THE ESSAY QUESTION

The Question: Rock was dead by the late 60s, and everything since has been wishful delusion or cynical careering (inelegant tangent: punk was not dead, for, somehow, it was initially not rock -- though within a few years, the dead hulk absorbed it). Support, dispute and/or digress.
Bonus question: If rock is dead, what do you propose instead?

The Answers...

If you take "the late sixties" as the death throes of rock (territory which could be partly mapped out by these points: the entire career of the Velvet Underground, the End Of The Beatles, the beginning of Zappa and The Mothers -- oh -- and the comeback tour of The Cowsills), you obviously leave out albums like the first Modern Lovers record, Doc At The Radar Station (Cap'n Beefheart), Slanted And Enchanted (Pavement), and various other gems. I happen to have just been in a discussion with a coworker about Wynton Marsalis' statement that Miles Davis' Bitches Brew was a pop/rock sell-out. (I always thought that album sounded eerily like the Archies!) Anyhow, it's easy in retrospect to say that fusion was an unfortunate sidetrack to jazz, or that stadium rock was a ridiculous perversion of what Buddy Holly and Slim Harpo started out saying 20 years before. But the question to me seems to be not that this loud, guitar-driven, unswinging music stopped being rock at some point, but rather devolves down to choosing to have the term 'rock' incorporate these things.

If, over the years, your Aunt Agnes puts on lots of weight, wears binding polyester clothes and garish makeup, and speaks in a louder and louder, more nasal tone, do you ask, "At what point in the late seventies did she cease to be Aunt Agnes? Now she's just lame." Such has been the sad state of affairs in the music world since time immemorial. It is important to remember, when discussing the 'golden age of rock and roll,' that when the Beatles' first chart-topper hit number one in the states, the song it displaced was by Dean Martin. What most Happy Days nostalgists don't remind you of is that late fifties radio contained more Perry Como and aging band leaders than rock and roll. The seventies seem extra atrocious to us because we heard all the crap that wasn't going to make it to posterity, and was destined for the abyss of obscurity -- until an entire sub-culture cropped up specifically to find and poke at these artifacts, and to lampoon the culture that gave birth to them! Thank you Tarantino, et al. But who's bringing back Hocus Pocus by Focus? Who?

Here is a brief, off-the-cuff, totally subjective tabulation of whether things are or are not 'rock':
Led Zep - yes
Elton John - no
Kansas - no
Violent Femmes 1st album - yes
Violent Femmes later on - no
Eno (Here Come the Warm Jets) - yes (!)
Motley Crue - no
Ornamental Wigwam - yes
Camels In The Dark - yes
Styx - no
The Ramones - yes
The New York Dolls - yes and no
Nick Cave - once or twice
Bjork - no
Pearl Jam - no
On and on and on... It would likely be a different list by this afternoon.

Anyhow, the term rock, kind of by default, has to include all of the sins committed in its name. And the term 'dead', well, maybe in an aesthetic, spiritual sense it was dead, but the Spectrum triple-header of Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, and ZZ Top was a very lively affair, as I recall through the haze. Oh. And then there's the first three Kiss albums. But there's a rockumentary about that (or is it a rock-u-drama?).

© 2000 Andy Bresnan -- Musical Fellow

There is the school of thought that sees Rock 'n' Roll as a youth movement co-opted by corporations that changed it into something palatable. However, the seeds of doom were planted earlier than the late 1960s. To look at it in the meta-sense, as soon as Fabian was molded into a singer because he had the look, as soon as Shelley Fabares was asked to record Johnny Angel and was double-tracked because her voice was weak -- but she was on a TV show -- even as soon as Tony Curtis' Mother yelled out to him from their apartment window that he was wanted in Hollywood, Rock 'n' Roll had started to become more product than movement.

It may sound cynical, although I don't wish it to be. One must never argue the power of music and I am not one of those folks who dislike Rock 'n' Roll or Rock, far from it. That being said, it will be best to look at the music industry as just that: industry. I don't even truly argue the date of the late 1960s. There are some points of that argument that I agree with and I believe that part of it has to do with the maturation of market research. The 1970s brought market research. This concept was not new; in the 1920s, a person who was involved with the nascent days of what we now call public relations asked some young people that he knew to march for "injustice"; nothing particular, just injustice in general. Like an unholy Clairol ad, they told two friends and so on and so on, until it became a larger gathering than anticipated.

