Today is Memorial Day, which means a few different things:
*There are many events paying tribute to the service men and women who have made great personal sacrifices while defending our country. The sky is filled with flags, small towns and cities are filled with parades, and cemeteries are filled with people paying their respects to the fallen. As it should be.
*People in Minnesota who went to their cabins for the weekend will inevitably get rained on. I think that’s been a law since around 1960.
*There’s a lot of meat being grilled and consumed today.
*With all of the sales going on, odds are somebody somewhere is buying a new mattress.
*There are any number of classic rock radio stations across the country running their Memorial Day countdowns of “The 500 Greatest Rock-n-Roll Songs of All Time.”
Of all time? Really?
Here in the Cities, we have one station that considers itself the flagship of all that is classic rock. I won’t mention the call letters here because this station is such a self-parodying dinosaur of music it doesn’t deserve the mention. I listened to it back in junior high and high school when I was still educating myself on rock and roll history, but at some point in the past thirty years or so they slammed hard into a time loop which prevents them from acknowledging there have been anything other than token moments of quality music released after about 1981 (my cousin Eric just might be the program director).
Of course they’re doing a Rock-n-Roll 500 countdown, like they do every year, and they’re probably playing the same exact five hundred songs in the same exact order they did last year and the year before. Out of curiosity, I’m going online to read through their list of just the top 100 (I do have a life, after all) and divide their song selections into two parts of a timeline: songs released before 1981 and songs released after. I’m choosing 1981 as a cut off since that’s approximately the year I first became aware that rock and roll was more exciting and diverse than what was found in my parents’ collection of Carpenters LPs. Before I even start, my guess is this list will end up weighted on the older end of the timeline, just like it always has been....
Okay. Done. Called it.
Pre-1981 Songs: 91
Post-1981 Songs: 9
Come ON! NINE?!
For the record, here were the most recent releases that made their top 100:
Free Fallin’ - Tom Petty
Pride (in the Name of Love) - U2
Small Town - John Mellencamp
In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins
Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
Back in Black - AC/DC
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For - U2
You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC
Sweet Child of Mine - Guns n’ Roses
By my estimate, “Free Fallin’” is the most current song to appear on the list, since I remember it coming out in either 1989 or 1990. Which would mean it’s at least 25 years old.
Okay, look, Grandpa Radio: Since I don’t need to hear The Doors, The Doobie Brothers, Steve Miller, George Thorogood, and Foghat on constant repeat, I haven’t even had you as a mostly-ignored car stereo preset in over a decade. Consequently, I don’t care if your playlist blatantly panders to your demographic; that’s to be expected, after all. And I'm not saying that just because a song has been around for a long time means it can't be a good song. But conversely, just because it hasn't been around forever doesn't mean it isn't.
So please don’t call your countdown an “all-time” list when it clearly isn’t.
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