Why is it cool to hate these bands? Frank Zappa complained once

>>73780117
they aren't good or bad. just decent pop music. but i mean back then they didn't have the internet.
so it was either listen to this shit over and over. or save up money to go buy records.

>>73780157
haha dude, they ARE bad. they SUCK. haha
wtf "decent pop music"
you must have some kind of contempt for pop music if your standards are so low.
GTFO pshh

because they're shit. i understand why your mad though. shit like weezer and radiohead is praised on mu for some reason but look down on bad 80s pop rock

foreigner is easily the worst example of dad-rock.

Probably doesn't help that their big hits are grossly overplayed on classic rock radio.

>>73780624
Ugh, I don't understand it. Bands with huge catalogs and all they play are the same couple of hit singles over and over and over.

>>73780624
>Bands with huge catalogs and all they play are the same couple of hit singles over and over and over.
i mean the whole point of the radio was to get you to stay on air. so you can listen to shitty commercials
avg person will turn the station if its a song they don't know.

>>73780781
I knew a DJ who worked for a CRR station and quit his job because of the corporate politics involved. The big radio networks like Clear Channel are exactly like this, they give stations a programmed list of songs to play which rarely includes B-sides or deep cuts.

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>>73780243
>>73780157
Styx was god-tier, plebs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs

>>73780624
>>73780781
>>73780837

What you guys want are "DEEP CUTS". Sometimes you'd find an underground station that would basically take records and play whatever the fuck track they wanted to

Remember, mainstream stations ONLY play singles. Want to hear the weird quirky closer track from that one album? You gotta buy it

>>73780898
Agreed. It's not for everyone but that's ok.

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This was from a Steve Hoffman thread, which actually was full of hilarious logical fallacies and misinformed posts, but...

>>73780962
>I'd add that there are quite a few younger fans of these bands

Wait, wut? I was to an REO Speedwagon show once at a county fair, it was just nostalgic middle aged mullet guys with beer guts, there weren't any 20 year olds there (or very few).

>>73781084
>county fair
makes sense

>>73780962
>punks were anathema to the values of Middle America
Ok but anyone who was a serious music enthusiast or played in a band followed that shit back in the day. Including the corporate rock bands he cites, you can see in some albums like REO's Nine Lives that they were trying to compete with punk.

There's an important distinction between casual listeners who just want something they can dance or have sex to and active music nerds.

>>73780837
Sort of. My favorite time of the week on terrestrial stations is way late on Sunday nights. The non Clear Channel, CBS, and Cumulus stations air really weird stuff that I may never hear again. Not all of it is excellent, but most of it is groovy. Also, the boomers bought the records so deep cuts are always welcome.

I've heard big tremors are occuring in terrestrial radio. A lot of the big companies like CBS and Clear Channel are in big debt. I'd like to see them collapse. People say that something worse might come out of it, but terrestrial radio is so bleak right now I can't imagine how it could get worse.

>>73780117
Styx > Foreigner >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Journey > REO

In the 60s, rock kept changing. Things were done for the first time, lots of technical breakthroughs (and other substances) helped the music evolve in lots of different directions at a really fast pace. The possibilities seemed endless.

But they weren't. Rock icons died, drugs kicked in. The 60s giants like the Stones, Beatles, and Clapton were approaching middle age and almost out of ideas. With the protest era over, there was also not as much stuff to sing about. Rock became a corporate industry. Which is why bands like Foreigner happened, they appealed to women and middle schoolers, but serious music enthusiasts/crits like Christgau et al were left cold by them and wanting more than a generic love ballad. The stuff was basically musical wallpaper, not bad for what it was, but not a patch on the actual dangerous, groundbreaking, larger-than-life rock personalities of the 60s.

>>73781438
The 60s suck.

Journey's manager once called them "not so much a band as an entire floor in the offices of Columbia's headquarters."

In other words, a commercial hit factory and not a rock-and-roll band.

One notable characteristic of these bands is the extremely faceless members. None of them had a standout personality like a Jagger or a Townshend, everyone was pretty anonymous.

>>73781479
You have shit taste :^)

When my cousin was like 14 back in the late 70s, he said this one friendless weirdo he went to school with kept trying to sell him on the Clash and Elvis Costello, ie. Christgau-approved artists. He said he and almost all of his peers had never in their lives heard of these artists, it took several years for him to "discover" them.

The people behind the music weren't any less dedicated and committed to their art than were art rockers or folkies or whomever.

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>>73781776
Ok, so you're telling me that when Neal Schon and Gregg Rollie left Santana to start Journey, they were trying to find a new creative outlet to express themselves instead of making as much money as they could.

>>73780117
I don't know much about Zappa (I only have his London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 1 CD), but I do know that he is 100% correct in that statement.

>>73781834
In the beginning. After their first two albums failed to sell, Steve Perry came aboard and the rest was history. Of course, the music world had changed a lot since the Santana days, that jazzy, proggy, fusion sound wasn't cool anymore by the Carter years.

