Classic Rock Rules the World

I grew up on classic rock. Unfortunately for me, I also grew up in the 80's, quite possibly the worst decade ever for popular music. In Portland, after moving to Ainsworth Elementary in third grade, I seem to remember that my friends and I started out listening to Magic 106.7. They used to play the Stones and the Who. It was great. Then they started playing things like Kenny Loggins' theme song "Footloose." Then I stopped listening to Magic 106. From then on, all classic rock was listened to on KGON, 92.3 FM.

Since then all of us have moved away (and some have moved back), to various parts of the US, but we've also noticed that wherever you go, there seems to be a KGON. Of course, each station has its own variation. For example, KGON has always seemed to have an unfortunate fixation on George Thorogood (and The Destroyers, of course). But you also get the staples: Dylan, the Stones, Zeppelin, etc.

Of course, all of us have moved on from classic rock to embrace other genres. But I doubt that any of us have left it entirely. Whatever else I'm listening to at the time, I almost always sneak a listen to KGON when I go back to Portland (as my folks have frustratingly found when their car stereos have been not-so-mysteriously tuned to 92.3).

What's amazing is that classic rock, and its various cousins but primarily classic rock itself, is huge over here. There must be 5 or 6 KGON's coming across Wellington's airwaves (and there are relatively few radio stations). The what's-on-TV-at-the-moment channel is always playing Hendrix for some unknown but wonderful reason. Many of the bars play classic rock, and many of those that don't play either its blues-based ancestors or descendants or cousins, such as reggae, which is very popular here, or soul music (which replaced classic rock as the dominant musical influence of my grad school years, and still is fighting to maintain that status).

My other musical favorites (or favourites) aren't doing so well, though. As best I can find, there's only one jazz station (dominant in my life during college), and they play an unfortunate amount of "smooth jazz" [sic]. Rap and neo-soul are also semi-big here, which is just about right for me. I almost never hear alt-country or alt-country-derived rock (competing for the dominant genre for me, against soul, during my post-graduate school life). Supposedly there's a great band here called Ghostplane that a recent review compared to Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and Sun Volt all in a few paragraphs, but I haven't heard them yet (CDs here are incredibly expensive). Maybe that will be good. At any rate, at least there's a lot of classic rock.

I guess it's too quick to say that it rules the world. Ann tells me that you don't get that kind of music in Sydney, for example. (There you get a lot of vacuous Euro-crap, I'd uninformedly and dismissively imagine.) But of all our cultural exports, we (okay, and the UK too) have done a lot worse. It's nice that there are more outlets of classic rock than all the fast food joints we've sent here, for example.

At times that fluctuate with no pattern I can discern yet, I can also get FOX Sports radio. That's nice too, but my massive US sports withdrawls are another story (as are my internal conflicts about consuming anything FOX). Mmmmm, football.