big teddy
  • Mar
    06
    Red Rocks.
    by mike at 11:15am

    So I was listening to my all time radio friend Live 105 the other day. Live 105 is the San Francisco “alternative rock” station, and one I’ve been listening too since I was about 12 which was about the time they switched to their current format. For some reason around 5th or 6th grade I had about 3 weeks straight where they’d be playing Peter Schilling’s Major Tom (Coming Home) right around the time my alarm went off. (Note: this is NOT David Bowie’s Major Tom, totally different thang … interestingly currently a google search for “Major Tom” ranks Schilling First).

    Anyway post the move of Howard Stern to and the creation of “Free FM” Live 105 has put together a “Morning Music Co-op” where they have a couple of people talk, and play music etc. (Too much talk not enough music for me). A couple of days ago they had their program director Aaron Axelson on talking about the type of music they play and the way they don’t play “Red State Rock”. Red State Rock is a newer term that seems to be floating around and one that kind of interests me. A quick google search for the term “red state rock” turns up a daily kos piece about Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama. Now it’s important here to make a distinction between Southern Rock and Red State Rock. Southern Rock is a style of music that adds a country blues twinge and Nashville style to fairly traditional 70s rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, and ZZ Top typify the genre. Red-State Rock on the other hand is stuff by the likes of Creed, Nickleback and Disturbed.

    I have to admit at least a small affinity for some of these bands. Heck I shouldn’t admit it but I actually bought the first Creed album. (to my credit, it was a number of years ago and Live 105 played them then ;) But as inane as some of the lyrics can be such as this poetic excerpt from Hinder’s “Get Stoned”


    Let’s go home and get stoned
    We could end up makin love instead of misery
    Go home and get stoned
    Cause the sex is so much better when you’re mad at me

    There’s a certain visceral rock animal in me that likes the simplicity and straight ahead nature of the music. Even though I tend to much more often lean “blue” in my listening tastes, the pretentious image-via-lack-thereof of most blue-state music (think the Strokes, Modest Mouse, and Deathcab for Cutie) can just get utterly annoying.

    or maybe I’m just getting long in the tooth.

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