In the field of records, Stan Freberg mentions early market research when Capitol Records wanted to see how a group of people would react to yet-to-be-released product by having them squeeze a rubber bulb if they approved. For those who are interested, the standout records in that experiment were Nature Boy by Nat "King" Cole and John And Marsha by Stan Freberg ("the people almost broke the bulbs," according to what Freberg was told).

Media was changing in the 50s and 60s. Stereo, while not a new concept, was gaining momentum, so was the concept of high fidelity. Television was in its infancy, but the answer truly lies in the ads.

1950-1960: TV is just beginning to supplant radio as the dominant home medium, and advertisers are trying to figure out how to sell to people. Before, one wrote ad copy by saying the product name a good number of times and mentioning said product in a favorable light. 50s commercials, by and large, are radio ads with pictures. The sheer verbosity of some of the ads makes one wonder why they bothered to show pictures.

1960-1970: In a bizarre reversal from the movies, in which they had to learn how to talk and not merely mime, advertisers now were trying to sell visually and verbally. They were trying all sorts of things, because as there is really no such thing as an exact science, there was no real matrix or course to sell either, which made for some rather wild ads. Ironically, one of the greater advertisers of the era turned out to be a fellow who much preferred radio to TV, Stan Freberg, who wrote great ads for both media.

By the 1970s, someone somewhere had figured something out; we know what sells. Since we do, let's do precisely that. Much of the adventuresome spirit had gone by this point. The wit was dulled, the wildness, somehow tamed. There were good ads to be sure, but much was shunted aside, replaced with the safe and tested.

Roughly the same happened in music. A woman I went to school with, Leslie, who dressed smartly, so she is qualified to speak, echoed a sentiment uttered by George Carlin by saying that Rock 'n' Roll and Rock are rather different beasts. By the 1970s, the larger music corporations had stopped fighting as hard against the new music, stopped selling Al Martino to Beatles fans and figured out something. When they did, they marketed it, researched it and bought into it.

It, by and large, worked, too. The smaller companies that couldn't survive the payola scandal of the early 60s were lost, so that battle was won, it's just that no one could have seen the utter domination of Rock in the 60s. For better or worse, The Beatles changed that. For better, because the music was good and for worse, because it completely stratified the buying audience by age. Gone were the days where you saw a record sleeve advertising Elvis Presley and Esquivel and Artie Shaw, and by the 70s, there were Rock inner sleeves and Jazz inner sleeves and so forth.

Someone had figured something out.

While the collector in me says that there were aberrations in this, what remains is that Rock 'n' Roll had died and Rock had taken over, if you take Rock 'n' Roll as R&B/C&W influenced and Rock as the co-opted musics that had sprouted up by that time.

So while I see the point of the question, I think that Rock is doing just fine, actually (and all that implies). It's older, it has award shows and most tellingly, the advertisers use it all the time, so, for better or worse, Rock is here and it is not moving anytime soon. It even has a stratified audience. Johnny Otis said that concert-going for popular music in the 1950s had changed to where one had all ages in the audience and on the stage and by a certain point, all you saw were "kids" on the stage. Well, that time has come and gone. There are reunion shows for older acts, there are old acts still touring and grossing big, there are the kids and their bands, and nowadays, it is not inconceivable to have Mom and Dad listening to The Beatles in one room, while the kids are listening to Bush and Godsmack in another. If you want to take the inelegant tangent into account, 70s Punk was looked down upon, yes, but guess who was a big Rock fan? Johnny (Rotten) Lydon's Mom! She was happy for her son's success in the Sex Pistols, so I guess at least one older person "got it" (his father, by sharp contrast, was a racist boob, so maybe that whole rebellion thing... aw, skip it!).

