CARLTON FLETCHER: Countdown proves it — ’70s music rules!

Yes, it’s No. 1, it’s top of the pops.

— The Kinks

Being something of a creature of habit, one of the “habits” I engage in each year and really enjoy is listening to as much of local Classic Rock radio station Rock 103’s Labor Day and Memorial Day “500” broadcasts. The station, using an unexplained method of determination, plays its version of the top 500 rock songs of all-time over the course of the three-day weekends.

As I listened to last week’s Labor Day 500, a couple of things hit me, things that will seem nitpicky to some but certainly will resonate with other music fans and Rock 103 listeners. One: Enough with the “This is …” and “That was 60 seconds in the rock shop” as an ad lead-in and -out. The rock shop might have been a clever/hip way of saying here comes the commercials when it originated what seems like decades ago, but now it just seems annoying, especially when you’re listening over an extended period of time.

Second, would it be too much of an imposition to have someone actually count down the songs? I mean, they play No. 500 starting around noon on Friday and play No. 1 at around 8 p.m. on Monday. In between, you have no idea where they’re at in the countdown. I realize most all of terrestrial radio is now automated, living/breathing deejays on-site being a thing of the past. But how hard would it be to have someone — anyone, even the janitor could do it, heck, I’ll volunteer — say, “At number 247 is …?”

You wouldn’t even have to announce the song. Just have someone say — or, since you’re apparently big into jingles and such, sing — “Number 186” before or after the song (like Casey Kasem — respect — used to do on “American Top 40”).

Still, the 500 countdowns give our local commercial rock radio station an opportunity to outshine even satellite radio with all its various specialized stations. Sorry, even “Lithium,” “Pearl Jam Radio” and “70s at 7” don’t top the multidecade collection of the 500s’ hits.

Now, my quibbling out of the way, here’s the real nugget to emerge from Rock 103’s most recent countdown. Proving, I think, unimpeachably my long-held contention that the 1970s edge the 1960s as the best decade ever for rock music (even with the throwaway years of the late ’70s), I noticed that of the Top 15 songs from the Labor Day 500, 11 are from the 1970s. The 1980s had three songs and the 1960s one.

Case closed.

Here are the countdown’s Top 15 songs (I actually started writing them down randomly after coming inside from cutting the grass, having no idea where the countdown was at the time) and the year each was released:

No. 15. “Crazy Train” by Ozzie Osbourne (1980)

No. 14. “LaGrange” by ZZ Top (1973)

No. 13. “Baba O’Riley” by The Who (1971)

No. 12. “Dream On” by Aerosmith (1973)

No. 11. “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd (1974)

No. 10. “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix (1968)

No. 9. “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC (1980)

No. 8. “Money” by Pink Floyd (1973)

No. 7. “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by Guns N Roses (1987)

No. 6. “Hotel California” by The Eagles (1977)

No. 5. “Sweet Emotion” by Aerosmith (1975)

No. 4. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who (1971)

No. 3. “Layla” by Derek & the Dominoes (1970)

No. 2. “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973)

No. 1. “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin (1971).

No matter whose criteria you use, that’s a pretty representative Classic Rock best-of. Certainly there are those of us who believe The Beatles ought to be in there somewhere, and you’ll get arguments from Elton John, Metallica, Bob Seger, Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, U2, CSNY, Allman Brothers, Billy Joel, Kinks, CCR, Dylan, Bowie, Tull, Springsteen and Queen fans as well.

But there’s not a song in Rock 103’s Top 15 that doesn’t belong.

It says something, I believe, that the “newest” song of the bunch is GNR’s “Sweet Child,” which is only 27 years old, and that only it and Ozzie’s “Crazy Train” and AC/DC’s “Shook Me” — which both, you’ll notice, missed the ’70s by only a year — were released after 1979.

Certainly part of what makes a song “classic” is its ability to stand the test of time. And at 43 years and counting, “Stairway” qualifies.

But what such a countdown also points out is that when it comes to rock and roll music — and by that, I mean real rock and roll music — there aren’t a whole lot of future classics waiting on the horizon to take these songs’ place. It’s like that noted rock pioneer Greg Kihn said in 1981 (and, yes, I wrote that with more than a touch of irony), “They just don’t write ‘em like that anymore.”