Yes, journey were seen as gay and shit. Then for some reason in the 2000's everyone was all wtf i love journey now.

Total CIA psyop

>>73781897
And I guess Sam Cooke-inspired music is somehow supposed to be less artistically valid than Mahavishnu-inspired music? The only real problem with latter-day Journey was that the lyrics could be very trite behind what was actually pretty good music. And Steve Perry was an outstanding singer.

>>73781942
That was not implied anywhere. I said the first two Journey records were jazz-prog fusion that failed to sell more than about 20 copies, so Columbia gave them an ultimatum--take the saccharine crooner or else get cut.

>>73781270
There are millions more casual music listeners than music nerds, though. Stations don't care about their passionate fan bases, they care about the masses.

>>73781976
How concerted was their bid really? What precedent was there that Old Journey + Steve Perry was going to be a guaranteed hit? The only group out there before them that was successful and similar in sound was maybe Boston, who was huge at the time. Journey didn't sound like Zeppelin, didn't sound like Aerosmith, maybe sounded a little more like REO Speedwagon. The thing is, prior to 1976 or so, none of the "corporate rockers" were all that successful.

Slicker hard rock was coming into style and Journey had the fortune of good timing when they moved into that area. IMO, they should have thanked Boston for paving the way with melodic rock and high-pitched vocals.

Ever been to high school? Remember the cliques and the self certified cool kids? Some of them never matured and became rock "critics".

Wasn't it actually Rolling Stone that peddled the "corporate rock" and "faceless" tags for those bands? At least when you're a teenager or even in college, you can be forgiven for falling into the trap of caring what's cool or not cool to like. Yet, that's how critics from rags like Rolling Stone and Spin make their living.

>>73782108
Please define the term "corporate rock" for us.

>>73782127
I the record label is telling the artist what songs to record, what mix to use, what singles/videos to release, what appearance the artist should have, they are probably corporate rock.

>>73782127
rock music for profit

>>73782156
Not really, no. I mean, Heart went through that phase but I don't think Columbia were telling Journey how to dress. Plus, I'd wager that any artist signed to a major has discussions with their label about which tracks to issue as a single or over shooting videos, back when they mattered. If a definition applies to everyone it becomes meaningless.

Corporate rock is about faceless bands which are more of a brand name than anything. Like I said above, most people can't even name a member of REO Speedwagon or Foreigner without consulting Wikipedia. Heart maybe a little more, but that's because they were women and sex sells. That is why the albums tended to feature thematically linked artwork and a logo rather than the band members. And that is why Styx, Journey and Foreigner can continue touring casinos and county fairs for nostalgia mullet guys with beer guts despite missing the vocalist who sang on most of their big hits.

Also corporate rock groups tend to be comprised of veteran session musicians whom a label assembles into a band.

>>73782217
Why? They each started and had major success in the 1970s. They most certainly belong with the rest.

I was thinking about it and all of these bands are to the stones and beatles what post grunge was to grunge.
Like after cobain died some jew was slamming his fist on a table saying he wanted pictures pictures of spiderman wearing ripped jeans and making generic rock music

>>73782241
REO Speedwagon had been releasing albums since Nixon was president, but they didn't have any major success until Hi Infidelity blew them up overnight.

Journey same deal, they didn't get big until the very end of the 70s.

For both bands, the key to success was power ballads that could be played on top 40 and appealed to women.

Boston, Styx, and were a little different. Their first hits were also ballads, but they were came along much sooner with Styx in 1975 and Boston a year later. But, ballads did not define their sound, image, or audience. They went on to have major hard rock hits that were big with the core male rock audience.

Foreigner started off hard, but were never really a hard rock band. If anything, they are a pop band, and probably don't belong in the discussion.

Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Rod Stewart. They were blasted for their ballads, but it ultimately didn't hurt them.

But, none of these bands were "corporate". No one told them what to play, record, or release, or how to do it. Again, they just happened to have an ear for top 40. That's all.

>>73782294
>Like after cobain died some jew was slamming his fist on a table saying he wanted pictures pictures of spiderman wearing ripped jeans and making generic rock music

And thus Live, Silverchair, and Candlebox.

>>73782307
REO actually started to get major attention with You Can Tuna Piano, But You Can't Tuna Fish which came out in 1978. Journey's first album with Steve Perry was also pretty huge.

Check out the album sales, lots of rock at the time was successful without hit singles/radio play, think Aerosmith, KISS, and Ted Nugent. Anyways, its pointless to not consider them 70s bands just because they continued into the 80s successfully.

"Corporate Rock" was so named because it was designed for mass appeal. It's appeal is to the lowest common denominator. Designed to sell. It didn't break new ground, and in the 70s was viewed in contrast to less popular rock bands which did. A band from the same era (like Gentle Giant for example) would never be called 'corporate rock' because they had musical integrity. They weren't a rehashing of what came before them, designed solely for the purpose of selling a bunch of records to the masses. The 'underground FM stations which thrived in the late 60s and early 70s and which encouraged experimentation and discovery, were usurped by corporately owned rock stations who used 'playlists' populated by the kind of bands mentioned by the OP. Bands with very little creativity, but with plenty of mass appeal.

