That ain't workin' That's the way you do it.

[coloradodem2005]

You play the guitar on the MTV.

[carpetbagger]

1. 1985, probably the final year of AOR.

Brothers in Arms, Under a Raging Moon, The Firm, Building the Perfect Beast, Reckless, Born in the USA, Scarecrow.

At the time it seemed like the light had dimmed on the scene, but it was still pretty damn good in retrospect. The sun was setting, but you could still see enough to roll your joint.

[coloradodem2005]

2. Why did AOR end in 1985?

Did everything become more singles oriented after that?

[carpetbagger]

3. I haven't been able to put my finger on it, but I've got theories.

I don't think it was a singles orientation. I can't think of many singles that came out of 86-91 that held a candle to the older stuff. I think AOR died for a number of reasons:

1. Artists just got old. They went out on their own and ran out of oxygen, lost their drive and creativity, or took to lounging on the endless legacy tour (see Stones, Rolling).

2. Rock got fragmented. The last great southern rock album came out in 1985 (Fogerty). Heavy metal went in its own direction. Pop-ish rock went more into the synthesized sound. The California sound of the 80's coated everything like a bland Van Halen video.

3. "Classic Rock" ensured that the stuff had to age before getting good air play. Sure, some stations did play some new stuff, from old bands, but it sucked the air out of any band who was trying to break through with music that would get bought up by this audience. Without the CR format, new bands would have gotten to the top with an AOR format and stayed there. The failure of Living Colour to achieve super-stardom is IMHO the prime example of that. CR might be the biggest culprit.

So by the time the grunge scene hit the big time, there was a near-total disconnect between 90's rock and 70's rock. I think that was one reason why 90's rock/grunge/alternative faded as quickly as it did (I'd say it started in 1991 and ended by 1998). It just melted into the various scenes out there (metal, punk, rap), and eventually became a speed-metal monolith.

[coloradodem2005]

4. Living Colour would have been cool.

They had the potential. Of course so did Guns & Roses. When you are talking about Fogarty, you mean "Centerfield"? I actually like Van Halen. Though I prefer the David Lee Roth era to Hagar.


As for the 1990's, I actually was a teenager during those years. I like a lot of that music. I can definitely see what you are saying about alternative rock. If AOR still existed in the 1990's, I wonder if alternative rock would have thrived in an AOR format, or if it would have continued the way it did during the 70's and early 80's. Of course, you know what happened around 1997-98 when alternative rock started to fade. Teen pop took over. Ugh!


Who did "Under A Raging Moon?"

[carpetbagger]

6. GNR VH etc.

Guns n Roses is a great example, perhaps THE great example, of a band that just didn't have the discipline to attain longevity. The problem with GNR is simple: Axl Rose couldn't reliably show up for work.

I think Van Halen peaked with "1984". After that, they became a good band, but not the kind of band that could lead the format. The bands that tried to be like Mike (Eddie) just didn't have the depth that, say, Zeppelin wannabees had.

I think alternative rock/grunge would have done wonderfully in an AOR format. AOR had the benefit of fostering band loyalty. As such, the average time at the top would have been 5-7 years, not 2-3 years as it was. It could be said that this was a revolutionary period along the lines of the 1967-1969 period, and I could go along with that, but there was just no shelter from rapid evolution that led to the implosion of popular music in the late 1990's. In the early 70's, the refuges for bands to grow were in the AOR format and the FM format (early FM being analogous to college radio now). There was also the top 40 world, which played a broad range of styles from crooners to folk to country crossover, r+b crossover, and of course hard rock, power pop, and soft rock.

It was actually in the late 90's, not the early 90's, that changes in technology started to break against the album format. What the 60's and 70's did to AOR (lp, cassette, 8-track), the millenium did to undo by way of the song as a downloadable unit.

"Under a Raging Moon" was Roger Daltrey's one great solo album. Like most musicians cut off from their life support (i.e. a stable group of collaborators), the oxygen ran out.

[coloradodem2005]

7. When you talk about the song as a downloadable unit....

...are you talking about Napster and MP3's? The problem is, I am for these kinds of things as being a way to introduce people to music and make them want to buy it.

I think the emphasis of top-40 and releasing hit singles was the huge factor in undoing the album oriented format. What do you think of that?

[carpetbagger]

8. Yes and maybe.

Napster/MP3 had a big effect on what people good hooked on and turned on by. It wasn't so much that your average person was, or is, downloading as a primary means of access. It's that the trendsetters, the people who go see the locals, who create the buzz, and then the people who buy the albums and see the concerts of bands on the rise. They're browsing through single songs now.

It's not about being for or against downloading or pirating as a commercial issue. I tend to support it as a way of getting publicity for a greater variety of bands, and cutting the massive overhead the industry collects. It's that in 1984, your friend bought Defenders of the Faith or Born in the USA, and you copied it on cassette. Now, you burn a CD of songs from all different bands. You get compilation albums. I doubt you're going to delve much into the back tracks. And most importantly, the tracks that are more of an acquired taste never get play. In 2004, Led Zeppelin would have put out III, gotten downloads of The Immigrant Song, maybe also of Out on the Tiles, maybe with airplay for Immigrant, and the rest of the album would have been ignored. So reeling from defeat, Zeppelin IV would have sounded much, much different.

Top 40 has always been around, and some successful rock bands have done well in it, some not. The problem I see with it is that there no longer is a general radio audience. For instance, I just googled a top 40 list for 1974 with peak positions. With multiple top 10 hits are a range of people including John Denver, The Eagles, Elton John, Barry White, The Guess Who, Neil Diamond, BTO, Chicago, and Olivia Newton-John. You also get chart hits from some of the bands that are more known as AOR or Classic Rock bands (Doobies, Eagles, ELO, Skynyrd, Clapton, Styx, Golden Earring for instance). Even in the death grip of disco, top 40 stations would break into AOR (1979, for instance, saw top 20 hits from Styx, George Harrison, Van Halen, ELO, Foreigner, Supertramp, and Dire Straits, some of these bands getting 3 or more top 10 hits.)

So where is top 40 now? It's had the rap/r+b taken out into its own format, country doesn't cross over, crooner music (if it exists at all outside Nora Jones) is a rarity- older listeners hide in boomer oldies formats, and hard rock sticks to hard rock (where it needs to stay hard to maintain credibility), while classic rock stations vigilantly maintain a fossilized playlist. What's left? boy bands and divas. This squeeze happened a while ago. Even by the late 80's, there was little room left for people like ZZ Topp outside their period of highest success, no room for Stevie Ray, and no room to support the guys who would have otherwise gotten the exposure by putting out the top 40 single.

That's a long answer, so let me condense it, and then go to bed. Media changes have impacted on the format, but the death of rock as it once was is more related to the fragmentation of audiences which has left no room for new rock to percolate up. If there were room, you'd see it coming up in a general top 40 format (just like the critters quoted at the start of the thread), and then those bands could get the album exposure. Even with the total death of albums, you'd still get the singles scene from the late 60's, where a rock band would live on a few hit singles each year.

[jpgray]

5. Ah yes, Sting ripping off his own vocal melody

'I want my close to me'? 'Don't stand so MTV'?

:D

[uncle ray]

9. ah, the guitar intro that almost ANY radio can play at full volume!

and still sound good!

that song has always been kind of an audiophile favorite of mine. a good LOUD song.