Your first clue that you were old is that you were still listening to FM radio.
So i requested my fav Perl Jam song and sat by my radio with a blank tape in and my finger on the record button. When the radio DJ called Perl Jam classic rock, that’s when i knew i was old!!
Wait, seriously? Dang it…
Everyone knows DAB+ is where it’s at these days
DAB+
I think Germany plans to switch to DAB since 2000 or so. Is this still a thing?
This is something that I don’t understand. I have lived in walkable neighborhoods for 20 years. When I walk to a corner store and hear radio blasting from a car (including ads), I wonder why the fuck that person subjects themselves to that bullshit. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been people listing to talk radio, but music stations. It’s surprising.
I thought Classic Rock was a defined genre including Led Zeplin, The Who, The Doors, etc. Not just “popular rock from 30 years ago”
Who defined that term? The radio stations. Artists and labels typically do not use that label, it’s primarily the radio stations.
When classic rock stations started to appear in the '80s, they played popular hits from the '60s–'80s. So it included newly released hits. But when grunge came into the scene in the '90s, it had a different audience than the classic rock stations so they stopped including new hits. For about two decades there, it was fairly unambiguous that classic rock meant popular rock from the '60s–'80s.
After enough time though, grunge was no longer alienating to the classic rock stations listeners. The opposite became true and the stations could increase their audience by including hits from the '90s.
This raises the question: Did those '90s songs become classic rock or is the term fixed and anything not considered classic rock now never going to be considered classic rock? Who gets to define it? The radio stations who originally defined it or the public perception that developed during the period of time when classic rock stopped evolving?
Personally, I prefer to think of classic rock as a radio format rather than a genre, because it doesn’t really behave like a normal genre. If I start a band that sounds like metal then my band is metal, but if I start a band that sounds like classic rock it’s still not classic rock? Why? That feels out of the spirit of music genres to me. There are music movements that are tied to a specific time period—my band could never be part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal—but it could be in the same genre as those bands.
In terms of music style, how are AC/DC and Billy Joel considered the same genre? They’re wildly different. The Who and The Doors? Very different.
The reason those bands are considered classic rock is not because they sound similar, it’s because they target similar audiences. As a radio format, it makes way more sense why some bands are considered classic rock and some aren’t.
Wikipedia also refers to it as a radio format
None of those artists called their music “classic” rock…. It is basically older styles of something, there is no defined time, but 30 years sounds about right.
Right, well they couldn’t have. Just like it wasn’t called World War One until the second one happened. But after rock as a genre was founded, the classic version of it should always be just that. So are you saying that that A) Led Zeppelin is no longer classic rock or B) Led Zeppelin and Pearl Jam are the same genre?
it wasn’t called World War One until the second one happened
Except by people who were either psychic or extremely pessimistic.
Just like it wasn’t called World War One until the second one happened.
The world war was still the world war, that’s not even a parallel example……
I’m saying that it’s arbitrary and in 10 years another decade will be added since it used to mean the 60s, then it meant 60s-70s, then it went the 60-80s. It now includes the 90s and has shifted away from 60s.
It’s entirely stupid to define what has always been an arbitrary genre, since no one calls their own music classic.
“Classic rock” encompasses all types of rock. The only factor that defines it is popularity and time.
You are totally correct. Keep in mind that punk rock, progressive rock, and other genres were also present at that same time. Classic rock is very much a genre and style.
You just labeled 2 specific genres that include artists that are considered “classic”.
Classic is an arbitrary genre that has changed every decade to account for newer music becoming classic and older music being phased out.
No.
The police are on a bunch of “classic rock” lists, and they are punk/pop rock.
It’s almost like the specific “rock” genre means nothing to this arbitrary genre…. And trying to define it will just point out all the flaws in trying to define it….
There are still artists making “Classic Rock” today. Its a sound and a style. Look at Tash Sultana. Look at Nick Perri. Look at the Underground Thieves. These are modern artists making classic rock. Johnny Cash. Older than the classic rock genre. Is he classic rock? No he’s rockabilly. How about the Beatles. Also predating classic rock. Also not classic rock. Joy Division, Unknown pleasures, 1979. Effectively the birth of Indie rock. Five years before Van Halens “Hot for Teacher”.
Just because you are ignorant to music history, where and how styles emerge and evolve, and want to lump everything into a definition that’s convenient for you, that doesn’t make it so.
Classic rock isn’t a retirement home for a song that happened X years ago. Its a musical movement that was so dominant when it was at its peak it held the crown of just being “Rock”, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t or isn’t a style with its own sound. There were and are styles of music that came before (and are still being made), styles that were happening during (and are still being made), and styles that came after (and guess what, are still being made). Classic rock probably is the most popular style of rock, but it wasn’t even the only style of rock being made when it was at its peak.
There are still artists making “Classic Rock” today. Its a sound and a style.
Multiple things can be true in life, and usually are IME.
