of stuff.
"Dreamboat Annie" was originally released on Canadian indie Mushroom Records. The story of Mushroom impresario Shelley Siegel and the battle between the band and the label is interesting if you like that sort of stuff.
rockaction
Footballguy
Rulez so hard. Crazy On You alone should be here and firmly entrenched in the seventies for its live performance alone on The Midnight Special.
rockaction
Footballguy
My favorite radio song ever, even from someone who loves songs and books about radio...
Jimmy Eat World - Your New Aesthetic.
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rockaction
Footballguy
Also a plug for this book, which is an awesome one and argues against the FCC. I hope that Tim should love this; it's in the spirit of the thread.
Rebels On The Air
Rebels On The Air
Zegras11
Footballguy
rockaction
Footballguy
Zegras11
Footballguy
My last two years of HS were in Burbank. My older brother would take me. Some in late 75 also. Good times sitting on those mats and then moving over to the next stage. I bought the midnight special collection and need to go through it
Eephus
Footballguy
Zegras11
Footballguy
Zegras11
Footballguy
So in thinking about this a little more, we actually moved there in November of 74 and moved away in September of 77. We went to a lot of tapings during that time. Also many, many Johnny Carsons and several welcome back kotters, sandford and sons and wheel of fortunes.
HellToupee
Footballguy
HellToupee
Footballguy
Came across this last night while looking around about Heart
:Heart’s Ann Wilson recalls ’70s and ’80s sexism in rock
Although Heart was a trailblazing rock band led by strong and talented women — that doesn’t mean they weren’t dealing with the harsh realities of a sexist rock community day in and out. In light of the growing #MeToo movement, singer Ann Wilson spoke frankly about what she and sister Nancy had to go through during their rise to the top.
Wilson told Rolling Stone that she and her sister loathed the suggestion that they were reportedly involved in a lesbian affair with each other and still views the rumor as the worst part of the business. She recalled how the band’s 1977 classic “Barracuda” was inspired by a sleazy promoter entering the sisters’ dressing room and asking Ann about her “lover”: “That pissed us off. It went against everything we were trying to initiate, trying to invent — and the fact that our first time in (Rolling Stone) had that lascivious implication. For (this promoter) to imagine us together in an incestuous lesbian relationship — the sleaze factor really dawned on me in that moment.”
Wilson went on to recall the writing of “Barracuda”: “Those lyrics were written by my true nature, in true rage. I hope that that song will come in handy now when women are thinking about what they want to do and not do. I went through things like ‘lizard,’ ‘snake’ — but ‘barracuda’ just had a wickedness that I thought sounded good. It had rhythm. It just seemed more threatening, more despicable.”
Ann Wilson maintains that sexual harassment — and worse — has always been a mainstay of the music business, saying, “It went on in 1977 and it still goes on now. Back then I didn’t know why (that was happening) and now I know we were just being cast as cute girls rather than people who had ideas and abilities. Look at someone like Taylor Swift and what she’s gone through. She put herself on the line about this guy groping her, and took it all the way to court. There was a lot of eye-rolling about that, but she’s making a point. Somebody thinks that they have the right to come around at a meet and greet, reach up her skirt and grab Taylor Swift’s ###. And that it was OK. He can go and brag about it in a bar.”
Wilson was asked how she came to terms with the fact that so much of the rock she loved was steeped in often vile misogynistic backstories: “I always struggled with it, because I couldn’t stand to be part of it. The early MTV years where we did go wearing the groupie clothes and the big hair — those were the years I was unhappiest and the most uncomfortable in my own skin. Most other people I knew who were participating in all that thought it was a harmless little theater to sell units. But I was letting my own ideals go to hell.”
Ann Wilson has long stated that although Heart scored several multi-platinum hits during the second half of the 1980’s, the period was hardly her favorite era: “What I went through in the ’80s was more of a pressure to put out a Number One record — and not being Kim Kardashian. It felt like, I’m not good enough unless I’m onstage in stilettos, a corset, with big fingernails and huge hair. In other words, having no depth.”
Although she and sister Nancy Wilson were never ashamed of being females in a male dominated field, Ann Wilson told us that Heart never wanted to be specifically singled out for being women playing hard rock: “The thing that Nancy and I always fought the hardest against is the, y’know, gender designation of all these lists. Why girls have to be over here and guys have to be over there; why can’t we all just do it together on the same footing?”
