We’ve explored politics now for a while. Just for grins, let’s take some time to explore the “times that stir men’s souls”- Rock music, a dying art form. I do this a great length in my two Pitt Osher Lifelong Learning Institute classes on Rock Music Appreciations (60s and 70s). I’m told there is some interest among academic Pitt students for a 3-credit class by me on these subjects and I’m looking into it for next Fall. Even if you have no clue who Led Zeppelin is, it’s a good general education subject you can amaze your otherwise unknowledgeable friends with.
Let me give you a little history and philosophy of this captivating art.
Among other things, the revolutionary 60’s changed everything in music. Strains of “Are you experienced” by Hendrix and “The End” from the Doors wafted out of dorm room doors in the mid-60s replacing girl groups and do-wop. No one had ever heard anything like this before and it changed lives, putting young adults in tune with what was going on in society and government. Then the age of 60s “collectivism” and communalism died under its own weight, morphing to the “Me Generation” of the early 70s. Convoluted “Bands” morphed to “singer-songwriters”; Sweet Baby James, Paul Simon, Don Mclean and getting in touch with one’s inner self.
The 70s, evolved to a rich tapestry of music embodying some of the most talent musicians in history, an alternate universe of unconventional social mores passing through optimistic iterations to ultimately to end in a fatal mutation. An exploration of “no limits”, the price of admission for which a number of very talented players paid with their lives.
The medium of Rock has always been one of rebellion against conformity and conventionality. A high risk-high gain medium selecting for those actively living the dream, selecting strains and chords to pull resonant strings of the human brain, abandoning order. The stuff of existential anti-heroism, inviting those seeking salvation by immersing their souls in cathartic rock media masquerading as social profundity.
Those selected as the cast in this living theater had no safety net and were drawn in at their peril. Normally composed hominids become temporarily irrational at a Jerry Lee Lewis concert and ripped out seats. Jerry Lee lights a piano on fire and is carried out still playing by firemen. Duane Allman thought he was immune to laws of traffic. Bonzo and Moonie thought they were immune to the dangers of ethanol. Hendrix couldn’t sleep without escalating soporifics that ultimately put him to sleep forever. Cobain chose the brief pain of a shotgun blast to end the constant pain of his life. Jim Morrison died alone in a bathtub.
The early 70s were also a straight up revolution, preceded by the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968 and nurtured by the violent Democratic National Convention also of 1968. An age of violent protest. Nixon Agonistes, the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Faction, Kent State, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (it’s head- John Kerry), Angela Davis and Black Power.
MLK was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the day before I left for Vietnam. The country exploded and, as you can imagine, the Brothers in my unit finishing jungle training at Ft. Bragg, NC were upset beyond belief. But we all understood that we were all responsible for each other once we arrived in-country, if for no other reason than no one else would be. So, I ran into one of the Brothers crying in the bathroom and touched his shoulder (in retrospect, maybe a dangerous move under the circumstances). I told him how painful this was for me as well and he accepted that. We never had a problem from that moment on. The candidate for President Robert Kennedy tearfully announced the death of MLK to the country from the back of a truck platform in Indianapolis.
Much but not all of the 70s related to an intensely polarizing President and the unpopular Vietnam conflict that remained in full swing. The current perception of popular unrest in the 2000s is jejune in comparison. In the early 70s, virtually every city in the country brimmed with firebombs, looting and the crackle of small arms fire. Business owners sat in shifts with shotguns propped on their toes outside their storefronts nightly.
But I digress.
Something very important was happening to American music in the 70s. Dave Grohl believes that virtually all Rock music can eventually be traced to a central origin, nurtured and modulated in the turn of the 60s into the 70s. The best way to explain that concept is to postulate the repository of Rock music as an unstable white dwarf star in the universe, undulating and straining but not ready to explode into a supernova just yet, waiting for the right stimulus. Back in the 40s, big band music was simple and staid, feeding upon itself. In the 50s, a fundamental instability began with skiffle in England that created the Beatles. In the USA, be-bop and rhythm & blues, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and of course, Elvis.