>>73782074
Uh huh. And at the same time there's plenty of 50 year old men with mullets who never grew up and still own a '77 Trans Am and listen to Foreigner.

>>73780117
Probably because a sitcom or a comedy film made fun of them.

I would characterize corporate rock as any band named after a city, state, country or continent and/or has an album cover with a spaceship on it.

>>73782509
Or with a name that refers to a mode of transport, not being a resident of a country, or the transition from one place to another.

The critics have put down "Corporate Rock" for years and have WAY too much influence on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I got tired of Rolling Stone Magazine's snobbery years ago. I just don't get the jeers and boos for what is considered Corporate Rock.

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>>73782549
>>73782509

They're all just trying to get laid. Indie bands are just as shitty and fake

How does Tom Petty avoid the corporate rock tag?

The only thing "dangerous" about him was maybe standing up to his label a couple times publicly.

Tom petty is southern rock and has always fought against da man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00sy6_jv7Lc

>>73782693
I guess it was because he had stripped-down, back-to-basics roots rock that avoided all of the horrible overproduction that characterized bands like Journey, as a consequence his music has also aged far better. Petty's songwriting is also pretty straightforward and honest--while he's not exactly Mr. IQ, his lyrics have a simple, clear point to them and he avoids melodrama and cliches. And once in a while, he comes up with something surprising/interesting.

For instance, the chorus of Free Fallin' is a masterstroke both lyrically and musically. The refrain literally comes soaring out of the soft-spoken, laid back verse with "I'm FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE.... Free FALLin'." This twist, turning the "bad boy's" freedom on it's ear, is both smart and surprising. There's many other examples like this but this is the first one that springs to mind.

Musically speaking, I guess I could argue that by taking a roots rock, Byrds influenced approach the Heartbreakers avoided the Big Stadium Arena Sound that some of the aforementioned bands have at times. It's the little things with with The Heartbreakers, Mike Campbell's subtle but interesting guitar licks, Benmont's B-3 colors and Stan Lynch's flavorful backbeat (quietly highlights a lot of TP's work, his drumming on Don't Do Me Like That, for example.)

>>73782693
Tom Petty avoids it because he has a very well-known "face" and personality. He's on the album covers, rather than some lurid, colorful painting of spaceships or sea serpents and waves crashing on rocks with a big recurring logo. He also was on the fence dividing trad rock with New Wave influences, so his sound was harder to pin down.

Still, classic rock radio did not play Tom Petty for a long time, probably not until the mid-90s.

DAILY REMINDER THAT NIRVANA'S SIGNATURE SONG WAS LITERALLY JUST A REWRITE OF MORE THAN A FEELING.

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>>73782844
>Tom Petty avoids it because he has a very well-known "face" and personality. He's on the album covers, rather than some lurid, colorful painting of spaceships or sea serpents and waves crashing on rocks with a big recurring logo
Uh...

I agree that Tom is not a pitch-perfect vocalist, but rock doesn't come more slickly produced and note-perfect than Damn The Torpedoes (which I'd say is one of the 20 or so greatest rock albums ever recorded). But Tom and Jimmy Iovine slaved over that record to get a big, huge, note-perfect sound for the radio.

>>73782894
Lyl I didn't know about that album. I guess Petty was trying to gain more corporate rock cred or something?

>>73782914
It's a clean, well-produced album that I don't think crosses into being too sterile or slick, but in any event, corporate rock derives from hard rock or prog, and Petty certainly doesn't come from that background. All the usual suspects with band names derived from locations, travel, or being from somewhere else do.

>>73782928
Nah, if that were a Styx or Asia cover, there would be a sea serpent or pterodactyl attacking the spaceship. :^)

>>73782844
>Tom Petty avoids it because he has a very well-known "face" and personality

Steve Perry, Sammy Hagar, Phil Collins, and Don Henley are well-known personalities, does that make them not corporate? FWIW, AC/DC's members have always been quite anonymous but they still fill stadiums.

>>73781751
Whoawhoawhoa hold on there. The Clash introduced a lot of middle America kids to reggae, ska, and dub. I don't think Boston or Foreigner introduced kids to anything but mullets and fucking in the backseat of a Camaro and making money in a very cliched, generic fashion.

>>73783014
Also, I mean, Taylor Swift has her face on all of her album covers and she's not exactly the summit of alternative music.

>>73783053
The joke hasn't got a thing to do with whatever "corporate rock" did or didn't do, it has to do with the kind of critical posturing that filled up music magazines when The Clash were in their heyday. "The Only Band That Matters" and all that crap. It would have been funny even at the time, but it's even funnier in hindsight.

I don't think REO Speedwagon were capable of writing these lyrics.