:Heart’s Ann Wilson recalls ’70s and ’80s sexism in rock
Although Heart was a trailblazing rock band led by strong and talented women — that doesn’t mean they weren’t dealing with the harsh realities of a sexist rock community day in and out. In light of the growing #MeToo movement, singer Ann Wilson spoke frankly about what she and sister Nancy had to go through during their rise to the top.
Wilson told Rolling Stone that she and her sister loathed the suggestion that they were reportedly involved in a lesbian affair with each other and still views the rumor as the worst part of the business. She recalled how the band’s 1977 classic “Barracuda” was inspired by a sleazy promoter entering the sisters’ dressing room and asking Ann about her “lover”: “That pissed us off. It went against everything we were trying to initiate, trying to invent — and the fact that our first time in (Rolling Stone) had that lascivious implication. For (this promoter) to imagine us together in an incestuous lesbian relationship — the sleaze factor really dawned on me in that moment.”
Wilson went on to recall the writing of “Barracuda”: “Those lyrics were written by my true nature, in true rage. I hope that that song will come in handy now when women are thinking about what they want to do and not do. I went through things like ‘lizard,’ ‘snake’ — but ‘barracuda’ just had a wickedness that I thought sounded good. It had rhythm. It just seemed more threatening, more despicable.”
Ann Wilson maintains that sexual harassment — and worse — has always been a mainstay of the music business, saying, “It went on in 1977 and it still goes on now. Back then I didn’t know why (that was happening) and now I know we were just being cast as cute girls rather than people who had ideas and abilities. Look at someone like Taylor Swift and what she’s gone through. She put herself on the line about this guy groping her, and took it all the way to court. There was a lot of eye-rolling about that, but she’s making a point. Somebody thinks that they have the right to come around at a meet and greet, reach up her skirt and grab Taylor Swift’s ###. And that it was OK. He can go and brag about it in a bar.”
Wilson was asked how she came to terms with the fact that so much of the rock she loved was steeped in often vile misogynistic backstories: “I always struggled with it, because I couldn’t stand to be part of it. The early MTV years where we did go wearing the groupie clothes and the big hair — those were the years I was unhappiest and the most uncomfortable in my own skin. Most other people I knew who were participating in all that thought it was a harmless little theater to sell units. But I was letting my own ideals go to hell.”
Ann Wilson has long stated that although Heart scored several multi-platinum hits during the second half of the 1980’s, the period was hardly her favorite era: “What I went through in the ’80s was more of a pressure to put out a Number One record — and not being Kim Kardashian. It felt like, I’m not good enough unless I’m onstage in stilettos, a corset, with big fingernails and huge hair. In other words, having no depth.”
Although she and sister Nancy Wilson were never ashamed of being females in a male dominated field, Ann Wilson told us that Heart never wanted to be specifically singled out for being women playing hard rock: “The thing that Nancy and I always fought the hardest against is the, y’know, gender designation of all these lists. Why girls have to be over here and guys have to be over there; why can’t we all just do it together on the same footing?”
Ghost Rider
Footballguy
Tremendous record. Crazy on You and Magic Man are the obvious classics, but the rest of the album is fantastic as well. How Deep It Goes, in particular, is outstanding. What a voice Ann Wilson had/has.
zamboni
Footballguy
Good call on this one.
Excellent album by a very underrated band IMO. I don’t like their migration into pop sensibility in the ‘80s ( “How Can I Refuse” is a standout exception), but you can say that about many bands that were looking to cash in on the MTV craze.
Excellent album by a very underrated band IMO. I don’t like their migration into pop sensibility in the ‘80s ( “How Can I Refuse” is a standout exception), but you can say that about many bands that were looking to cash in on the MTV craze.
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timschochet
Footballguy
Just a coincidence. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I have a classic rock playlist with about 500 songs (I really could have about 3 times that). I shuffled it and “Crazy on You” came up and I thought, yeah that’s a good album to discuss. That’s all that went into it.
timschochet
Footballguy
Nobody seems to like that, including the band. I had a friend who saw them about 5 years ago and told me they didn’t do any of the 80s songs.
But I have to admit I kind of like them. I don’t love them the way I love their 70s classics, but I like them, particularly “These Dreams”.
zamboni
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Eephus
Footballguy
Bands have a right to make a living if there's still an audience for them. I think it's great if they still record new material after 40 years as long as they don't insist on playing all of it at their shows (or collaborate with Train).
