CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL: THE RESULTS

10 votes was pretty respectable, I guess.

Lowest placing song with a first-place vote -
368. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Crosstown Traffic 350 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote

...unless something got a first and still fell outside the top 500.

My first place was outside of the top 500: Robert Palmer - Sailin' Shoes/Hey Julia/Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley. Have to admit that it's definitely not the most "classic rock" of songs, but it squeaks in under Little Feat. I probably should have given more points to Skynyrd or something.

Yesss TWO buck dharma joints in the top 10 and that's WITHOUT me voting! This is why ilx is my home.

When I did finally get a ballot put together up to number 32 it was the Friday after the Wednesday of the deadline and I was like fuck it and didn't send it. But here it is:

Blue Oyster Cult – Don’t Fear The Reaper 1
Rush – Tom Sawyer 2
Electric Light Orchestra – Do Ya 3
Led Zeppelin – Dancing Days 4
Jethro Tull -- Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of the New Day) 5
Boz Scaggs - Lido Shuffle 6
Fleetwood Mac – The Chain 7
The Cars – Let’s Go 8
The Police – Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic 9
Don Henley – Boys Of Summer 10
Steely Dan – Reeling In The Years 11
Heart – Crazy On You 12
Steve Miller – Fly Like An Eagle 13
Blue Oyster Cult – I’m Burnin’ For You 14
Van Halen – Jump 15
Gerry Rafferty – Baker Street 16
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – You Got Lucky 17
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Born On The Bayou 18
Boston – Rock & Roll Band 19
The Eagles – In The City 20
AC/DC – You Shook Me All Night Long 21
Yes – Roundabout 22
Thin Lizzy – The Boys Are Back In Town 23
The Who – Baba O’Riley 24
Pat Benatar – Hit Me With Your Best Shot 25
Golden Earring – Radar Love 26
The Pretenders – Back On The Chain Gang 27
Styx – Renegade 28
.38 Special – Hold On Loosely 29
Christopher Cross - Ride Like The Wind 30
Kansas – Dust In The Wind 31
Toto - Africa 32

I feel most guilty about "Do Ya" that song is THE elo jam and it needed me and I wasn't there for it.

Also, it is dangerous to drive with radar love playing. The only song that has made me drive faster than radar love is the first track on zen arcade

do oakland raiders fans sing a version of radar love at games?

They should've played it over the end titles of the final episode of m.a.s.h.

Lowest placing song with a first-place vote -
368. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Crosstown Traffic 350 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote

*raises hand*

A little shocked this was the lowest Hendrix tbh. My ultimate criterion for choosing my no.1 was how it would fit on a UK Drive Time Hour, being I think our closest relative of Classic Rock. Crosstown Traffic is the drivingest song imaginable, so.

What's the name of the doc about the lady who lives in the park and thinks her lover/husband? is speaking to her through the song Radar Love being beamed directly into her head??

Also I was out tonight and missed the chance to deploy my Thin Lizzy story:

My student job was dogsbody in a hardware store in the South Side of Glasgow. Occasionally there'd be this old dude in the shop, buying screws or something, and whispers would go round the staff that the guitarist from Thin Lizzy's dad was in the house. I never found out which guitarist, or even tbh which old dude it was, but I did look up the members' resumes once and TL did once have a guitarist who was born in Clarkston, so the story checks out. Whether he knew it or not, old dude was our house celebrity.

What's a dogsbody?

What's the name of the doc about the lady who lives in the park and thinks her lover/husband? is speaking to her through the song Radar Love being beamed directly into her head??

― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Friday, August 1, 2014 4:12 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know, but this is once again infuriating because this is not what radar does.

RADAR = RAdio Detection And Ranging, i.e. you do not communicate with radar

I know but this lady wasn't well -- it's just what she believed to be true iirc

I thought dogsbody was a made-up Sex Pistols word.

