OK…here we go…my first classic rock blog for today.com. I have to tell you here and now that the classic rock label is an incommodious term in more ways than I care to imagine. I’m told it was actually coined in the 80s by some clever radio station programmer looking for a way to differentiate between music from the 60s and 70s, previously given the Neanderthalian “old” rock tag, and “newer” music covering a wide cross-section of new wave, punk, ska, hair metal, etc. Today, much of the music from the 80s has fallen into the classic rock well, making the label completely and utterly worthless. Does this mean Dylan and Devo are both classic rock artists? Preposterous! What’s going to happen to grunge and hip hop in 10 years? Will these too become part of the classic rock conglomerate? When will the madness stop?
As far as I’m concerned, the term vintage rock is more appropriate for two simple reasons:
1) It sounds so much cooler than classic rock, doesn’t it?
2) I run a web site called vintage rock
One thing that I do for vintage rock is write reviews of CDs and DVDs. This year started off slowly, but in the last few weeks there’s been lots of good stuff coming to my mailbox. Everyone from Whitesnake to Neil Diamond is making a new album. Yeah, they’re all flying under the same banner these days. And then there are those sweet reissues, bulging with extras. I don’t know where to start. Some times, you have to immerse yourself in the process. And even though you begin to wonder if giving up this much time for something like the new Asia album is really worth it, you start to realize that someone might be wondering the same damn thing.
We’ll see how this train runs tomorrow.