What do I propose instead? No-o-thing! I don't know, but the 60s are back, sort of. Not in the sense of the acts and some of the retro acts, necessarily (I was in a band that played in a 60s style myself), but in the sense that the diversity in the marketplace is back, sort of. Rock is still big, big, big, but there is also a big surge of Latin musics, orchestras are replacing synthesizers on the non-single driven soundtracks, there are people buying reissues of older music, there is dance music, there is Hip-Hop, there is the Jazz family, there are people buying world musics, older Pop singers are finding older and younger patrons at their shows and it even has folks like Harry Connick, Jr. singing standards. With the advent of the Internet, more people can hear more things from more places than ever.

I don't think that's too bad, either.

So what do I propose? A toast, I guess (I'll be the guy with the iced tea in the fancy glass). While I have seemingly never much dug what has sold the most, the diversity is there and you don't have to look as hard as you used to. I don't see Wynton Marsalis hitting the top ten, but I don't see him starving either.

What do I miss? Regionalism. There is some; East Coast Rap and West Coast Rap are indeed different, there was the Go-Go movement of the 80s in Washington, DC. The problem is that with access to so much, people can tend to sound too much like each other, so if there is something on the horizon, it will more than likely look and smell pretty much the same and that's sort of sad. The newness of discovery and the naivete is gone in the global village.

Let's just hope that no one figures something out again.

© 2000 Brian Phillips -- Musical adventurer and pleasant company

Rock was not dead by the late 60s -- perhaps the shock of the new had worn off by then, but rock still had another decade or so of life left in it at that time. By the late 70s, though, it was time to move on.

Rock had evolved from Chuck Berry to Elvis to The Beatles and Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin (okay, the Rolling Stones are still around, but they're pretty much a travesty of their former selves -- 50-somethings prancing around on stage just don't quite cut it). It was time for a change in musical directions.

Punk rock appeared and shook things up a little, and then it was time for the new wave movement to step into the limelight. As the new wave movement dropped off the map, the state of music stagnated, until grunge surfaced, and with it, the alternative and indie music scene. But none of these are rock, or anything close to it. "Lite rock" is not the same as rock at all -- it's just pop with a different name.

In my humble little opinion, the remains of rock has come down to a bunch of guys with mullet cuts (also known here as rocker cuts) playing their air guitars to old Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple riffs. Rock is dead -- and music continues to evolve...

I think as the world becomes a smaller place, many things will influence what happens to music -- who knows where the next movement will come from? A lot obviously has to do with what the major labels want us all to buy, but will that alone decide it? Hopefully not. What will replace it? Ideally, a variety of different types of music. Is a rock revival possible? Who knows? They're trying to bring back disco, so anything can happen. However, rock has had a long and healthy life, and I think it's time to accept its demise. But then, that's just my opinion.

© 2000 Cheryl Shinfield -- DJ and Highly Opinionated Musical Expert

Rock was not dead by the late Sixties, as evidenced by the vital, energetic explosions that occurred in Britain every few years afterwards.

Glam Rock, although hardly an intellectual or socially-compelling tour de force, was anthemic and sexy and fueled teenagers' resolve to be themselves and scare their parents at the same time, one very potent tell-tale footstep left by the caveman of Rock and Roll from the beginning. Punk Rock, the next gestation, did the same, and even managed to threaten society-at-large for a short time -- witness the shocking outrage of the Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen on those good Victorians of the U.K.

Even into the early Nineties, when Sinead O' Connor tore up a photo-print of the Pope during a Saturday Night Live performance, to the outrage of everyone from Frank Sinatra to her detracting anti-fans at the Dylan tribute concert 11 days later, Punk-spawned New Wave and then, so-called "Alternative" rock, had the ability to get people's attention, and their ire, up... up... up. Nothing dead causes such effects.

As for Punk Rock not being a true offshoot of Rock and Roll... Sid Vicious' charming allegiance to the songs of Gene Vincent should set that record spinning at the correct speed... 45 rpms!

© 2000 Daiv Whaley -- music critic, art brat

Rock isn't dead.

What died in the late 60s was the sense of idealism in the youth culture that thought it could change the world without co-opting the things it intended to rebel against. Music was a form of expression for this youth culture, and like most things in life, it seems, it's all very cyclical and most of it wasn't really very revolutionary to begin with. Rock made its roots in early rhythm and blues, and like all popular culture, it borrowed and stole from the best stuff out there and began feeding on itself. Styles come and go and return again (rockabilly, punk, neo-folk) but new derivatives spin out of the debris to start up different styles and moods.

