SANTANA - SOUL SACRIFICE (1969) LATIN ROCK (via heroecaifan)

Another non - #earworm.

This is not the music from my generation, I am 39 which means I am wedged solidly in the middle of “generation X.” What we did have was real Classic Rock radio stations that played a LOT of stuff that we would had not run into otherwise. Such radio stations have disappeared over the years, to the point where most radio stations that you will find that call themselves “Classic Rock” usually play the same 20 songs (in no particular order or ranking:

1. Free Bird - Lynnrd Skynnrd


2. Hotel California - The Eagles


3. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen


4. White Room - Cream


5. Black Magic Woman - Santana


6. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin


7. Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple


8. Yesterday - The Beatles


9. Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze


10. Paint it Black - The Rolling Stones


11. Pinball Wizard - The Who


12. Living in the Past - Jethro Tull


13. Lola - The Kinks


14. Don’t Fear the Reaper - Blue Öyster Cult


15. White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane


16. Layla - Derek and the Dominoes


17. Another Brick in the Wall (part 2) - Pink Floyd


18. American Pie - Don McLean


19. Piano Man - Billy Joel


20. Nights in White Satin - Moody Blues

I can assure you that each metropolitan area in this country has no less than one radio station right now blasting out a play list almost identical to the one I listed above. All of these are great songs, but it is a terrible way to keep interest in these fantastic artists because almost NONE of these songs are representative of the artist.

This is why there are so many “fans” of Led Zeppelin, The Eagles and Queen that can only name one song for that particular band. 

There is a great alternative: online streaming services that use music fingerprinting to dynamically change your playlist based on your tastes. I am really awed by the ability of both Pandora and Last.fm to continuously generate playlists that I almost never skip. At least somebody with the right interest in this kind of music will be able to leverage these services to discover new music the way we used to by relying on the DJ that worked the graveyard shift and used to play weird music just to stay awake through his shift.