Elevator! Going up!
In the gleaming corridors of the 51st floor
The money can be made if you really want some more
Executive decision-a clinical precision
Jumping from the windows-filled with indecision

I get good advice from the advertising world
Treat me nice says the party girl
Koke adds life where there isn't any
So freeze, man, freeze

It's the pause that refreshes in the corridors of power
When top men need a top up long before the happy hour
Your snakeskin suit and your alligator boot
You won't need a launderette, you can send them to the vet!

I get my advice from the advertising world
Treat me nice says the party girl
Koke adds life where there isn't any
So freeze, man, freeze

Koka Kola advertising and kokaine
Strolling down the Broadway in the rain
Neon light sign says it
I read it in the paper-they're crazy!

Here's Wiki's definition:

"Arena rock (sometimes stadium rock, anthem rock, or corporate rock) is rock music that utilises large arena venues, particularly sports venues, for concerts or series of concerts linked in tours. Historically, arena rock bands have often come from the hard rock, heavy metal and progressive rock genres, utilising a more commercially oriented and radio-friendly sound, with highly-produced music that includes both hard rock numbers and power ballads, both often employing anthemic choruses."

That's about right. So, a band can start out as non-corporate and end up corporate, like Journey when Steve Perry joined the band and gave them a wider, radio orientated sound. Or some bands like Boston are corporate rock out of the gate.

I'm just gonna say that a lot of those corporate rock bands worked their asses off to get to where they were. REO Speedwagon were formed in the late 60s, put out their first album in 1971, and played bars and clubs in the Midwest for years until their big breakout in the late 70s. Styx also dated to the late 60s and their first big hit, "Lady" wasn't picked up by radio stations until two years after the album it was on came out. I'd say they toiled a lot harder than the Sex Pistols who were a couple of teenage kids whom some record producer picked up and made a boyband out of and pretended to be all edgy and shocking.

>>73783222
Yeah that's actually pretty funny to contemplate. Boston was literally one auteur playing around in his basement while the Sex Pistols were a manufactured boyband who recorded AITUK with state-of-the-art recording equipment.

If you don't like the first Boston album, you don't like music. Sorry. What, you're too cool? I'm glad I'm old enough to not care about that stuff. That record is a masterpiece, Tom Scholz had the vision, he had the will... Oh yeah he knew this guy named Brad Delp (RIP--it was very sad what happened to you). Seriously, have you listened to it?

Greatest debut album in the history of recorded music.

>>73781479
shut up nu-male

>>73783222
Hey, my dad knew REO Speedwagon back in their bar band days in the late 60s. He thinks the corporate rock label is unfair and they toiled hard for many years before they finally made it.

Corporate rock can broadly be taken to mean middle-of-the-road radio/women-friendly music that doesn't do anything edgy or offend your parents. Thus, Journey would fit that description, The Clash would not.

>>73782074
>>73782108
Critics are kind of a hivemind and tend to see themselves as "tastemakers". Some artists have always gotten a free ride from the music press no matter what they put out (think Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, etc). Others like Bob Dylan have been a little more problematic, still most critics are in agreement on what albums of his were duds (Self-Portrait, Live at Budokan, the Christian stuff, etc).

Then other acts were objects of derision. Rush possibly more than other, ELP were extremely cool for critics to dislike, and then there were the easy targets already listed in this thread (Journey, Foreigner, Loverboy, Styx, REO).

Bands with working class roots/fans like REO Speedwagon always get shat on by critics because most of them are urban hipsters like Christgau who have a snob disliking of blue collar Americans. Based on the analyses of Pierre Bourdieu, a possible reason for that would be that people tend to reject most vehemently the tastes associated with class formations just below theirs on the social hierarchy, whereas those of classes more "safely" removed are often embraced.

Lyl the irony of it all is that those first-wave punk bands from the 70s-early 80s have been _way_ more commercialized that any of the corporate rock bands of that time. You can go to Hot Topic and buy a Ramones or Black Flag T-shirt but I defy you to find a Foreigner T-shirt in there. There's also distinctly more biographies/biopics about Johnny Rotten and Patti Smith than there are about Steve Perry.

>>73782509
>>73782127
Be apolitical.

Be anthemic.

Cover all your bases (power ballads to appeal to women, rockers to appeal to men).

Overproduce everything and make it so slick you can eat off of it.

Hire promo guys to pass out the white payola. Styx referred to radio programming directors as "penguins", as they loved the snow.

Mega tour behind every album, playing each song the same every night. I believe Styx even used canned stage patter.

I think there may be some demographic resentment against baby boomers going on from the Gen Xers who came of age under the shadow of the baby boomers.

The boomer generation were huge and extremely self-absorbed, so they believed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the be-all-and-end-all of music and nothing that came after could possibly touch them. Since there were so many more boomers than the first wave of Gen Xers (ie. people born in the early 60s), they continued to have massive buying power. In fact even when punk/New Wave broke in the late 70s, most of those bands were actually boomer-aged guys born in the late 40s-early 50s, Debbie Harry was born in 1945 for goodness sake.

The kids in flyover country didn't care, they just wanted basic beer-and-Harleys kind of rock. Corporate rock fit their tastes well. But the hip urban kids in New York, LA, and San Fran wanted to hear punk and New Wave stuff, and this wasn't getting played on the radio like Boston were.