The notion of a final album rarely applies unless an artist (or key band member) dies.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
I was thinking that when it was mentioned earlier in the thread. Most of the major classic rock acts are still putting out new music, albeit in some cases (Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, Roger Waters....) as solo acts.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Oh I have no issue with any band writing, recording, touring for as long as they want. I just mean in terms of quality- it often wanes over time. Same thing great football players. I have no issue if Adrian Peterson gets signed to be the 3rd string RB for the Titans and get 3 or 4 touches a game. If a team wants to pay him and he's willing to do it, go for it. I just prefer to remember the 2000 yard Viking Peterson.
Final albums usually aren't planned as such but bands do break up or people do pass away. Electric Ladyland is probably the best last album from the classic rock era.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
So are we restricted to discussing the "featured" record here or are we open to general discussion.
Would be interesting to see a listing personal favorites (i.e. everyone's top 10 classic rock albums) - or is that too over-done?
Would be interesting to see a listing personal favorites (i.e. everyone's top 10 classic rock albums) - or is that too over-done?
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
It's kind of an unfair comparison though in context. Electric Ladyland or L.A. Woman are still within the artists peak years and can't really be compared to A Bigger Bang or Endless Wire where it's a bunch of old men still squeezing out some original songs.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
True. Although to ask the question "best rock album by artists over 50" would steer us outside of traditional classic rock and this thread.
timschochet
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
I am thinking about that now- although we don't all seem to agree what is or isn't classic rock.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
I was a huge Heart fan growing up. Saw them live 4 times, including on the beach at Fort Lauderdale during spring break 1983 (I think) after driving from Buffalo with 3 college friends in my 1962 Buick Special (has to be one of the ugliest cars ever made-we had truckers driving by us laughing at us, at one gas station a truck driver asked "what year is that critter anyway?).
Bought everything they put out (I gave away my album collection years ago, must have had 300). Liked even their later "poppy" stuff except one album that was pretty terrible and cheesy, can't remember what it was titled.
eta hmm, looking at their album list the album I didn't like was "Private Audition". Didn't realize they put out albums in 2004 and 2010.
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Doug B
Footballguy
A little late in responding here ... but regarding Cheap Trick's classification:
Their live act circa Live at the Budokan was very much in line with their classic-rock contemporaries. Rick Nielsen's lead work was pushed WAY to the forefront, and he was at his best while being permitted to rock out live. In the studio and prior to Budokan ... I don't know if it was the on Epic Records direction or what, but Cheap Trick's harder edges were filed down quite a lot.
Listen to this early version of "I Want You to Want Me". Then listen to it sucked dry on In Color. Then one more time on Budokan, with the energy and edge reinserted.
Verdict -- In the late 70s, Cheap Trick was indeed a classic rock band that wasted a few years being shoehorned into categories like "power pop". Away from producers and PR flacks, their live set truly represented the band laid bare.
Doug B
Footballguy
Heck, U2 was -- before Red Rocks for sure -- very much the anti-commercial alternative to new wave.
Zegras11
Footballguy
I saw Cheap Trick open for Kiss at the Forum in LA. They were so good, we all booed Kiss.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Top 10 in no exact order
Hendrix- Are You Experienced
The Who- Who's Next
The Band- Music from Big Pink
Led Zeppelin- IV
Rolling Stones- Beggars Banquet
Bruce- Born to Run
Dire Straits- Brothers in Arms (it is post 80s, but again they played it on the classic rock station growing up and I think Dire fits much more in the stylings of 70s rock than any kind of rock movement of the 80s)
The Cars- The Cars
Rubber Soul- The Beatles
Rumours- Fleetwood Mac
Hendrix- Are You Experienced
The Who- Who's Next
The Band- Music from Big Pink
Led Zeppelin- IV
Rolling Stones- Beggars Banquet
Bruce- Born to Run
Dire Straits- Brothers in Arms (it is post 80s, but again they played it on the classic rock station growing up and I think Dire fits much more in the stylings of 70s rock than any kind of rock movement of the 80s)
The Cars- The Cars
Rubber Soul- The Beatles
Rumours- Fleetwood Mac
Big Blue Wrecking Crew
downsized
In Color - Steve Albini sessions
To further highlight Doug B's take, the band re-recorded In Color with Steve Albini as they would have liked to have heard it. Much closer to the live CT experience than the original album. Always worth going to see now, even without Bun E. on the kit.
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