I think that the majority of listeners tend to get comfortable with a set of musicians and songs and then rarely stray from the comfortable confines of what they're used to listening to. So a listener from the 60s might say that rock is dead on hearing the latest tunes in the top 10 charts.

I still find new music that seems to come alive and is exciting on one level or another, be it the musicianship, the sentiment, the mood, or the craft of songwriting. It's just a bit harder to find what truly "rocks" from the vast wasteland of music that pretends to be "rock" today. One sticky bit that you must consider, and this would seem to be a tenant of the ookworld site: what is "rock" for one listener, may not "rock" for another.

© 2000 Dean Sabatino -- Web developer/part time musician

First of all, it is an interesting statement to consider. Like most blanket statements, I think it would be easier to prove false than true. Before I do that, though, I must understand the definition of "rock" and what it means for it to be either living or dead. If rock is defined by what is played on WYSP (the rock station in Philadelphia) well, I might say I personally have no use for it. But the fact that the station is popular and has a fierce competitor in this market (WMMR) for almost the same type of music, then I'd say as a genre, defined perhaps as a soundtrack for extended teenagerdom, it is quite alive.

But I'm guessing that in this statement rock is defined as a popular electrified music that reflects and stirs social change, something like "rock and roll" with a broadened social conscience. If this is the case, I would say the delusion is in the definition. Rock cannot be so narrowly defined. Nevertheless there are bands that have since the sixties offered reflection of social issues in their music: U2, Rage Against The Machine, Bob Marley, and Fugazi to name just a few.

I'm not going to seriously consider the "cynical careerist" part of the statement, partly because I do not think I really understand it. As with any area of culture (or art) there will be honest artists and there will be hacks. Often the hacks will be more popular and earn more money and also be more cynical toward their work than the true artist, but that does not negate the validity of the form.

So I must say the statement is false. Rock music continues to serve broad purposes culturally and deserves to be considered a "living" genre. The wishful delusion, I think, was on the part of the original Woodstock generation, or, more accurately, the original rock critics and journalists of sixties, who thought rock could or should be a main force for social change. The fact that "rock" continues to be a major commercial genre for the music industry suggests that it has merited in our society the label "alive" and not "dead".

© 2000 Joe Jack Talcum -- ex-rocker

I have two theories:

Rock is not dead, because it's a thing, not a plant or an animal, although it may be a fungus with no clorophyl of its own, living off the decaying matter of other life forms -- but that's another essay question.

Since it's your ballgame, though, let's just say that Rock is kind of like that worm you chopped up when you were a little kid. You know, your buddy would say, "Hey, you can chop up a worm and it doesn't die -- all the pieces become new little worms."

So you try it and sure enough, all the little worm bits keep wiggling around, and you watch it for a few minutes until you get bored and move on to something else, or until you bait your hook with them and really give the poor worm a shot at reincarnation.

But if you just let the worm bits alone, pretty soon they'd all croak, because they weren't really living. It was just their little nervous systems going on about their business until they noticed that their food source had quit on them. Then they just got stiff and dried up.

So that's the state of rock today -- a chopped up worm, still wiggling in its various marketing-driven formats (Oldies, Classic Rock, Big Eighties, Top Forty, Metal, etc), but since the worm isn't connected anymore, it's starting to dry up.

Which is why so many folks feel that Rock died in the late 60s -- because that was near the end of inclusive radio programming, when you could hear Strangers In The Night followed by Wild Thing followed by It's A Man's Man's Man's World. Current radio (and let's include MTV as the logical successor to 50s and 60s AM radio) just don't do that anymore. The marketeers have chopped up the worm into various niches, and the public, God bless 'em, seems perfectly happy not to stray from their comfort zones.

Which is not to say that all radio listeners in the past were incredibly enlightened Renaissance men (yes, and women); most people would only buy the stuff that appealed to them, and dis the rest. I know I did. But I was exposed to everything, and as the years went by I found myself becoming more and more tolerant of the music I dismissed years ago, and hey! I even started to like some of it.

