this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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The only one that has any utility as definition is the latter imo. What's the use of having a label for any rock act older than some arbitrary date?
I made that same argument about how retro games should be defined as games made before the advert of 3d when arcades were the dominant gaming platform, but people just want a term for "old games" without saying "old games."
You were right, never back down
But does that genre descriptor-thing work when it's one we have only been able to make looking back? Of course all genres are made retroactively, after there's enough attention on a niche and enough of it for it to get it's own little corner, but I feel like most bands are somewhat aware and agreeing on the "genre" of music they're making, but - as far as I know - "classic rock" bands didn't think they were making classic rock. They thought they were making [insert genre depending on band].
I am also under the impression that "classic rock" is a genre that's a lot more malleable than most other genres - It's been around for as long as I can recall and always just referred to "rock that's 30+ years old that we couldn't ever really fit into one specific definition".
I agree it doesn't have any real utility, but isn't that most music genres? It's all vibes based, like look at "punk" that is a mess of a descriptor too. How often is it a band, an album or even just a song fits cleanly into a genre? Personally I feel as though it's much more common to hear people go "yeah it's sort of a bluesy, poppy thing with a techno twist" in order to describe something
Genre is always messy, tbh. It's the sort of thing that looks perfectly sensible from a distance but begins to break down almost instantaneously upon closer scrutiny. To get a little philosophical about it, it relies on the emphasis of commonality by flattening or ignoring difference. Even going by the stuff that basically everybody agrees is classic rock like say, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, how much do they have in common really? Is it more salient than their many differences?
That said while genre is a fiction ultimately, it should be a useful fiction. And classification by by perceived stylistic similarities, influences or artistic worldviews is more useful than simply lumping together every "rock" (itself a problematic genre) act prior to 1994
Thank you for your answer! What you're saying makes a lot of sense, but to speak to the "utility": If this classification of "classic rock" has always been around and always meant some variation of "rock from a previous era" then doesn't that mean there is some inherent utility, since it keeps showing up? Like all genres are incredibly vague and vibes-based where the qualifications don't really matter, because we make exceptions anyway, then a genre that's more or less only based on age seems pretty straightforward.
It's not really something there's an "objective" answer to, but I appreciate your insights and am curious about your thoughts.
That's the thing, it hasn't always been around. The rock of the previous era like Elvis and Little Richard, was not called classic rock at the time, and generally isn't considered classic rock even now. It's considered rock and roll specifically
Thank you for your response and sorry, "always" was hyperbolic, but it's a genre I remember from at least the early 00's and back then it already seemed to be a very common thing. So it's been around for a few decades at least, and thru those decades what has been included in the genre has slowly expanded.
If we agree that more or less for as long as the genre has been around, there has been a tendency to include more and more bands based on the criteria of age, I guess wether or not one thinks it has utility essentially boils down to how we view language or something. I'm not really big into philosophy, but I think there's a bunch of those guys talking about that kinda stuff