5 Overlooked Genres To Try If You Love Classic Rock

So all you oldheads in the audience want to listen to something new, huh? Tired of the same rotation of 100 classic rock songs off the local radio station, 20% of which are "Hotel California"? Have no fear, because plenty of music exists that you might like, provided you dig beyond whatever's shoveled at you. There's whole genres of music waiting to be discovered that are suitable for classic rock lovers.

But first: How do we determine what kind of music classic rock lovers might like? Folks can't even stop debating which Zeppelin song is the most overrated, over half a century after their peak. On one hand, we could assume that classic rock true believers aren't going to go for post-deathened blackgaze-core or whatever it is your cousin makes in his bedroom. The safest bet is to choose genres that are similar enough in sound and style to classic rock's golden age (about 1964 to 1982), i.e., music that contains recognizable elements of folk, blues, psychedelia, early synth work, etc. Music that was contemporary to that golden age makes sense, too. At the same time, such music has to have been a part of its own scene, not a singular band or group that didn't fit in. 

Our choices include international rock that never fully caught on abroad, flash-in-the-pan musical moments, genres that spawned other, more recognizable music, and more. Don't let your exploration die, here, though. Vinyls and streaming await.

Let's help you with this musical genre: It's "kraut" as in sauerkraut and "rock" as in rock, which combined make krautrock, aka, German rock. British journalists invented the term "krautrock" to make fun of post-World War II Germany's oddball rock scene. Germany was in a state of self-reflection following the war, and krautrock in all its experimental, hodgepodge weirdness functioned as a kind of rehabilitative plea to the world through the '60s and '70s. 

It's hard to define krautrock because it's so all-encompassing. Mirroring classic rock's evolution from the late '60s to early '80s, krautrock mutated over its entire lifespan from psychedelia to synthpop, fusing funk, jazz, blues, dance music, and more along the way. Guru Guru was a pretty straightforward, proggy outfit; Tangerine Dream was a titan of experimental, electronic rock who've put out about a quadrillion albums (they're still active, too); Amon Düül II sounds like a cosmic mindtrip; CAN sounds like rocky funk stirred with soundtrack music; NEU! offers hypnotic forays into rock-laced ambient music, and on and on. Krautrock is a whole universe of music you can explore for years.

While you might have sadly never heard of krautrock, krautrock's imprint is everywhere, from Joy Division to Radiohead to Björk. The whole scene inspired prominent musicians and genres well beyond its overlooked status, especially the very '80s-sounding Kraftwerk's massive impact on David Bowie and his so-called Berlin trilogy ("Low," "Heroes," and "Lodger"), which contain some seriously underrated Bowie songs you've probably never heard of. Honestly, if you're still listening to that same 100-song classic rock playlist after doing a krautrock deep dive, it's time to call it quits on music.

Back in the late '60s and arguably all the way till the mid-'70s NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal, e.g., Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Saxon), there wasn't a big distinction between rock and heavy metal. "Metal," as it came to be called, was just heavier, psychedelic-leaning rock that crystallized into Black Sabbath. But Sabbath had influences, too, years before a song like "War Pigs" gave boomers bragging rights over other generations. Enter proto-metal, a label we've given to those bands that paved the way for all of modernity's many metal sub-genres and which will most definitely appeal to fans of classic rock who want to go heavy. 

At its core, proto-metal is much closer in sound to darker incarnations of late-'60s to mid-'70s rock than anything like 2020's breakdown-galore deathcore (one of modern metal's more en vogue trends). Proto-metal wasn't a cohesive scene with a geographic core, but composed of a scattered assemblage of rockers who leaned into sounds we now associate with metal. Iron Butterfly's 1968 "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is the typical go-to example, a 17-minute long psychedelic foray with a Ron Bushy drum solo that helped make the song a masterpiece. You've got all the hallmarks of metal on display: dark and menacing tritones, detuned and distorted guitars, a chunky riff, etc. 

Those elements are present in pretty much every other proto-metal band, which only briefly blossomed as a genre from the late '60s to the early '70s, largely in the U.K. and U.S. Atomic Rooster fits the bill as a prog crossover outfit, as do Sir Lord Baltimore, Blue Cheer, Budgie, High Tide, Gun, and loads more bands. Give them some love.

