The worst and best of classic rock playlists

And now for something completely different.

An old friend of mine was saying yesterday — on the Internet of course — that he had never got the Clash, which made me wonder how much he knew about their music. I mean it’s OK not to like the Clash obviously, but there’s a broader point here which is what this post is about.

The broader point is that it’s really easy to get a misimpression about an old rock band (and aren’t they all at this point; not really, just seems that way to us in Boomerland) if your exposure to their music is largely or wholly limited to what gets played on classic rock radio format stations.

Submitted for your approval: No great rock band has been more ill-served by that format than the Clash. (Obviously I’m limiting this to great rock bands that get played on American commercial radio: Many never have been of course).

I know from long experience that very close to 100% of the Clash’s airplay in the USA on commercial radio stations is limited to three songs: Train in Vain, Should I Stay or Should I Go? and Rock the Casbah.

The first two are, in your correspondent’s humble opinion, among the band’s very worst songs, and while the third is good, it really doesn’t represent any of the band’s core styles.

Which raises a broader topic: What other great rock bands or solo performers have been particularly badly (or well) represented by American commercial radio playlists, acknowledging as an axiomatic matter that the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel?

I have some thoughts but prefer to read yours.

. . . OK I should add that there’s a related but distinct issue here, endemic to commercial radio playlists, which is the overplaying of a small slice of a band’s catalog, while ignoring all of a bunch of equally great or better music that band produced.

The most obvious entrants in this second category are Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.