Because of this background, people who like corporate rock assume that people who hate it are also making a value judgement about the kind of people who like this music. And often they are correct.

Read the new Heart bio...A clever, popular hippie band of friends, brothers and sisters eventually become an even greater mega successful cog of the music industry selling sex with material written by outside established "hit makers" and the record label dictating nearly every move they made. Both Ann and Nancy grew quickly to hate it. Loved the success and the money but they knew they became sellouts. Heart is a perfect example of the corporate rock evolution within a band.

All Hail Michael Fisher!

Never listened to Journey or Foreigner, but Styx and REO are god tier.

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>>73780962
>This music was the music of my high school years (1977-80). I don't love it because of nostalgia, I just love it
...

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Pieces of Eight [A&M, 1978]

Wanna know why Starcastle are heavying it up? They want to go platinum just like Styx. Fortunately they haven't yet gotten around to the cathedral organ. C-

>>73784056
Christgau is a faggot hack. I agree with some of his opinions but he has a massive hateboner for anything mainstream as well as metal and prog.

>>73780117
For a lot of reasons.

I haven't commented yet so better late than never.
I hate corporate rock if that means Boston, Journey, Kansas, REO, Fleetwood Mac, whatever. It's like an over sugary candy that you have to spit out. It's too contrived and calculated and a million miles from what rock-and-roll or even great pop is all about.

>>73785399
I wouldn't call Fleetwood Mac sugary-sweet, even their pop stuff was fairly raw-edged and lacking in opera vocals, glossy production, and spaceship/serpent cover art.

The complaints of music critics back then were not wholly without justification, they were upset that the punk/New Wave stuff wasn't getting traction, that the airwaves were instead flooded with Boston and Jefferson Starship. The Clash eventually broke through shortly before breaking up. But The Sex Pistols? The Damned? Even Elvis Costello only managed on platinum album and only a couple of hits.

And even that's more chart success than the US punk bands could muster. Of course Blondie broke after going disco, but hipster heroes like The Ramones, Television, The Replacement, Husker Du, etc. etc. pretty much languished in the shadows of Fleetwood Mac, Peter Frampton, Heart, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Kansas, Supertramp, Boston, etc. etc.

The lesson of Frampton Come Alive/Rumors/Boston/Hotel California was that you could make more money easier by selling previously unheard of numbers of a few albums than selling smaller numbers of a greater variety of albums. Frampton Comes Alive's success was organic, in that no one predicted it. But once the record companies picked up on the fact that that level of success was possible, you can damn well bet they tried to recreate it. The "corporate rock" acts were the bands who were both willing and able to meet that demand.

>>73785512
The resentment about corporate rock had a lot to do with radio at the time. Whatever else was happening in music, FM radio basically decided that Heart, Journey, REO etc were now the flagship bands. They were "corporate rock" in the sense that the radio corporation was behind them. Minor stuff like Loverboy, New England, etc would go right in because it sounded like those bands. Everything else had to sneak in sideways-- It took seven albums before Costello got a song (Everyday I Write the Book) into regular rotation-- most stations didn't touch the early classics. Peter Case never stood a chance. Lindsey Buckingham was an automatic add because of Fleetwood Mac. Familiarity was what mattered. Radio was still a big deal to most people at the time, and for the first time radio was really out of touch with what was happening musically, or large chunks of it.

Plus if you lived in flyover country, you didn't have access to the hip, urban music scenes that spawned punk rock. You were limited to major label releases and radio play.

It was all about Payola. Epic, Columbia, and Atlantic were bribing radio programmers left and right to play their corporate moneymaker bands.

Eh? Those punk and New Wave guys got plenty of interviews and Rolling Stone Magazine cover stories back in the day. It's patently stupid to act as if they were absent any media coverage.

>>73781909
In the early 80s The Rolling Stones held a festival in Philadelphia and Journey were there and got booed off stage.

>>73785661
Magazines, sure, not on TV other than Saturday Night Live who regularly featured "alternative" music acts. Most New Wave bands got mainstream attention only when they came up with a hit single like Heart of Glass or Whip It or the entire Cars S/T.

>>73785600
Elvis Costello was too bohemian and abstract to ever get mainstream attention; his songs are full of obscure historical and literary references and subtle jokes. Plus he never came up with a hit single that was surefire radio play.

AC/DC on the other hand wrote lyrics that edgy 13 year olds could appreciate, so...

>>73785631
Back in the hippie era, radio programmers could pretty much freely play whatever they liked. However, during the late 70s, radio became increasingly corporatized and stations were given a set playlist which usually always featured the latest Journey or Jefferson Starship single.

>>73785751
EC was on Columbia, one of the biggest record labels, and got no shortage of advertising. He didn't get anywhere in the US because of several stupid things he did, which I won't waste time mentioning, but you can look up on Wikipedia or whatever.