The second theory is one I learned from my comic collecting hobby. A big question among fan-boys used to be "What was the Golden Age of comics?" The 1930s? 1940s? Eventually it was decided that the answer was "10."

Same thing with Rock; probably the average person's peak enjoyment of Rock music occurs around the ages of 14-16. The die is pretty much set by then, and after that, Rock is Dead. Ask a 14-year old kid the same question, and I'll bet Rock is not dead.

© 2000 Kukolaka Mishabob -- Entertainer

Sometimes I can believe some of this. I can see rock as a cohesive, organic whole that began to splatter apart (in a marvelously diverse way, I might point out) by the end of the 60s. And the big-time record biz managed to build a stable, long-term development and marketing structure around it in the same time-frame -- institutionalizing the whole thing. And it's easy (not necessarily accurate) to see the wild style games of the 70s as directionless meandering in the wasteland. Though I think a lot of very interesting things happened in that splattered world.

Punk... do I really have to get into that now? In retrospect, it's obviously just another link in the historical chain, with clear prior influences, but at the time, it was like a transmission from space, opening up a whole new world. Then again, 50s kids have said similar things about Be-Bop-A-Lula, so maybe it's just a matter of perspective (though come to think of it, Be-Bop-A-Lula blew me away like that when I first heard it in the 70s, so what's it all mean, Mr. Natural?). Wait, punk did have a definite new thing -- a desperate and powerful "NO!" It may have appeared previously in isolated instances (Velvet Underground, The Monks), but with punk it had a new focus and a whole spontaneous sub-population behind it.

Through the 80s, punk was steadily absorbed into the mainstream, usually on the cheesiest possible level (movie villains with mohawks, anyone?), until you could hear The Ramones on the soundtrack of beer commercials. Initially though, punk did manage to clear a provisional space in which all sorts of diverse new wave, post-punk possibilities briefly flourished. But with endless waves of cookie cutter hair metal, Spinal Tap turned out to be the most influential band of the decade. Punk did at least leave us with a viable network of small, independent record labels and fanzines. Unfortunately, much of that network was bought out and clear-cut by the majors in the early 90s grunge/indie wave (fortunately, new micro-labels always seem to pop up -- and with the internet, a whole universe of 'zines has blossomed).

From the 90s to today... more genre collisions (some of interest, some not), more generational aping. To be honest, for me, most current bands come off as washed-out 99th generation photocopies, all plying their own little corner of rock history. Even the punk bands, who at this point are as much style-revivalists as a rockabilly act (punk's almost 25 years old, for chrissakes -- 50s rock wasn't even 10 years gone when Sha-Na-Na got started). It makes me sad when I look at it in a certain extremist light... these bands are all just flies smashed on the windshield of the music biz (and yes, that even includes such sacred idols as The Beatles). But hey, that's just one very cranky perspective... I'm sure most of them enjoy the ride, at least.

But I'm afraid that for me, the whole guitar/vocal-based combo thing feels awfully played out, both practically and in terms of its symbolism. In Year 2000, rock is almost an old joke. Think not? I've overheard some current teens laughing at a Led Zeppelin record like an earlier generation laughed at Ray Conniff records. Amazing... I thought classic rock would never loosen its death-grip. And y'know? Thank God it's finally slipping. Rock and its accompanying mindset have dominated the floor for far too long. Music is a wide, deep and varied world, and rock is just one form-set among many (even if it did develop a messiah complex). Let's have something else happen, even if we don't particularly like it. Rock was a youth culture expression, and you can't expect successive generations of youth to keep accepting the same hand-me-down experience forever.

On the other hand...

There are those blessed exceptions here and there that still manage to defy the odds. The bands, or songs, or even brief moments, that give you a little slap and say, "Hey, worry-wart, gimme a smile -- the form still works."

And if I poke at this essay question, it starts to fray. Like, what is Dead and what is Rock?

Does dead mean no one plays it anymore? (obviously not so) Or people play it, but it's just pointless whistling in the graveyard? (ever seen a club circuit oldies act? it can be pretty disheartening) It's a bit like saying painting is dead because there are no more technical/conceptual breakthroughs to be had. But of course, painting isn't dead, because you still have the individual artist's personal relationship with the art. Though if the artists or musicians are simply aping the attitudes of their predecessors, what does that add up to? An empty ritual? A useful ritual?

