I'll bet nearly all of you have had that experience of your parents putting down your music. Growing up in the '70s, I remember my parents saying, "Y'know, I swore I would never put down my kids music, and but with all this garbage now, how can I say anything good about it?"
For many of you, you also swore you wouldn't do it. Maybe some of you are younger readers who get tired of hearing your folks or grandfolks bashing your tunes. I know I did. I thought 'if it's so bad why do they bother listening?' Part of the problem was that they really didn't listen, but that's another matter.
But now, here I am, criticizing the "kid's" music -- sort of.
For my parents, all of the nascent heavy metal -- Led Zeppelin was huge at the time -- was bad enough, and when punk reared its head, well, they thought the world was going to hell in a kiddie car. My parents hadn't quite even gotten over Mick Jagger yet. I came from a family where "The Glen Campbell Show" was must-see TV. So was "The Johnny Cash Show," though for those of you in the know, that one actually was incredibly cool.
But back to the subject at hand. Needless to say, my take both on punk and on metal was a little different. I also thought music got as outlandish as it was going to get, so I swore I wasn't going to be one of those old curmudgeons lecturing kids about what trash the music they listen to was.
Decades later, I listen to myself, and I guess I've become one after all. My reasons, though are completely different. Does that excuse me? Maybe, maybe not. My problem is not that rock and pop has gotten too outlandish -- it's that it's not outlandish enough.
When people my age -- I'm 51, for the record -- were kids, we thought long and hard about how we would wear our hair and our clothes in the way to burrow as far under our parents skin as we could without puncturing organs. Thus we had long hair, followed by punk hair, and dirty jeans, and tight jeans, and tattered jeans. And it worked. Some adults thought once our generation was in control the commies (remember, there was a cold war) would be waltz right in.
Alas now, other maybe than some of the more gang-ish looking attire of some of the hip hop faithful (some, not all!), everything is acceptable. I often see kids with mohawks and ripped clothes. I want to scream at them, not because they look ridiculous, but because they can't come up with their own ways to be weird. Hopping on a bandwagon that's more than 30 years old? Yeesh! You're not even supposed to trust anybody over 30.
But it goes beyond fashion, right to the heart of rock and roll. Along with this inability, or unwillingness, or lack of interest for whatever to cause a little non-important mischief is an inability to make music that riles the folks. And for rock and roll, that's a huge problem.
At its heart, rock and roll was all about rebellion. In the '50s, the wild rhythms (and implied race-mixing) led many to truly believe that it all was part of some communist conspiracy. Like any age, it wasn't just the music, though that was bad enough, but the fashions -- leather jackets, tight skirts and men's hair that began to creep just a bit over the ears.
But, fear not, "the establishment" or "The Man" as the powers that be would later be dubbed, stepped in. The ringleaders and masterminds of the corruption of America's youth were dealt with in swift and decisive fashion.
Elvis joined the Army and, to the thinking of many, was never the same again. Chuck Berry faced some bogus "white slavery" charges (pressed by people who didn't think real slavery was all that bad). Little Richard disappeared into religious la-la land and Jerry Lee Lewis went into underage cousin-land. Some, like Eddie Cochran, Richie Valens (whom, I think, had unimagined greatness before him) and James Dean, didn't make it at all. In their place stepped sweet Pat Boone, squeaky-clean Frankie Avalon and utterly harmless Fabian.
Now, I'm going to commit absolute heresy and say that not all the music these individuals made was bad. In fact, it probably does reflect quite a lot of what that early '60s era was all about, at least on the surface. But the rebellion was quashed. But it wouldn't stay squished for very long. Even as rock and roll had all it's teeth yanked, under the surface a new set, sharper and stronger than ever, was ready to move in.
When that worldwide tsunami known as the Beatles came along, even though, at least publicly, they were as nice as any young men could be, but the rebellion was back. Parents freaked at the long hair, and the British accents just reinforced that, not only were they rock and rollers, but they weren't even American. It's easy to see, looking back, why so many parents flirted with having an aneuryism.
I think, though, what really scared the beejeebers out of so many was that the Beatles signaled the growing up of rock and roll. Sure, music was fun again, and still the stuff of teenagers. But it was plain to see that rock was experimental again, and not seeking parental approval. And of course, the Beatles weren't the end-all be-all. The Sonics, the Pretty Things, and the Music Machine were just around the corner, and not too long after that, the Doors, and Jimi Hendrix, not to mention the stuff even further under the radar like Link Wray.
This cycle has gone on for the entire history of rock and roll. Here in 2015, and in my opinion for the better part of a decade, I think we are now in another teen idol, or should I say, American Idol type era. Once again, mainstream music is utterly homogenized, pastuerized, and de-humanized. This time, it's not Mom and Dad, or churches, or politicians that have neutered it -- it's corporate America some degree, and the digital revolution to another.
Radio has become so cookie-cutter and pre-planned and along with that, devoid of any kind of fun or meaning. If you live in a market with more than one rock station, you know that the playlists of any of them will differ almost zero. Later, I'll get into why that is. It's mostly -- but not entirely -- the bottom line.
I'm not going to go political here. I am a capitalist, after all, and business and profit are not bad things. And rock and roll has always been a business. You can go back before rock and roll, to the blues, and Sonny Boy Williamson (number II, for you picky-pants out there) hawking King Biscuit flour and B.B. King's radio career, which was basically one big on-air commercial.
For most of the rock era, though, there was a balance, frequently uneasy and often breached, between art and commerce. It existed through much of the '60s and early '70s. But as the "Me Generation" became the chief portion of consumption, including music consumption, that balance began to tip more and more towards the ledger. By the mid-70s, arena rock -- long in the making -- was able to strut shamelessly in all of its vapid glory.
Don't get me wrong -- there's NOTHING wrong with making money off music. The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and so many others made gobs of money, as they darn well should have. But there was consistent, genuine art there. The music had something to say. It felt like the artist was really saying something besides "buy my album." Maybe they weren't. Maybe they were as empty as everyone else. But they sure seemed sincere.
Also, this doesn't mean, then and now, there aren't a lot of incredible artists out there, if you look hard enough. Throughout rock's history, that's always been the case. But it used to be -- again, think Springsteen -- that if you plugged away with great music for long enough, and slowly built an audience, at some point you at least become recognized. I'm not sure this is still the case.
The result is that rock and roll, such as it exists today in the mainstream, doesn't take chances. It seeks to grasp the widest audience possible and alienate nobody, or to use an old adage, it seeks to make an omelet without breaking an egg. Again, there's certainly nothing wrong with catching a lot of ears. But in becoming so homogenized, it says absolutely nothing.
And there are many people out there who think music should say nothing -- that its main purpose is as a background for workouts or car drives. There have always been a lot of artists willing to serve that purpose.
But there are also a lot of us that think music should be exciting, artistic, challenging, that it shouldn't be afraid to say "I'm not for everybody." And I can prove by going cookie cutter, rock is digging its own grave. And I'll offer that evidence soon. But let me finish this post by saying this: If you think music is only for workouts or audio deodorant, this probably is not the blog for you.
Or maybe you need it more than anyone else.
I'll address that more soon. In the meantime, are you somebody that IS trying make make, or promote good fun rock and roll, especially garage rock/protopunk/power-pop/freakbeat? Let me know. I want this blog to be less a soapbox for me than something to join people together who think rock and roll is to be enjoyed, and not just be a symbol on the stock exchange.
Back soon.
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