Classic Rock and the Alternative ’90s

In February, Cumulus’s Classic Rock KQRS Minneapolis began playing a handful of new titles, few of which would have stuck out for any station featured in my “What Classic Rock Added in 2024” story from a few months ago. They were, for the most part, the ’90s/early-’00s songs that other Classic Rock stations have been using to modernize, including:

• Bush, “Glycerine”
• Evanescence, “Bring Me to Life” — one of the songs on KQMT (The Mountain) Denver’s list, as featured in the story
• Green Day, “Time of Your Life”
• Cranberries, “Zombie”
• Green Day, “Longview”
• Sublime, “Santeria”
• White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army” — also on the KQMT list

The only two titles that weren’t from that era were Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” and Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun.” But even those songs wouldn’t necessarily portend much at a station that was, for decades, often porous about the boundaries of AOR and then-Classic Rock.

On March 24, KQRS began stunting under PD James Kurdziel. A few days before its relaunch on April 3, it began filtering about 80 more titles, some from local acts (Soul Asylum, Replacements/Paul Westerberg), some of the sort that you would expect from an updating Classic Rock outlet (“Champagne Supernova,” “Disarm,” “Semi-Charmed Life”), but some you would not, including:

• Breeders, “Cannonball”
• White Stripes, “We’re Going to Be Friends”
• Mazzy Star, “Fade Into You”
• 311, “Amber”
• Pixies, “Here Comes Your Man”
• James, “Laid”
• Cranberries, “Dreams”

Not all of the 80 songs or so have played more than a few times. But they all make a statement. So does playing Prince, who would test for many Classic Rock stations, but who hasn’t been on KQRS since his passing in 2016.

There is still a lot of mainstream Classic Rock on KQRS. It’s still possible to find “Sultans of Swing” next to “Gold Dust Woman,” but that was in the same 5 p.m. hour on April 8 that also included Westerberg’s “Dyslexic Heart.” The Classic Rock that remains is largely of the “acts being rediscovered by your 15-year-old” sort. The songs that were powers on the old KQRS but are now gone include:

• Whitesnake, “Here I Go Again”
• Scorpions, “Rock You Like a Hurricane”
• Kansas, “Carry On Wayward Son”
• John Mellencamp, “Jack and Diane”
• Ozzy Osbourne, “Crazy Train”
• Bon Jovi, “Livin’ on a Prayer”
• Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin’” — to be fair, the last two are also prominent in the rediscovered by 15-year-olds canon.

There’s been a lot of attention directed toward the resurgence of gold-based Alternative outlets, including sister WNNX (99X) Atlanta over the last few years, but also including some new launches that don’t have a history of playing those songs the first time. In Canada, the new CFGQ (The Edge) Calgary has generated enough buzz with its “Iconic Alternative” format that Corus also put the format on Active Rock CJKR (Power 97) Winnipeg.

But the filtering of Alternative gold into Classic Rock has been happening as well. A decade ago, as Active Rock became more library-based, doubling down on grunge was a logical choice, especially as Alternative became less tied to some bands from that era; e.g., Alice in Chains or Soundgarden. As Active Rock began blurring into  “next-generation Classic Rock,” it was easy for incumbent Classic Rock stations to expand with those songs, too.

Eventually, that phenomenon took us beyond just grunge. At least a decade ago, an Active Rock research client asked me to include some Alternative titles that it had never played in a music test. The one that stood out at the time was “Loser” by Beck. Last week, that song got more than 250 spins at Classic Rock. 

How far does it go? As some Classic Rock stations push further into the ’00s, I’ve wondered if teen punk/emo is the place that they won’t go. So far, there aren’t spins for “I Write Sins, Not Tragedies.” But there are spins for “The Middle,” “What’s My Age Again,” and “Sugar, We’re Going Down.” Classic Rock acknowledging the Alternative ’90s isn’t a headline as much as KQRS playing them.

With three decades’ remove, it’s possible to see how radio’s “new rock revolution” of the mid-’90s was, essentially, the next generation of Album Rock radio. Even in the “Jewel-to-Tool” era, the center lane was grunge, making the format friendly, or at least not incomprehensible to Zeppelin fans. A few of the prominent stations of that moment were former heritage AORs: WMMS Cleveland, WBCN Boston, WWDC (DC101) Washington.