And what is rock? One way I look at rock is as a merger between various folk musics, which then merged with commercial pop. And went through further mutations as the business affected it and it affected the business. So perhaps it can always deflate back down to a folk-level existence. And will surely never go away completely, even if its commercial aspects fade. That could be the healthiest thing for it.

Speaking of pop, this question sidesteps the whole messy issue of pop. From the pre-rock varieties, to the blends that emerged as it mated with rock, it brings a whole lot more complexity to the question. Is Nancy Sinatra pop or rock? You get trapped in semantic swamps when you start trying to draw those sorts of lines, but the differences are there regardless. By its nature (functionally: music that is commercially popular, or is intended so), pop has incorporated many styles at many times, sometimes in pure forms, sometimes as hybrids. Even in its salad days, rock always had to share the turf in the pop marketplace, despite its edge in perceived hipness (Hello Dolly was a big hit in the mid-60s, y'know). For pop is no specific style (though there are pop mini-genres which are built around idealized visions of certain pop eras), and will continue long after rock becomes something like that favorite old quilt you got from Grandma.

Right now, the "boy bands" and "jailbait girls" are the big pop thing. I'm not too crazy about them myself, but hey, they're a valid response to the blank canvas. With their elaborately over-mannered music and choreography, they remind me of baroque courtly performance. An odd little development. Do they have staying power? Probably not, and why should they? Pop is supposed to be "of the moment," novel, fleeting, a whirl of change. That's the trouble with rock -- it stayed around too long -- built up all that mythology and attitude and self-significance and seriousness until it turned into some sort of smothering religion. And lost its pop fun. Rock doesn't need to be dead, it just needs to get over itself.

But then again, if the next thing is another return of hair metal, I'll wish rock was dead and buried, with a stake through the heart!

© 2000 M.Ace -- "troublemaker"

Firstly, I must address the mysterious exemption of punk from Rock here. A reason cited in an outside e-mail exchange by the troublemaker instigating this essay exercise was [editor's note: Hey, no fair!], "I know it's somewhat subjective, but at the time that punk emerged, it clearly was not Rock -- it was like a disruption from somewhere else ripping through a hole in the space/time fabric. Yet within a few years, Anarchy In The UK was just another Rock warhorse, like Stairway To Heaven."

This statement really just reinforces that punk was like any other stage in Rock history, like rockabilly or psychedelia, that seemed so alien in its time, but only later in hindsight had a very sensible evolutionary, historical slot. Many people probably didn't regard the Ronettes as Rock and Roll either in their day, but people tend to lump the evolution of most "popular music" that fell under some part of the influential shadow of 1950s Rock and Roll as "Rock." Punk is most certainly Rock, as is the Jefferson Airplane and anything else stylistically a million miles away from Buddy Holly that still shares part of Rock's complex musical genealogy.

Rock isn't dead. From my experience it's instead a case of individuals culturally dying as they get older. Oldies radio formats feed off of this phenomenon, where people are stuck listening to a fixed, limited rotation of the same music they were listening to in high school or college. High school, and probably even more so, college, tends to be a time when people explore new ideas in all sorts of media: books, films, and, the issue here: music. And it's not just things that were new at the time, but ideas that were new to THEM as individuals, which might include works created generations earlier. I've observed that the Average American Citizen, upon graduation, tends to fall prey to the 9-to-5 work grind, family obligations and whatever stresses are brought on by being a member of society. They then tend to grow lazy in learning and growing and exploring things the way they did in their youth. They protest that culture died after they graduated, but it seems that instead it was them as individuals dying culturally and mentally.

The fact is people have continued long past the 1960s to make music, and have been making interesting music that's descended from Sun Records, Dick Dale, Phil Spector, Motown, the British Invasion, Velvet Underground, MC5, early 70s UK Glam, The Sex Pistols, Devo, The Residents, Laurie Anderson, Art of Noise, Husker Du, The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Beck and a zillion other famous names and unknowns.