It all boils down to this: Journey and Heart and their ilk...ok, they were good at what they did which was deliver slick corporate product for radio play. Steve Perry could hit the high notes and Neal Schon could play those glossy solos. Arena rock in a nutshell. However, from a purely artistic standpoint it's pretty damn limited music compared to what Elvis Costello or other bohos of the time were doing. Journey and Heart were never great, they were at best competent and gave a lot of white trash teenagers basic, catchy songs they could dance and have sex to. The people in charge were the people who stood to make a buck, and they blocked the entrance to better people who should have gotten more of a chance.

>>73785825
Yes and Columbia was also Bruce Springsteen's label. The thing is, Springsteen didn't get much attention from his first two albums and Columbia were ready to cut him, so he had to generate a hit single (Born To Run) to stay afloat.

I'm sorry that Elvis Costello was never a star. Maybe if the US had had some sort of Ministry of Culture, that allocated radio airplay on the basis of artistic merit, instead of on the basis of what radio listeners actually enjoyed, he would have been a star.

>>73785930
What? Springsteen was absolutely huge in 1975, he made magazine covers everywhere and everyone wanted to interview him, and he was being hyped as the next Dylan.

Springsteen and Costello were both part of the media's never-ending search for the next Bob Dylan, and ironically enough they ended up being label mates with him.

>Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen are on one of the biggest record labels from day one
>REO Speedwagon busted their asses for years playing bars in the Midwest
>Styx's first few albums were indie-label
>yet they were evil corporate music created for money
...

>>73780837
Television-style ain't the only way it's gotta be, kid, and just 'cause it is sure as shit don't mean it was.

>>73785751
>AC/DC on the other hand wrote lyrics that edgy 13 year olds could appreciate, so...
Or Van Halen for that matter.

Let's not kid ourselves about Payola here. The record industry has always bribed and arm-twisted to get their talent media coverage. Sometimes, like with the Beatles or Stones or Springsteen, actually talented artists emerge. A lot of times though, you just end up with trash like Foreigner.

>>73785930
I mean, fuck. Costello always got his balls massively licked by every music publication. If people like Bangs and Christgau had had their way, he would have had 20 hit singles. Even after he said some blatantly racist stuff, he still got a complete free ride from the press.

Yet he was never more than a niche artist in the US.

Again, the question isn't whether Styx/REO/Journey etc worked hard for their success and deserved their fanbase. The question is whether they were the best, most interesting and important artists around in 1978-85. Radio largely decided they were. I can't believe anyone else would.

I wouldn't name Elvis Costello as the one artist that should have gotten that level of exposure instead. I'd name XTC, the Ramones, Prince (largely ignored by rock radio before Purple Rain), X and Talking Heads. And in terms of heavy rock, Motorhead. Lemmy's lyrics are more clever than David Lee Roth will ever imagine, and he never butchered "You Really Got Me."

>>73786213
>XTC

Black Sea was a perfect album imo. Edgy, rocking, tuneful, and the guitar and drum sounds are fantastic. Tragically, they got no attention here because the US release was handled by RSO, who were in shambles at the time.

By the way, when I'm talking corporate radio playlists, I mean Lee Abrams' Superstars Radio Network. Some stations followed it to the letter while others were willing to experiment a little bit more, but it came to pretty much define FM radio by the time Carter was president. The basics of the format included no black music, no punk rock, no heavy metal, and no album cuts that weren't singles. Thus, the most bland, homogenized, inoffensive music is what got airplay.

I'd say MTV were a considerable improvement over FM since they'd play almost anything that had an appealing video to accompany it.

One thing to remember about the punk/New Wave era is that this was the last time when alternative acts got onto major labels. The Clash, Devo, XTC, etc were all on Epic and Columbia next to Boston and Journey. Some of them never managed to produce that winning hit single like Whip It.

By 1982 or so, alternative bands only got on indie labels.

A question I've asked and never had answered is why critical punching bags like Rush, Neil Diamond and Sabbath got critical resuscitations but corporate rock is still waiting? Even "yacht rock" has some cool appeal, even if in a mildly ironic way.

Major labels are obviously in the business to make a profit, it doesn't make sense why they'd sign a guy like Elvis Costello with no potential for hit singles.

>>73786441
IDK, I am going to take the guess that Costello was signed as a prestige thing and not necessarily a moneymaker the way Journey would be.

>>73781897
Where and when exactly did this Madison Avenue deal between the suits and Steve Perry take place?

>>73786074
This

>>73786475
Sometime in mid-1977 in a Columbia office in San Fran. Journey's first three albums didn't sell anything, so Rollie and Schon received an ultimatum to sign a new singer and write pop hits, or take a hike.

>>73786497
>>73786475
Some of this stuff abutts the conspiracy theorists.

The suits, the artist, the meeting room, the blueprint is laid out, a deal is cut.

There are certainly plenty of instances of already-successful bands being told to conform to a certain sound, and to stop doing the very things (like writing their own material) that had made them successful. See Heart, Chicago, McGuinn/Clark/Hillman, Tubes, etc.

