Every time I go to a Mr. Goodcents—about once a month, usually—I get to hear what is currently falling under the rubric of classic rock. That's the thing about Mr. Goodcents. They play classic rock. And it's not just this particular sub franchise, either, because I worked at a Subway store one long-ago summer and they played classic rock, too. Anyone who attempted to change the official station was promptly chewed out by the mullet-sporting manager, the same manager who often quizzed me on the artists and song titles until I knew them by heart. It was the same songs over and over again, beginning with Journey and ending with more Journey. The only selections I ever liked on the lineup were by Pink Floyd, although they always played "Money," the one song of theirs I can't tolerate.

So there I am at Mr. Goodcents again, and the classic rock station is blaring like usual. But this time there are two selections that I find to be out of place and disturbing. First of all, "Ziggy Stardust." Second of all, Metallica's "Master of Puppets." What? This is no longer just about timelines shifting to incorporate more recent music, it's what the official definition of classic rock has come to encompass. See, to me, the term classic rock conjures up images of chewing tobacco and concert t-shirts with the sleeves cut out. Classic rock is Foghat and Foreigner. It's Steely Dan and Boston. It's everything Carl listens to on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It sure as crap isn't "Ziggy Stardust," which breaks the bank on cleverness, satire, and pure ethereality. Bowie's just a little too timeless and hip for old Carl there, anachronistic hunk of beef that he is. So what is Bowie doing on the classic rock station, exporting his orchestrated magic just after that Rod Stewart song? That's like someone putting a bird of paradise in the primate cage at the zoo.

Then there's the Metallica problem. Let me tell you what I recall about Metallica back in their heyday. They were hardcore, evil-looking people with long hair, bad attitudes, and untreatable drug problems. Their fans were cut from the same cloth, at least superficially, and they were not even remotely the same people who camped out overnight for R.E.O. Speedwagon tickets. I loved Metallica. They produced angry, exhilarating music that made me feel empowered and provided me with a therapeutic outlet for my nebulous teen angst. I'd slip on the headphones and just tune out the ickiness of the world. Remember that age where it felt like you'd be angry forever? You weren't even sure what it was you were angry about, whether it was The Man, war, world hunger, or that mean girl who picked on you in band class (Kristy, I'm looking at you). But thrashing along with "Battery" somehow made you feel you were part of an important subversive movement; it filled a niche in your soul that was probably inhabited later by punk and alternative music (which was admittedly more intelligent and had more of an ethos than your standard "I'm doing lines of coke and I'm mad about it" song). Maybe I'm lionizing the boys of Metallica more than they deserve. According to my own testimonial, their music is essentially juvenile, their songs all laments for the trials of troubled youth. But there was something real about their music, too—something flinty and unbreakable that we all wanted to identify with. That quality, whatever it was, has been thoroughly eroded through the years until the band has become the goofiest possible caricature of itself. I hate it that they've been reduced to this. I hate it that they were on the fascist side of the Napster debate. I hate it that they released a CD called "St. Anger" (the pronouncement of which should always be followed by a Gomer Pyle guffaw), and that, to use an artistic metaphor, their music has gone from Francisco de Goya to Thomas Kinkade. Most of all, I hate it that they've been so thoroughly neutered that DJs feel not even a frisson of danger dropping them into the classic rock lineup. That's the really sad thing, that they belong on that station.

So in the first instance, we have a case of mistaken identity (Bowie, where no Bowie would dare to go), and in the second, we have the inevitable product of years of musical and ideological decay. Can it be long before we hear Nine Inch Nails or The Cure on this station, wedged between Dire Straits and Deep Purple? Is there, perhaps, a point to any of these musings? Not really, I'm sorry to say. No point. Just...wow.