I will concede that the 1960s were an unusual time when there was more musical creative exploration and widespread embracing of more experimental music, but that is more a testimony to the overall cultural climate of the period than any barometer of Rock music's "state of health."

Maybe Rock's not in its most actively innovative season, but it sure ain't dead. The evolution of Rock from Buddy Holly to Jefferson Airplane to X to Chris Knox and Magnetic Fields and Optiganally Yours is happening as we speak. Most people are just too lazy to listen, explore, and notice.

© 2000 Michael David Toth -- disquaire

The ME Generation Lives On, At Least Until Social Security Is Gone

The selfishness of Baby Boomers continues to burn unabated, and now their loss of innocence is viewed through the rosy bifocals of nostalgia. Due to either their unparalleled uniqueness or potential to generate commerce, these people influence media, politics and history for all who must cower in the shadow of the coolest generation ever, really man, the coolest. There's nothing new about self aggrandizing. It's a tired cliché when boomers celebrate their singular and unique contributions to contemporary culture and assert no one else should even bother trying.

It would appear humanity owes a great deal to this generation, as they invented not only sex and drugs, but rock and roll. The actions of Hester Prynne, snuff snorting Yonomami Indians and Chuck Berry only served to inspire the generation who really did it right, in the only decade that really mattered, the 60s. There's no disputing The Dave Clark Five, Cyrkl, The Swinging Medallions and The Turtles REALLY rocked. Certainly Tim Leary, Papa John Phillips and Phyllis Diller were stoned to the bone on something during the 60s. The birth control pill and woman's empowerment has made the world sexier and safer.

Every era, each decade, all generations contribute to the greater culture. America's boomer bias is due to their numbers -- to quantity, not quality. The sneering haughtiness with which 70s, 80s and 90s "culture" is regarded, is an opinion to which some are entitled, but it's editorial, not gospel, and its selectivity is shameful.

This is not a defense of Disco, John Denver, homegrown grass, key parties, herpes, The Clash, MTV, The Facts Of Life, AIDS, Boy George, coke, Metallica, Flannel, crack, Nirvana, TB, heroin or Britney Spears. Nor is this a trivia showcase, where obscure vs obscure results in some self-serving analysis grasped by 3 other really cool people. For example, consider the influence of the Sonics (from the early 60s, not the later ballad-y crap) on 4 track recording, mono and grunge. Could it be the weather in the Pacific Northwest causes a super fuzzed out guitar sound and garage style delivery? Did any of their children end up in Nirvana or on the Estrus label?

Boomers are underestimating themselves, as they've brought our culture more than Keith Richards, civil (yeah) rights, and tie-dyed apparel. This hypocrisy inspires derision. The 60's also gave birth to anti-establishmentarianism which brought us plummeting voter turnouts and the Reagan/Bush regime. The elevation of self pleasure over societal constructs spawned high divorce rates and fatherless generations. Though Earth Day helped raise consciousness and recycling rates, who is driving all the giant gas guzzling smog machines? Senior citizens? Gen Xers? Illegal Aliens? Visiting Canadians?

The realization they've become fatuous self-inflated hypocrites, causes the "deification" of all associated with their innocence, and loss thereof, way back in the 60s. They think if they keep clapping their hands, Pete Townshend will fly them back to their youth. Once there, they can relive that first hit, first sexual experience or first pop star infatuation while pissing off the 'rents (aka the greatest generation EVER) and pretending a 388 pound crocodile with an alarm clock in his belly isn't nipping at their heels. The vitality of their icons is a reflection of their own vitality, especially for men. Someone is buying tickets to The Moody Blues/Kinks/Who's last show ever, for real this time, man (Admittedly the last-tour-ever thing draws in suckers of all ages. I know a slacker couple whose first date was The Who's first last tour ever way back in 1990. Last I checked they're still married).

What way would you like to thank the boomers for creating a culture of escalating affluence built on credit and its long term affects? How shall we thank all the tireless crusaders for women's rights who gave up after ERA and are now making 70-cents to a man's dollar just like their daughters are? How do we thank them for building luxury homes on farmland and parking their Chevy Gigan-tors with the Eddie Bauer interiors in the driveways? Could they ever be repaid for raising children who seem to embrace rap, hip hop culture and, for want of a better word, "wiggerdom"? Perhaps their kids really do know how to piss the folks off -- Jimmy Page plays his ass off, while Puffy Combs grunts "uh huh" and makes millions.

