We continue today our tour of Southern California pop/rock music radio stations. Short of a college station, a modern rock station is as adventurous as you're going to get on the airwaves, and in this post we'll check in with KROQ, the 'godfather' of modern rock stations. KROQ has been in the modern rock business for almost 40 years, more specifically, since 1976, perhaps not coincidentally the year that the Ramones released their debut album.
By the way, there are at present no modern rock stations serving the New Orleans metropolitan area. I was around during the WZRH and KKND years and listened to those stations from time to time but they are long gone.
Modern rock stations are also termed alternative rock stations. I was going to say that the alternative rock moniker was more appropriate back in the day whereas the modern rock moniker is more apt today, but on second thought I'm not so sure about that. I don't recall listening to KROQ in the late 1970s - in fact, I don't think I was even aware of KROQ back then - so I can't tell you how cutting-edge it really was at the time. (I mean, I'm sure it didn't play anything by, say, The Doobie Brothers or the Eagles, but this is setting the bar pretty low, yes?) Meanwhile, The Police's "Roxanne", The Clash's "London Calling", and Blondie's "One Way or Another" had trickled onto the playlists of many AOR stations by the end of the 1970s. I've noted previously that radio format labels have to be taken with a grain of salt, and the modern/alternative rock label is no exception.
Suppose a radio station limited its playlist to songs by classic artists on albums released in 2000 or later - e.g., The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang, The Who's Endless Wire, Bruce Springsteen's High Hopes - wouldn't that playlist be a "modern rock" playlist? Given that such a station would be clearly different than the typical classic rock station, wouldn't that make the station an "alternative rock" station? Inquiring minds would like to know!
Anyway, let me get down to brass tacks here... Four weeks ago Thursday (13 November) I tuned in to http://kroq.cbslocal.com/ and did some live listening for almost an hour and a half. Here's a list of the songs that I heard, in chronological order:
The Black Keys: "Tighten Up"
The Smashing Pumpkins: "One and All"
311: "Love Song"
Imagine Dragons: "Demons"
Green Day: "Welcome to Paradise"
Hozier: "Take Me to Church"
Muse: "Supermassive Black Hole"
Lorde: "Yellow Flicker Beat"
Sublime: "Santeria"
Arctic Monkeys: "Do I Wanna Know?"
Keane: "Somewhere Only We Know"
Foo Fighters: "Something from Nothing"
Franz Ferdinand: "Take Me Out"
The Neighbourhood: "Afraid"
U2: "Song for Someone"
The White Stripes: "Seven Nation Army"
Walk the Moon: "Shut Up and Dance"
Jane's Addiction: "Jane Says"
Vance Joy: "Riptide"
The KROQ Listen Live widget offers lyrics for the songs that it plays but otherwise doesn't provide anything (bios, album discographies, etc.) for the songs' artists.
The above list is broadly consistent with the modern rock designation although there is some room for improvement, as discussed below.
Random commentary
• For better or for worse, I think of bands like The Black Keys and The White Stripes as being less raw versions of The Stooges; some people call such bands "garage rock" but I prefer to call them "dirty blues". "Tighten Up" and "Seven Nation Army" go back to 2010 and 2003, respectively. FYI: The White Stripes broke up in 2011.
• The Smashing Pumpkins' "One and All" is brand new, and is satisfyingly grungy à la "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" vis-à-vis "1979".
• 311's "Love Song" is actually a cover of The Cure's "Lovesong"; a reggae styling gives 311's version a warmth that the original lacks. (Admittedly, of all the adjectives one might use to describe The Cure, "warm" is not one of them.)
• Green Day's "Welcome to Paradise" goes back to 1994 and appears on the band's Dookie album. Green Day has released 8 studio albums since then: why not play something from 2012's ¡Tré!?
• Hozier, who is from Ireland, is one of three singer-songwriters in the list (Lorde and Vance Joy are the other two). "Take Me to Church" has some soul, a bit of gospel, and a dash of the blues in its sound, but is still very much a pop song - definitely different.
• Granted that you can dance to pretty much anything, Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole" is very much a dance track, and it's a very good dance track.
• Sublime's "Santeria" is our second reggae-pop entry. As you may know, Sublime ended when vocalist/guitarist Brad Nowell tragically died from a heroin overdose in 1996.
• I had never heard of Keane before, I have to confess. "Somewhere Only We Know" is a pretty piano-based balled, and is wistful in a "The Long and Winding Road" kind of way; it also reminded me a bit of Queen: "Freddie Mercury should be singing this," I thought as I was listening.
• You may count me among those who hold that Foo Fighters is a better band than Nirvana ever was. "Something from Nothing" is a well-written, structured song that starts slowly and builds to a charging hard-rock attack - definitely one of the high points of the set.
• Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", which appears on the band's eponymous 2004 debut album, is as edgy and noisy a track as you could hope to hear on a commercial radio station. All right, KROQ! That said, Franz Ferdinand has released 3 studio albums since then, and 2013's Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action finds the band in altogether more rhythmic territory - why not play something from that?
• Re the U2 selection: At last, something from Songs of Innocence! And it was a good song!
• I hadn't heard of Walk the Moon before, either. Per its title, "Shut Up and Dance" is a dance-pop song; I didn't care for it so I decided to check out some of the band's other Popular Songs, specifically, "Anna Sun", "Tightrope", and "Quesadilla", all of which I thought were better than "Shut Up and Dance". There's just no accounting for musical tastes, is there?
• "Jane Says" appears on Jane's Addiction's first proper studio album, 1988's Nothing's Shocking, and is the oldest song in the list. I understand that a song like "Jane Says" serves as a bone to throw to the casual listener, but be that as it may, most of us have heard "Jane Says" and "Been Caught Stealing" enough times, so why not play something from 2003's Strays (which has a great title track) or 2011's The Great Escape Artist?
Barring unforeseen circumstances, we'll visit KEGY in the following entry.
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