This is an article that I wrote in 1996. These days my ideas about the classic rock genre are much different.
You can read about them in an update below this article.
 

eyeweekly - 04.11.96
http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_04.11.96/NEWS/nv0411a.htm

MY LIFE AS A LIFESTYLE MARKETING DRONE
by
JOHN SOBOL

Vancouver -- The other day I took part in a market research product test. Strangely, we were testing rock 'n' roll. In 90 minutes we listened to 400 (!) songs. Or rather, the "hooks" of 400 songs.

Five- to seven-second soundbites. An instantly recognizable guitar lick here, a wretchedly familiar chorus there. The clink of a cash register at the beginning of Pink Floyd's "Money," followed by the soggy refrain of Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The U.S.A.," followed by the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"!

Yes, I'm sure George Harrison's guitar does weep these days, for the nightmare of Classic Rock.

The songs themselves no longer exist. Not for the artist, for whom that hit song from 1973 has been franchised to corporate radioland and parlayed into a lucrative but artistically imploded career. Not for classic rock listeners, for whom songs like "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Magic Carpet Ride" are dead zones in which the illusion of youthful vigor inhabits an atrophied spirit. And not for the record labels or radio stations, for whom songs like "Sweet Home Alabama" are literally demographic constellations in a consumer cosmology.

Our host was Bob from Atlanta. He was a pleasant, confident, contemptible shill who explained the rating system. Those songs we loved we were to give a score of 5, while those we hated we were to give a 1. "Songs you associate with your ex-wife, for example, would get a 1," he offered by way of illustration. Bob concluded his oration with the reminder that we were all being paid for doing something we love. "Isn't this a great country?" he added. Bob meant America, of course.

The room was full. Two hundred men, each representing, according to Bob, 4,000 other men. What a responsibility! How would I wield my massive voting block in the political cold war between Aerosmith and David Bowie? The thought of that much power was exhilarating. With my 4,000 men I could challenge the entire music industry -- a marauding mob of enraged revolutionaries trashingBillboard offices, banning from radio any song recorded more than a year ago, asserting the notion that culture lives in the moment!

Yeah, right. I take a look around the room and notice the 200 other 31- to 41-year-old rubes and recall that they too are generals of 4,000-man musical armies, marching division by starry-eyed division up that jailbait-lined "Stairway To Heaven." There will be no insurrection today.

Besides, the gruelling marathon is underway!
47. "And even in the quietest moments!"
48. "Now you're messing with a, uh, uh, a son of a bitch, you're messing with a!"
49. "Angie, Angie!"

I'm trying to separate my consciousness from reality so I can take stock of what's actually happening in this room, but the desire to listen closely to each song, consider it fairly, then gleefully gouge a black hole in the "Hate It" column is too tempting.

So I sit through the first hundred hooks dutifully considering and trashing, considering and trashing, with the occasional nod to Class 2, "Sick Of It," or, very rarely, the Class 3 designation, "OK," which I reserve for Canadian bands (except Bryan Adams) and Jimi Hendrix.

Many songs tossed into the "Hate It" category are great. What astounds me is the number I don't, under any circumstances, want to hear on the radio. Songs that once sounded divinely inspired now sound like cheap imitation leather, worn in a cheap imitation world. Just rotting corpses on the plain of imagination.

Hook 111 comes on, "Won't Get Fooled Again." Damn straight, I say, scratching "Hate It" on Pete Townshend's tombstone.

Other patterns start to emerge by hook 200 or 250, as I start to go into a trance state. I suddenly realize that apart from Hendrix, no songs by blacks are in the mix. And looking around the room I take a closer look and notice exactly one African face, one West Asian face, one Asian face and one Chinese face. Out of 200. This is a random sampling?
And where are the women? Only two hooks of the entire 400 feature women: Heart's "Crazy On You" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon." That's it.

I begin to understand what brainwashing feels like, but mercifully the noise ceases. The last computerized scoresheet is marked with the last "Hate It" and the ordeal is done. I sit waiting! for deprogramming? No, to get paid. My neighbor, Peter, says he saw scenes from his youth as he heard each familiar song. To his credit, he still trashed most of the hooks, but no doubt his sense of identification is what it's all about -- lifestyle advertising. Your life's greatest hits. So long as the movie has a great soundtrack who cares if the story's a little lame?