Clearly she was insane to believe she could get messages via RADAR!!!!!!

thank you, Jon!

I thought they just meant the body of a dead dog.

Dogsbody = individual who undertakes unglamorous, menial tasks at others' whims, to no acclaim i.e. the opposite of being guitarist in Thin Lizzy

It's like a gofer, right? A general helper with whatever needs doing?

Xpost

Cool word!!

It's also the title of an awesome SF novel by Diana Wynne Jones.

I'm really happy that crazy on you was top 10. My two favorite things about it are the cascading pull-off guitar figures that prefigure Meat Puppets and the bridge ("and you KEPT me alive with ya SWEET FLOWWIN LOOOOOVVVE") which I like to impress people by singing along with in this weird falsetto I have

My other falsetto party trick being the "you're the right kinda sinner..." part in Heartbreaker

CRAZY on you
CRAAA-AAAZY on YOU!!!!

My student job was dogsbody in a hardware store in the South Side of Glasgow. Occasionally there'd be this old dude in the shop, buying screws or something, and whispers would go round the staff that the guitarist from Thin Lizzy's dad was in the house. I never found out which guitarist,

Could've been Midge Ure's dad! Cos he was from Glasgow, but I guess Thin Lizzy is the thing he's probably least famous for.

It's also the title of an awesome SF novel by Diana Wynne Jones.

― before you die you see the rink (Jon Lewis), Friday, August 1, 2014 4:27 PM

ty for this!

i voted for 'do ya'

also lol

266. (tie) Jethro Tull – Aqualung 472 points, 7 votes
266. (tie) Billy Squier – The Stroke 472 points, 8 votes

Tuesday's Gone is on the list twice. Would have been top 200 otherwise. Still, it was a lot of fun and that Ian Thomas thing is the only one I don't know by name.

I feel most guilty about "Do Ya" that song is THE elo jam and it needed me and I wasn't there for it.

The Move version was in my top five

Also I was out tonight and missed the chance to deploy my Thin Lizzy story:

My student job was dogsbody in a hardware store in the South Side of Glasgow. Occasionally there'd be this old dude in the shop, buying screws or something, and whispers would go round the staff that the guitarist from Thin Lizzy's dad was in the house. I never found out which guitarist, or even tbh which old dude it was, but I did look up the members' resumes once and TL did once have a guitarist who was born in Clarkston, so the story checks out. Whether he knew it or not, old dude was our house celebrity.

― Ismael Klata, Friday, August 1, 2014 4:16 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the late 80s/early 90s my sister owned a flat in Newlands (South Side of Glasgow) and her next door neighbour was Brian Robertson's mother - a 100% working class wee Glasgow wifie, except that her flat was packed with memorabilia, photos etc of Thin Lizzy, Motorhead and tons of other rock bands and celebs. In her toilet was a framed, signed picture of Rod Stewart and he had written on it "Thanks for the bacon sandwiches, love Rod".

Placement above toilet makes that dedication super gross

Was "Amie" the highest-placing write-in?

"Badge" placed about 10 higher.

Just caught up. some dude and gr80 loved the radio station concept and loved the puns/intros to the songs accompanied by the images! good fun all around.

I kinda hate a lot of songs in the top 100 :) and have only heard maybe half of the top 20!

I'm trying extremely hard right now not to figure out what that might mean.

104. Argent – Hold Your Head Up 805 points, 13 votes, 1 first place vote
108. (tie) Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light 784 points, 14 votes

robbed imo

Wow, wow, wow. Sorry to have missed the last day of the big rollout. Great reading, great posts, great memories shared. I have no beef with the way the final results played out, except that I was one of the high voters for Dobie and wished he'd made it - I feel like each of my top ten items hits a different sweet spot of "what classic rock is all about": magic, escape, road-trippin, sex, feeling all right, etc. It's the flipside of "Come Sail Away," which is my biggest "holy shit, how did that not place?" You can't have classic rock without Styx exhorting you to board a starship and COME SAIL AWAY (rock as adventure, rock as redeemer for the teenage soul)! But you also can't have it without Dobie's warm, full-hearted drift away: rock as a lazy river, rock as balm for an adult's cares at the end of a long day or a long life. While that song's playing, I pretty much don't want it to stop, or for any music to sound any different from it. Note: if you have never heard Drift Away, look on YouTube - Spotify has only soundalike re-recordings.

