Is Sonic Youth Classic Rock Yet?

Statikev, Buddy Webb and I were hanging out in the vinyl library of the local community radio station after their Alumni Day. A bunch of former radio hosts came back to grace the airwaves again for the sake of the fundraising drive. Cool idea. And a good excuse for those who moved away to return.

That night, in the library, over some warm beers, we took turns randomly choosing slabs of vinyl to play. The 'random' part was fun for about four records. Then, the amount of really bad records contained in the library became pretty apparent. We quickly reverted to a more deliberate approach. Luckily for me, that turned up Eminence Front by The Who, a song I had never heard in my life. Glad I did! It was followed by Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. We all guessed at what year it was released. I said 1989 and they laughed at me. Buddy said 1992 and Staikev said 2001 (ha!!!). It turned out I was off by a year. Lucky guess!

Anyway, it made me think something I think quite often when it comes to Classic Rock. Is it 'Classic' because it's the best and no one has done anything better since? Is it truly the bar to which subsequent artists will inevitably be measured? Or is it Classic because people just know the music? I mean, even if you're not a huge fan, you know who The Who are. And familiarity counts for quite a bit. It's like, once you start watching a crappy show, you just have to keep watching it to see what happens. You get used to the characters and so on. You know its bad, but you watch it anyway. I think there is a similar thing going on with Classic Rock. People know it isn't the best always (ie. Neil Young and Bob Dylan have many examples) but you know the characters and are willing to cut them some slack.

At any rate, I am not sure if Sonic Youth is considered Classic Rock yet, I suspect this classification may happen sooner than later, but it's pretty hard to deny that Daydream Nation is a classic record. For whatever reason. Though I'd say the same about Sailing the Seas of Cheese and I know I am probably in a smaller cohort for that particular bent.