This music may once have been rock 'n' roll, but now it's an illusion that represents our manufactured identities. I felt weak for not having ripped up the stupid test and walked out. But that wouldn't have mattered either. Looking for a moral, I found only greed.

Isn't this a great country?

  

 

By John Sobol
A Classic Rock Update Written November 14, 2003 for this website

When I wrote "My Life as A Lifestyle Marketing Drone", I was living in Vancouver and making poetry full-time. (Which is why I needed the 50 bucks this market survey was paying.) In 1997 I moved to Toronto and in 2002 happened to meet Craig Martin at his garage sale in Little Italy. He learned that I play the sax and told me he needed a sax player for a new band he was putting together. I came to a rehearsal and we've been brothers ever since.

With Craig I have learned the beauty of musical interpretation, a lesson I have learned very belatedly. With Craig I play classical music. Classic rock.

In Feburary 2003 Craig launched Classic Albums Live, an outgrowth of his life playing in rock and roll cover bands for 20 years. His dream was to bring people together to create and share the music they loved the most. Live, in the moment. His dream was to recreate 'cut for cut and note for note' the greatest rock and roll albums ever made. And that is Classic Albums Live, a monthly concert series at one of Toronto's biggest and best clubs, The Phoenix Concert Theatre, sponsored by Q107, the classic classic rock radio station in the T-dot.

To date I have played the sax parts in rocking recitals of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Supertramp's Crime of the Century, The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and The Beatles' White Album. And other months there were albums with no sax, like Led Zeppelin IV, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, The Who's Who's Next, and Queen's Night at the Opera. All for audiences ranging from 600 to 1,200.

These shows are incredible events. Having been a player and a spectator I would say that the level of ecstasy is about equal among both parties. This music is SO great that everybody gets blown away. As musicans, the opportunity to play such remarkably powerful and beautiful music to people who are so happy to hear it is an amazing experience. The love is overwhelming. For spectators, the opportunity to hear the music that they love the most brought to loud and vital life in a great big club by a band of deeply committed inspired rock and roll veterans is dumbfounding.

Because what you discover in the presence of this music when it is played in concert, is just what it sounds like live - beyond the recording that has been its only existence. At least for most of us. Because Pink Floyd only ever performed Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety once. Because John Bonham and Pete Entwhistle and John Lennon are dead and this music will never be played by its creators again.

And yes it is played live - some of it sometimes - by cover bands. But almost never complete albums in their entirety. And to my knowledge never with such care and craftmanship. And almost never with such soul. Or such extreme attention to detail. These perfect albums in particular are all integral, like symphonies, and playing them is epic.

Digging into and learning this music it becomes a journey of respect, a deep humbling in order to channel the spirit of the music and its creators. It's the only way to do it justice; to abandon all the attitude I had bottled up and the 'objective' critical perspective. Instead playing this music asked me to become the music, and in doing so I could only marvel at its richnes and resonance.

Craig finds his players out of the blue. At garage sales, 7-11s, anywhere. "Hey, you're a musician right? Be in my band." He just knows. It's a gift. And it's a lifetime of hanging with people. He's all about the love. And about being a pro. Craig always finds seasoned skilled musicians who know how to get along while giving it everything they've got. They are great players and great people.

And Classic Albums Live brings out the best of them. Because as good as they are as players, and as much as some of these players have had major careers playing their own music, the reality is that none of us have created music of the same influence and beauty as the music we are playing in this series. And so when these great players get to play this great music, for people who are pumped to an extreme degree because of their lifelong connection to this music, the results are magical.

This is no cheezefest. This is high art with balls. Rock'n'roll beauty. Breathing life into the vinyl anthems of the world. Music played by people who have spent their lives training for this moment, every moment that they play. Of course Craig would say that the music was already alive, that this is the greatest music ever and can never die. As you can tell from the article above there was a time when I felt very differently. When I wanted classic rock banned from the radio to make room for today's music. And to be honest, I don't think I feel any different now. But I do feel differently about the music itself. Now I understand that the greatest popular composers and poets of their era really are immortal and that their music deserves to live. And when it is played live it is truly amazing to hear how hard and sweetly this music rocks. These are brilliant masterpieces without a shadow of a doubt. And they are taking on a different life. At least for me.

 So what I felt then is no longer relevant. Not very much anyway. Because if you don't like classic rock you can just get your music elsewhere. And if you do - well if you do - come down to one of our shows. Times and dates available at www.classicalbumslive.com. Check it out!