Would happily trade most of the Stevie parade here for those cuts, no offense - the Aorta definitely rocks pretty hard when it wants to, but are we missing some of the sweetness, the struggle for meaning, honey-thick luxuriation in rock's uncharted depths and powers? At least we have two Boston cuts. Will have to review my ballot when I get home and see what my highest non-placers were.

Torn between wishing the rollout had gone down to 150, and knowing how much it would have galled me to stop right before "Rock and Roll, Hochie Koo" while Joe Jackson and Pat Benatar became classic rock artists somehow. Maybe 125 - that'd get "Foreplay/Long Time" and admit Dylan and the Doors, who should be here (for better or worse). Also fucking BLINDED BY THE LIGHT, how did that miss the top 100 and yet we have TWO songs by 38 Special. ffs!

And aww, Sandy, thanks. :) Looking forward to it!

Anyway, though - an endless wash of arena applause to some dude, gr8080, and all the staff down at the Aorta. Thanks for the joy that you've given me, the rhythm and rhyme and harmony.

I'm on zing, so it's hard to get back to the full 500 list-- where did 'Renegade' end up?

156. Styx – Renegade 661 points, 11 votes

you better believe I'll be drifting away this evening. This thread has been the bright spot in a fucked up work week.

Cheers to the on-air crew at the AORta.

In a perfect world both Crazy on You AND Barracuda place in the top 10.

― Man, when I tell you she was cool, she was red hot, I mean she was (intheblanks), Friday, August 1, 2014 8:31 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Didn't realize it before this poll, but it's obvious now that we live in a perfect world

Doc Casino your thoughts on classic rock have been a total highlight since this poll began.

so gr8080 tell us more about the pics

aloha friday
internet k-hole?
ship fam?

awwwwwww, that's really nice of you to say, intheblanks! It turns out I actually know very little about the genre, as has been fairly systematically shown, but I love the stuff I know (and have known since childhood, or possibly since before birth), and it's been a really great joy to a) get some educatin' (go to school!) from ILM and b) just revel in other people's joy and memories and unabashed excitement for music that, you'd think, we'd have all been just become totally inured to through ubiquity. It's infectious.

(Shoutouts down the line: Veg was a major hero here as always, and, not to state the obvious, but Sandy has been a serious breath of fresh rockin' air. But there were no bummer posters on this thread; everybody kept the party going, right down the line, and not one toke over.)

Doc Casino OTM, especially here:

It's the flipside of "Come Sail Away," which is my biggest "holy shit, how did that not place?" You can't have classic rock without Styx exhorting you to board a starship and COME SAIL AWAY (rock as adventure, rock as redeemer for the teenage soul)!

it was my #25 and it blows me away to realize that even a #1 placing wouldn't have helped it

then again, it made the "most hated" list

So did "Don't Stop Believin'!" Really amazing how things turn around on this board... I would have assumed Styx was a total lock for this poll. (Of course, as some dude has pointed out, every vote mattered.) OTOH I think I did call the BOC win at some point, just based on my subconscious sense of the ILX hivemind, but I'm definitely not rifling through all the threads to find it.

i am bummed that work was too busy for me to fully rock along, i wanted so bad to CAPS LOCK ROCK as is my wont, but hey, shit was awesome no matter what

now occupies #2 spot in my heart right behind the legendary action movie poll for best poll ever

for those that don't know and those who just can't let the party go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIuyDWzctgY

written by Paul Williams' brother(?)