>>73786497
Look, it's no different than Springsteen. His first two albums weren't major hits and Columbia said if he wanted to stay with them, he'd better produce a hit single or else. Enter Born To Run.

>>73786497
It was probably the best course they could take, seeing as to how Journey weren't skilled enough musicians to compete with the likes of Mahavishnu Orchestra.

>>73786565
Not really the same. Springsteen, like any artist, can be dropped for selling poorly. No one officially told Bruce to fire his musicians, hire outside song writers, change his fashion sense, use certain producers etc. He ultimately came up with the winning combination and "saved his bacon."

If anything many of the perceived "corporate rock" artists can be noted for a facelessness, a lack of magical charisma, very little passion, and a distinct absence of purpose other than to sell records and tickets. At this late stage, exactly who fits the bill is left up to the listener.

I submit that there may be a scientific way to determine whether a band qualifies as "Corporate Rock"...

Potential key factors:

- label-financed radio play (Payola)
- outside songwriters
- "name" producers
- mainstream success
- critical scorn
- interchangeable band members

In other words, any situation in which commercial considerations override artistic decisions.

>>73786702
Not true, in fact most corporate rock groups like Foreigner, Heart, and Styx wrote all their own songs, they didn't use professional song doctors. It was only in the 80s after they had run out of creative ideas that they needed Desmond Child and Dianne Warren to write all their songs.

Also, regardless of Styx's comments about paying off DJs with nose candy, payola is what broke rock-and-roll in the first place in the 50s-60s so that stations played Little Richard instead of Pat Boone.

>>73786074
Boston had been around since 1970, it took many years to get a record deal. Foreigner also got turned down by a bunch of labels before Atlantic picked them up. These don't square with the narrative about them being industry plants.

>>73786856
>>73786764
So what would be the narrative then? The commercial heyday for these bands was roughly between 1981 and 1985. By the second half of the 80s, they were definitely passe and their old fans had grown up and moved on or whatever. Some bands like Heart and Cheap Trick came back in the late 80s with professional song doctors.

>>73786878
>The commercial heyday for these bands was roughly between 1981 and 1985

Try more like 1976 to 1981, that is to say between Boston S/T and Journey's Escape. By 81-85 actually the corporate rock bands were starting to run out of gas.

As someone else said, REO Speedwagon started as a country rock band that were little-known outside the Midwest, they started to get national attention with YCTAPBYCTAF, then Nine Lives switched to a furious hard-rock sound that made them less commercial, so then they went full-up pop mode and became the biggest band on the planet for a year and a half.

I was born in 1964 so I grew up in the corporate rock heyday and honestly, I just remember Journey, et al as little more than musical wallpaper. The stuff was just kind of "there" but it didn't really mean anything. Kind of the McDonalds of popular music.

>>73786993
Tell us more, oldfag-kun.

>>73787049
I was a pretty nerdy kid growing up and I didn't care about drugs or partying, it was hard to talk about ancient Rome or Galileo and stuff with the guys I went to school with, since most of them had few interests beyond muscle cars and getting drunk. After 40 years, a number of them are no longer around either due to accidents, cancer, alcohol poisoning, or just plain bad luck.

Where do the Cars fit into this?

>>73787132
Their songs were pretty generic, I'd say they were closer to corporate rock in spirit despite the New Wave production. The Police want further into ska, but, at their core, were still just a rock band. That's exactly why they had mass appeal, too.

Music nerds like us, Christgau, and Bangs appreciated quirkiness, music that has a message/social commentary, and innovates things, but the general public just wants something mindless that they can party and fuck to. That's why bands like Journey, Styx, Foreigner, and REO Speedwagon get labeled "corporate" rock. They didn't offer anything of what the people on the edge and constantly looking for something new were looking for at that time.

The corporate rock label is a little silly, obviously Journey and Foreigner didn't use professional song doctors and weren't manufactured by Columbia in a board room, they were bands who simply didn't aspire to the intellectual/hipster pretensions of The Clash or Elvis Costello. They wanted to make generic, accessible pop rock and fill arenas, and to that end, they succeeded. And apparently it's cool to hate them for it.

>>73787238
I always took the Cars' songs as a slightly sarcastic take on arena rock. Also it's not as if they had any sex appeal like Steve Perry did. Ric Ocasek looked like an extra from the Living Dead.

>>73780117
>Why is it cool to hate these bands?
>they were the only rock groups who got played on the radio for a while.
you answered your own fucking question dweeb

>>73787238
I like the Police. They made five classic albums and broke up, never to get back together. Good move instead of staying around past their time and embarrassing themselves.

I've unironically heard people call Steve Perry a great vocalist. Maybe great at giving the listener a debilitating brain aneurysm.

>>73787934
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0sfhppn1e8

The riff is kind of cool until the vocals kick in. And this is actually one of his better performances. Don't Stop Believing is truly Steve at his worst (and unfortunately it's their most played song).

>>73780295
>shit like radiohead
If you think any of those bands are on the same level as radiohead you need to rethink your life

>>73787934
Dennis DeYoung may possibly be a worse vocalist than him even.