KQRS wasn’t one of those stations. The rise of duopoly meant the station had the then-KRXX (The Edge) in the building. That station had a 6.9 share in spring ’95, according to ratings historian Chris Huff, meaning that Alternative had as loud a mic in the Twin Cities as elsewhere, at least momentarily. The Edge eventually returned to Active Rock as KXXR (93X). There’s still plenty of grunge on that station, but it also plays Active Rock currents.

The Twin Cities’ frame of reference has also been influenced by Triple-A (now rock-leaning Hot AC) KTCZ (Cities 97) and non-comm Alternative KCMP (The Current). To succeed, the new KQRS needs to find listeners who want more adventure but less eclecticism than The Current. But if KQ had stayed where it was, it would have been short-spaced to both Adult Hits KZJK (Jack FM) and KQQL (Cool 108), both still cheerfully powering “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

Even if the “new rock revolution” was a generational split in 1994, Classic Hits stations have been paving over such changes for years. It’s many years ago that Oldies PDs were scared to play the ’70s, but at the outset “Dreams” didn’t belong on the same “good-time oldies” station with “Build Me Up Buttercup,” until it did. (Before that, there was concern about CCR and the Doors on the same station with “Louie Louie” and “Sunny.”)  Somewhere, there’s a Classic Rock station now playing “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “Seven Nation Army,” and it doesn’t matter if they weren’t added to the canon by the same listeners.

I’m still very interested in hearing the “Cannonball”-type ’90s alt nuggets that a 99X can play but that most Classic Rockers do not (at least at this moment). But a lot of those titles have fallen away at Classic Alternative, too. When the first gold-based Alternative outlets launched in the mid-’00s, a lot of the nuggets disappeared, including almost anything pre-grunge that hadn’t been a crossover pop hit. But hearing “Backwater” by Meat Puppets sound just fine on KQRS makes me think there are a few more titles that could fit now.

The KQRS relaunch came with a revised staff lineup as well. Former Cities PD Paul Fletcher has joined the station’s Steve Gorman & Ryder Bue morning show, as well as doing middays. On the first morning, there was an early conversation about first concerts and early memories of core artists, some of which served to place all of KQ’s new core acts within one audience’s frame of reference. Here’s KQRS with Fletcher just before 1 p.m. on April 7:

• Black Crowes, “Jealous Again”
• Led Zeppelin, “Fool in the Rain”
• Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
• AC/DC, “You Shook Me All Night Long”
• Sublime, “What I Got”
• Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here”
• Rush, “Tom Sawyer”
• Patti Smith Group, “Because the Night”
• Pearl Jam, “Even Flow”
• Police, “Roxanne”
• Queen & David Bowie, “Under Pressure”
• Tonic, “If You Could Only See”
• Band, “The Weight”
• Radiohead, “Creep”
• Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy”

Here’s KQ again on April 16, also with Fletcher:

• Guns N’ Roses, “Paradise City”
• New Radicals, “You Get What You Give”
• Cake, “The Distance”
• Fleetwood Mac, “The Chain”
• Police, “Roxanne”
• R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”
• Talking Heads, “And She Was”
• Genesis, “That’s All”
• Meat Puppets, “Backwater”
• Pink Floyd, “Comfortably Numb”
• Pearl Jam, “Jeremy”–Fletcher’s break was about seeing one of his favorite bands cover the other when Pearl Jam did “Mother” live

In Canada, the ’90s and early ’00s took hold a while ago, particularly as some major stations tried to move away from being pigeonholed as strictly Classic Rock. It’s worth noting that when Calgary’s Edge launched, after a brief period of simulcasting its N/T AM sister station, it chose gold-based Alternative over being the Classic Rock station it had been before. Here’s their Winnipeg sister station, Power 97, in afternoons on March 21:

• Clash, “London Calling”
• Econoline Crush, “You Don’t Know What It’s Like” (Canadian)
• Green Day, “Basket Case”
• Treble Charger, “American Psycho” (Canadian)
• Audioslave, “Show Me How to Live”
• Rage Against the Machine, “Renegades of Funk”
• Black Keys, “Tighten Up”
• Cure, “Friday I’m in Love”
• Eddie Vedder, “Hard Sun” (Canadian — a cover of a previous hit by the band Indio)
• Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Under the Bridge”
• Metric, “Stadium Love” (Canadian)
• Weezer, “Buddy Holly”
• Sheepdogs, “How Late, How Long” (Canadian)
• Modern English, “I Melt With You”
• Tragically Hip, “Courage” (Canadian)
• Verve, “Bitter Sweet Symphony”