All of this boiled to the surface to bring the star to an explosive point in the 60s and 70s, setting the stage for the cataclysm it all literally and metaphorically went electric. A musical revolution never before dreamed of and will probably never be seen again. The star erupted sending chunks of musical expression out into the abyss to change the fundamental nature of music.
To name a few off the top- Hendrix, The Animals, the Zombies, The Kinks, Cream, the Doors, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Otis Redding, Credence Clearwater, The Byrds, Janis Joplin, James Brown, Miles Davis, The Who, Sly & the Family Stone, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Buffalo Springfield, Procol Harum, Paul Revere & Raiders, Hollies, Dave Clark Five, Neil Young, Steve Miller Band, The Guess Who, Steppenwolf, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Jefferson Airplane all at once.
Each of these chunks shone brightly and autonomously, but in the end, like real stars, gravity must eventually rule and all the chunks were slowly drawn back into the star’s mass, stabilizing them into a heterologous mass of eclectic sound and tone. The metamorphosed star then launched a kind of solar wind from its surface, fabricating swells of unfiltered music that waxed & waned in time, creating vacuous slabs- Disco, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, “American Idol”,’ The Voice”, Rap, Hip-Hop, Snoop Dog and many more dead or in jail. Survivors all wafting around out there at the whims of aimless, desultory mini-eruptions.
But the solar wind occasionally allows some bright spots, some incredible music out there but it’s dying out as the original artists age. If you seek it, there is one rule. Don’t follow the money. The money will lead you to hype, glitz and an empty box with “Kardashian” somewhere on it. The performers that we’re still listening to pushing 50 years ago wandered into Nashville or San Francisco on foot, broke with a Taylor or Telecaster strung over their back and played for five drunks in a dark bistro.
They all shared one commitment- absolutely no compromise. The music was what it was and would not be altered for any commercial advantage. It was all about the music. They didn’t care if they starved as long as someone was listening. The further you get away from money, the better it gets.
The one big paradox in American music is the ascension of mediocre talent to big money. Few performers illustrate mediocre voice talent more than Taylor Swift or her interchangeable monozygote Katie Perry. I’ve heard equal voice talent in local bar band singers. As it pertains to the nuts and bolts of voicing, tone and ear worthiness, neither can stand on the same stage as Sharleen Spiteri of the Glasgow band “Texas”, who in 25 years continues to enjoy only local UK exposure.
Ms. Swift’s albums of sophomoric personal narratives, “1989” sold 1.287 million copies in its first week, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 and making Swift the first singer to have three albums sell more than one million copies in a week. It’s difficult to explain how this can be. The unfortunate reality is that lack of talent does not necessarily equal failure once creative marketing becomes involved.
Taylor Swift started out in Nashville spending at least half her career learning creative marketing techniques applied to performance art for the specific goal of moneymaking while delivering a serviceable vocal product. For years her mentors gently nurtured her into a product that would fill a bill encapsulated with money. It was about leaping onto stage from spring loaded boxes dressed to show her figure as provocatively as possible and warbling to the flashing lights and swells of electrified instruments.
Recently, Charlie Rose interviewed actor Jake Gyllenhaal regarding his film “Nightcrawler”. The conversation described a sociopath that creeps around Los Angeles at night photographing violent, salacious activities and selling them to local TV stations. The question of who could possibly be interested in such things arose. The answer was interesting.
Back in the 60s, television news was immune from TV station merchandizing. This changed somewhere along the way, demanding that the news section generate a profit. This quickly produced what we see now on every local TV station in the country. Roving reporters searching for anything that might possibly be interesting to a population of jaded viewers otherwise bored with life in general. Weepy mothers decrying their kid shot dead just minding his business in the middle of a high drug exchange area at 3am. Vivid car accidents. High visibility court cases.
This is news? No, it’s entertainment and it draws viewers, which draws sponsors generating money by lying straight faced about their products. It is an inalterable fact of our life, as are blatantly deceptive TV commercials for products that don’t work, even for Shaq.
Unclear where this will end if it ever does. But where they shone, they shone oh so brightly.
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