> > I suspect my definition of classic is the same
>>as everyone elses--namely, a classic is
>>something that was popular before I was born...
>
> There may be another factor, too, namely
>whatever word comes after "classic." I'm pretty
>sympathetic to Howard's definition of "classic,"
>dating back to pre-1949 or so, but "pre-1949
>classic rock" doesn't really exist.
>
> I'd call 1950s rock-n-roll "classic rock," but I
>wouldn't call jazz from the same era "classic" in
>any way. Operas and symphonies and so forth
>would have to predate anybody alive today by
>several generations to earn the "classic" label.

I think there's a confusion between the two definitions of classic. One implies simple age. In cars, anything older than 25 years old is considered a "classic". The other implies worth. We call things that are great "instant classics". So one person might consider something a classic in one sense, but not in another, or two people might disagree on the use of the label "classic" based on two different uses of the word.

There's also simple age of the genre, as you say. How old does a novel have to be before it can rightly be called a classic? Is stuff written in the 1930s old enough? How about the 1950s? The 60s? I'm pretty sure Twain's stuff from the late 19th century can be considered "classic", but where's the cutoff?

>
> Might Black Sabbath be "classic heavy metal,"
>even though it's clearly not "classic rock"?

It might be, yeah. But we're getting into subjective definitions here. To a fan of what passes for heavy metal today, probably anything pre 1992 or so would be considered "classic" metal. Certainly all the big 70s/80s bands such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest would be considered "classic" metal by those fans, I'd think. But to me, that's just REAL metal. I'm sure fans of the 70s groups I named in my previous post would say that that was REAL rock and roll, not "classic rock" as I've labeled it.

Personally, Black Sabbath isn't "classic metal". It's just metal. I could (and sometimes do) make a distinction between the 70s/80s metal bands and the "hair metal" or "glam metal" of the mid-to-late 80s, but the distinction isn't really enough for me to split them out into seperate genres. Glam was just a sub-genre of metal, the same way thrash and death metal were/are. They all come under the big heading of "METAL" though, so to me they can't be "classic". I can't explain it any better than that, though.

>
> You're right, though, as much as I'm muddying
>the waters with more objective criteria, there's
>no getting around the use of "classic" as
>relative to one's own childhood. Nevertheless,
>Ciaran is still wrong.

He sure is.

-- Dave