>>73787991
>>73787934
Geddy Lee is even worse than both of them combined.

>>73787982
^This. I don't even like Radiohead, but to put them in the same category as Journey is an insult.

>>73781479
What an insightful post

I have to feel a little bad for Steve Perry because if you've ever seen interviews of him, he's a nice, nice man and he had the dignity to retire when he started losing his voice in the mid-90s rather than embarrass himself like Paul Stanley (never ever look at recent KISS concert footage, I'm not kidding).

>>73780117
Just seeing those logos made me gag.
SFW board man.

ITT: People who hate 80s soft rock because their mom used to beat them while playing Don't Stop Believing

>>73788071
That or they hate those bands because Christgau told them to hate.

Is Frank Zappa confirmed the biggest shit lord of them all?

>Hates all music
>His music is also incredibly shit

I think only edgy teens pretend to like zappa

>>73788090
Christgau tells us to hate everything that isn't Bob Dylan or the New York Dolls.

>>73780117
Foreigner were just generic and bland. They were to the 70s and 80s what nickelback and puddle of mudd were to the 2000s.

Styx were perhaps more talented but were basically a second rate Yes that were trying harder to be more palatable to the mainstream. Why listen to them when you could listen to genuine Prog?

>>73780295
>comparing radiohead and weezer to fucking journey

absolutely bonkers

>>73788105
Or the Clash.

>>73788105
>Christgau
>New York Dolls

I don't know why I used to be interested in his ratings but once I saw he gave that third New York Dolls album (the comeback album) an A+ I never looked back at his reviews ever again. What a fucking dishonest hack with clouded judgment.

>>73788122
Or when he gave four Sleater-Kinney albums As when listening through just one is torture.

>>73788122
Kek. That's like when Albini produced that Stooges comeback album and talked about how great it was. He's always such a judgmental prick who wants to come off as having superior and unique taste. But then he gets involved with what is, quite frankly, an embarrassing comeback album that he would have otherwised moaned and complained about being disappointing and acts like it's a fantastic album.

>>73788132
Or when he ranked Springsteen's Born in the USA the best album of 1984 in front of The Replacements Let It Be (both got an A+) And when he was given the chance years later to say if he would change his opinion about which album was better he said nope.

>>73788149
To be fair you can't really expect him to shit on an album he produced, especially not when it's by one of his heroes. And you also can't really blame him for wanting a chance to work with them.

I agree that Albino can be a cunt but that's not the best example.

>>73780898
Styx are fucking legends. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron who hasn't listened to them properly.

>>73788158
Or when he gave As and Bs to garbage mid-80s Dylan and Neil Young albums.

File: madonna.png (106KB, 1564x782px) Image search: [Google]

106KB, 1564x782px

>all those As
Depressing.

>>73788158
tbf it's not like 1984 was that good of a year for music releases. The competition was pretty thin.

>>73788184
>Styx are fucking legends
Cool, Dennis DeYoung's nephew posts here.

>>73788219
Point is that Born in the USA is pure corny dog shit ESPECIALLY in hindsite. It is dated as fuck. Let It Be is still a fucking Alternative Rock classic and holds up great.

>>73788243
Especially Dancing In The Dark which became dated in about 5 seconds.

>>73788243
>Born in the USA
>corny dog shit

I like both albums but holy fuck you're wrong. Springsteen's not even that different from The Replacements, aside from some synthesizers and gated reverb.

>>73788287
>aside from some synthesizers and gated reverb.

Yeah those are really easy to look past. They're definitely NOT ALL OVER the fucking album. I don't even have a problem with Springsteen, he has some great stuff. However, the majority of that album sucks IMO and it is definitely dated.

christgau used to be an ok music critic now hes just a sad old man with springsteen's cock in his ass

>>73788243
It was ok for 1984 (sure not now though). Otherwise there was hardly anything on the charts but hair metal and generic pop that year.

>>73788122
>I don't know why I used to be interested in his ratings
Comedy's sake?

Listening to Styx--You Need Love is not something you need to subject yourself to unless you're a deliberate masochist.

>>73788487
This guy fellates Springsteen and he thinks _metal_ is nihilistic melodrama?

First off Foreigner is horse shit

>>73789508
Well, yeah.

>>73789508
Foreigner are just kind of bland and harmless. Styx (or at least anything with Dennis DeYoung on lead vocals) are physically painful to listen to.

>>73781438
>but serious music enthusiasts/crits like Christgau et al were left cold by them and wanting more than a generic love ballad.
Your can't be serious. One of his favorite bands are The New York Dolls and he gave A's to both Nicki Minaj and Soulja Boy.

>>73787238
No one should dare write meaningful music? Interesting opinion.

>>73788105
How does he even reconsile Bob Dylan and the New York Dolls? It's not like the two are similar in intent.

>>73788101
Sorry buddy, it didn't work this time. Make them less obvious next time.

>>73780117
They suck.

>>73780117
Its not :(