Have you had enough of Classic Rock?

The problem is the catagorization.  "Classic Rock" is something the radio stations came up with to market to a specific demographic (mostly boomers who were teenagers in the late sixties/seventies).  "Album Oriented Rock" was the counter-category, and you could hear that late at night on small independent stations scattered throughout the country.

While listening to back-to-back commercial hits might be enjoyable while driving or doing chores around the house, a much more engaging experience could be had listening to whole albums that were designed to be played in their entirety.  The entire narrative sweep of an album can be taken in during a single listening session, and the individual songs have more depth and meaning within the context of the entire concept.

"Classic Rock" formats just bother and distract me.  If I can't sit down and listen to a whole album, I prefer soft jazz, "easy listening", or talk radio.

Note:  the iPod and other portable digital devices may have something to do with modern listening habits.  The ease with which one can skip to the another song, or even worse just listen to a part of a song then move on, probably has something to do with the difficulty many have sitting down and listening to a whole album.  This may be why younger people are discovering vinyl records, which tend to cause listeners to at least play a whole side.

I stopped listening to music on the radio about 15 years ago and only listen to talk. I also play a wide variety of music genres that aren't rock and that's helped me begin to enjoy classic rock again. I've recently been buying up remasters on CD like Led Zeppelin and the Paper Sleeve Pink Floyd remasters and wow are they good. The secret for me is to stay away from almost all music outside of my home. If I'm at work and am working on something the allows me the time to throw earphones in, I will seek out an NPR Tiny Desk Concert or seek out a genre I'm unfamiliar with on the iHeart radio app or Amazon and try and discover a new artist. 

“ Do you feel like I do “? Isn’t that a Frampton song ? If you listen to all the black musicians from the 30’s to 50’s , you can discover the Real Rock Music ! Happy Listening , Mike. 

@alexatpos - I can offer a partial explanation in the States and that is the explosive growth of the music business as a youth-aimed product in the later ’60s, when record companies realized that all those kids who liked the ’new’ music were a huge market. That younger market had seen a shift from the big band era before WWII to the rock ’n roll (think early Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis) era in the ’50s, the first British invasion a la the Beatles and Stones and then, after Monterrey Pop, a whole range of sounds, bands, records and "life style" to be sold.
Jazz had no real market in this environment, but what is interesting to me as we entered the ’70s is the re-emergence of some serious players in spiritual jazz scene, on private and small labels, merging jazz with Afro-centric, black power stuff that delved into funk, polyrhythms, eastern influences, gospel and soul. It wasn’t straight ahead jazz, but something very different, and had a socio-political aspect that spoke to the black experience in America during a period of social upheaval and raised consciousness in the communities. This stuff rekindled my interest in jazz in the last few years as a departure from straight ahead styles; it was, with few exceptions, not very well known or sold beyond the local communities where it grew-- Horace Tapscott in LA on Nimbus West, Tribe Records in Detroit, Strata East in New Jersey/New York. Some brilliant stuff, executed by some very well known players who turned inward when it became obvious that jazz was not a mainstream genre. Well worth exploring if you haven’t; I have found some great records from this era- Marchin’ On by The Heath Brothers, Earth Blossom by the John Betsch Society, and of course, Gil Scott Heron’s Winter in America, a sort of soulful lament of spoken word and Fender Rhodes.
I can listen to this and so-called proto-metal (very heavy rock that anticipates the later heavy metal scene, without the cookie monster vocals or guitar shredding) and enjoy it all for what it offers from that era.

I grew up on Classic Rock, but if that was the only music I listened to I would seriously be sectioned and entered into a lunatic assylum!