None of those artists are classic rock…. they make music in the same style as classic rock bands. But none of their marketing says they perform “classic” music. And that just more or less proves my point, they do t even call themselves classic, since it literally means older music, and isn’t defined by genres…. And they make modern music in that style, but it’s not “classic rock” and no one calls that.
As I said, older music gets phased out as newer music gets phased in, that’s why Cash is considered by some to be no longer classic.
If classic rock is this defined genre, why is every list different, and why does every list include artists from a wide swath of genres? Not just 2-3 like you’ve claimed?
The only people who would still be considered to make new “classic” rock, would be a heritage band coming back and putting new music out. But even then, they don’t call it classic rock or anything like that.
Genres are a social construct.
Yes, and how are we choosing to construct this one? That’s the whole conversation
Popularity+time. It is a fairly simple equation. They didn’t call Led Zeppelin, The Who etc. classic rock when they first came out either, it only happened with time.
Every piece of popular rock music will become classic rock with time.
We don’t have to. If one social group defines it differently then another social group it’s not really a big deal.
You know those “X is now older than Y was when X came out”?
Like, in this case: “Pearl Jam Ten is now older than The White Album was when Pearl Jam Ten came out”
That happened in 2014.
Look if I wanted to do word problems, I would have stayed in school.
This isn’t a meme, it’s a hit piece.
I did the same thing when I first heard Green Day on the Classic Rock station. Then they played Nirvana, blink-182, and The Offspring…
That shirt is great. Equally possible that they really like music and/or geology.
Boy do I have the video for you.
I love this so much
Amazing XD
deleted by creator
Hence the “and”
1991 - the year of Jeremy’s release - is 33 years ago.
33 years before 1991 was 1958 - ie the time of Elvis and the Everly Brothers.
My wife was eating some Golden Grahams recently and the box had a big thing about “flashing back” to the music from the 80s. Made me realize it would have been like a cereal in the 80s having a big thing on the music from the 40s. Which would have been weird.
The 80s we’re so much more futurist than we are now. Everyone thought the future was going to be great! I feel like it’s the last decade that was true for.
90s were still like that to an extent. But yeah, it started dying off around then.
Golden Oldies from the olden days when old people were still closer to life than death. For all you fossils out there - here are some ancient tunes from the end of the last millennium. Nod along carefully so you don’t break apart!
from the end of the last millennium
The late 1900s
Indeed. The very end of the last millennium. So old it transcends the boundaries of thousands of years.
I wonder if the radio deejays will still play Floyd, Zep, Hendrix, etc., in like 30 years.
“And now for an afternoon of Ancient Rock favorites, from Floyd to Zep, here on 103.1, THE ROCK!”
You’ll have to tune into the “oldies” station for those bands.
A station I listen to plays classical music and operas during the afternoons. I wonder how long until that happens to those bands. “Joining us today is Professor Smith from Juilliard who is going to share with us today some of the finer details of Pink Floyd’s earlier work.”
They’ll play a set of Mozart, Floyd, Beethoven, and Hendrix. All from more or less the same era.
Probably, but most likely way less often. I mean, there are still radio stations playing 1950s songs from Elvis Presley, Miles Davis, Glenn Miller and so on. I think we’d also have older music, if the recordings weren’t so terrible before the 1950s.
It is still good music after all. I was born many decades later, but Tutti Frutti (both LR’s and EP’s versions) is still a great song.
That said, they’ll only do it if Radio stations still exist in 30 years. I almost never listen to radio nowadays.
Just wait until you hear your favorite tunes from high school on the oldies station
I was visiting my girlfriend and she has one of those Alexa pucks.
She said: “Alexa play Classic Rock” and Linkin Park’s In The End began playing, a song everyone used to listen to in middle school.
I’d never been so devastated by a simple thing. But it came out in 2000. That was 24 years ago.
Linkin Park… 2000… Middle school?!
Fuck, I got old.
At the rate we’re going we’ll need to be listening to our MP3s in a museum. Hell, I have a go out of my way to physically plug my headphones in, everything is wireless these days.
Aaaaand, I still unironically use Winamp on a machine that has 48 physical CPU cores.
It really whips the llamas ass
Already am mate. Already am. They’re playing early Chillis , pearl jam and the occasional nirvana track like something in the way these days. I’m just waiting for Foo fighters and Queens of the Stone Age to become classic rock. They’re only a couple of years away.
Classic rock is redundant at this point tbh
My child…
This is without a doubt the finest use of Kai Winn template in the Alpha quadrant.
Ouch
“Classic” rock is typically 25 years old or older. In 2026 Nickelback will be classic rock
I hope this isn’t the comic capturing the exact moment when Xers become boomers? Not the content of the comic itself, but the fact that a hyper obvious played out troupe like this, expressed through the comic, could be readily shared on social media widely as a discovery of some sort to peers of this generation?
Gen X can never become Boomers. You can start to act more like your parents, grandparents etc., whatever generation you are, but you’re still, well, whatever generation you are.
This is a technically correct statement