Your reaction to the first 20 seconds or so (or the whole thing) of a song like "Diana" from Comus' 1971 album "First Utterance" might be absolute confusion, or possibly revulsion. Just because acid folk might appeal to some people who love classic rock doesn't mean all classic rock lovers will love it. But trust us when we say that acid folk — the extremely overlooked subgenre into which bands like Comus, Mellow Candle, and Christian Lucifer fall — is music for bored music lovers to sink their teeth into. If you're a classic rock fan and have ever thought, "Man, I need to break out of these predictable pentatonics," acid folk will be one of the freshest, most out-there musical antidotes you could ask for.

Also called "psychedelic folk," acid folk does indeed sound like late-'60s and early-'70s folk rock on LSD. As the story goes, journalist Lillian Roxon coined the term in 1969 to describe Pearls Before Swine, a folk rock outfit that incorporated some trippy-dippy flutes, organs, and general soundscapes into their music. This would have been right in the midst of the folk rock boom earmarked by Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited," an album that every folk rock fan should already own. 

Like proto-metal, acid folk wasn't concentrated in one country or region. But unlike proto-metal, it arguably never died. Caedmon's 1978's self-titled album is a stand-out acid folk moment, as is the Microphones' "The Glow, Pt. 2" from 2001. Listeners will notice that acid folk tends to skew experimental and instrumental on one hand, and frolic-around-the-fire-with-fairies-at-night on the other. No matter what, it's worth exploration.

Terms like "jazz fusion," "jazz rock," and even "jazz rock fusion" always come across as confusing. Jazz itself is confusing to many people, as well as smothered in an air of elitism and snobbery. That's where the second of those terms — jazz rock — can help. In the late '60s (yet again) through early '70s, some rock musicians took harmonic, rhythmic, structural, and improvisational lessons from jazz to give rock a boost in complexity and virtuosity. Their music, jazz rock, was never going to be huge but has been adopted by some of the greatest guitarists in rock history, especially self-taught ones like Allan Holdsworth.

In many ways, jazz rock came about because people on both sides of the musical aisle reached out to each other, especially Miles Davis and John McLaughlin. McLaughlin, an eclectic guitarist, joined the legendary jazz trumpeter's band in 1969 before his own band, the jazz rock group Mahavishnu Orchestra, released their debut in 1971. The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Herbie Hancock, Jaco Pastorius, Frank Zappa, and others hefted the jazz rock torch as Davis veered into jazz fusion territory and released "B****** Brew", arguably his most influential album.

The short of it is this: Classic rock lovers who want to stick to a four-chords-per-song wheelhouse and 4-4 time can certainly do so — there's mountains of such music out there. But for those wanting to grow their ear and tastes, as well as challenge themselves to learn more about music, jazz rock awaits.

"Hang on a second," you might think, "garage rock's not overlooked!" Garage rock as an umbrella term isn't overlooked, no. Nowadays, garage rock means any kind of cheaply produced, simple, easy-to-play music that sounds like it was cobbled together by some teenagers in a garage. But garage rock was also a specific musical scene in the '60s that morphed into punk by the mid-'70s via proto-punk bands like the Stooges. Garage rock did gain mainstream traction, especially with 1966's "Wild Thing" by the Troggs, which became a generation's garage rock anthem. 

The modern, umbrella use of "garage rock" is almost identical to its '60s definition. Pretty much the polar opposite of jazz rock, we could jokingly describe garage rock as rock-out music by people who can't play their instruments for people who don't know music — but that's not a bad thing. No doubt some classic rock lovers already know one or two garage rock outfits, even if the genre is overlooked in comparison to big classic rock names like the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd. If you're looking to bop around the house, de-stress with a glass of wine, put on some music for guests, etc., you might want to turn your attention to garage rock. 

Garage rock developed along with the mid-'60s British Invasion. No matter that the Troggs were very much a garage band, it's more that garage rock took off in the U.S. as a response to the Brits. Bands like the Castaways, the Sonics, and the Shadows of Knight wanted to play music, too, got instruments, and started making songs without any training whatsoever. This is the appeal of the whole thing, then and now.