Wouldn't it be neat if Jim Morrison was still alive, singing at Biker Rallies and State Fairs -- a living interpretation of Elvis' bloated excess? Imagine Bob Dylan flapping his jackson at the Divorced Dads Hall of Fame when they canonize John Lennon, who left his first family, Cynthia and Julian, 2 red cents and a nice last name. If Eric Clapton were hog-tied and beaten with hickory switches by half of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' kids it would be a strike for justice. Should Anton LaVey rise from the grave and claim Carlos Santana as one of his kin in service to the Dark Lord, it would explain much. Every generation has a dream.

Assaulting us with their cultural superiority is a ploy to disguise they really aren't that cool anymore, and they're out of touch with "music today" and have been, for oh, maybe 30 years.

© 2000 Miss Fidget -- NOT a runner up in the Miss Hawaiian Tropic Contest

Rock is dead, it just hasn't been buried yet.

I wasn't old enough to experience rock 'n' roll when it was new, other than subconciously hearing it in radio, in movie theaters before the film started or as background music for the auto scooter ride at the annual fair. And I was too old when the term "rock" replaced the term "beat", which was the hip mainstream music of my generation. So on one hand, I lack the direct experience, which seems to be so important to tell the real stuff from the fake substitute. On the other hand, in my humble opinion, rock music was only called "rock" after the time when, according to the essay question's statement, it was already dead. So I'm not sure what to say.

I guess all generations since rock 'n' roll had their music that took the place that rock had when it was new. So it's easy to say that since the time new mainstream trends took the place that rock 'n' roll had in youth culture in the late 50s and early 60s, the original rock must have been dead. Meaning that only new music can be good music and no chance for a musical movement to age in style?

The music that played that role of a rebellious soundtrack for life for me -- almost too late when I was already 23 -- was certainly punk. Punk changed my life, and I tend to believe it must have been some kind of rock music -- guitars, drums, loud, provocative, primitive et al. As I clearly remember, punk was, among all the things that it was, an attempt to reanimate the "real" rock music from the 50s. Which means, that by that time the real rock must at least have been lying in coma, if not long dead.

So what is rock, really? Is it a musical style defined by the rhythm, the harmonies and instruments it is played with? Then it is clearly not dead, although it should be. Or is it a music defined by the role it played for youth in the age of rebellion and change and only had a meaning in that context -- then it is as clearly dead, as that kind of youth has disappeared from the planet. It's interesting however, that only rock seems to be so meaningful for generations. Nobody would ever say: "What happened to the good ol' disco? Today's disco just isn't what it was before..." or something like that. Rock, the word, seems to invoke much more than music; it's a lifestyle, a philosophy, a way to "stay young," it even seems to be synonymous for youth itself. I think the explanation is that rock 'n' roll was the first music in history that articulated the feeling of being young. And this could only happen once. It couldn't be repeated in all its glorious innocence by later styles and it certainly could not age. Youth cannot become old. Maybe that's why deep down in my subconcious self, I find a preference for rock 'n' roll, early rock 'n' roll, rockabilly, 'til early psych garage, including instrumentals. It's possibly the only music that means something for me in a deep emotional sense. It still does today. There is no other music that represents something like a dream to me. A dream of a real life to live. Generations have tried to repeat this, but very, very seldom have they succeeded. Rock is dead, but the dream still lives.

© 2000 Moritz R -- artist

Kulture Links:

Bring Out Your Dead: The Uneasy Future Of Rock by Clint Small.
Is Rock Dead?, an essay by composer, Rhys Chatham, followed by comments from others.
AOR Is A-OK! by Richie Unterberger, debating the limits of revisionism.
Rock Is Dead And Living In Mexico by Ed Morales.
Rock Is Dead And Well At The MTV Video Awards by Jeff Stark.
Fuller Up, The Dead Musician Directory.
Dead Rock Stars Club.