# Some serious insight into the history of rock and roll



## Budda (May 29, 2007)

I think the history of rock and roll is interesting. I don't actively seek it out but I do like to read articles to learn about the beginning of it.

I didn't even think of it until reading this article, but then it makes a ton of sense. Read the full article linked in AJOMT below:

Bob Dylan Explains What Killed Rock'n'Roll-And It's Not What You Think - A Journal of Musical Things

Thoughts?


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

Interesting quote from Dylan - the article lost me when it started to reference US President Adams and also regurgitate the payola scandal.

There was an essay done by Little Steven a few years back on the death of rock and roll and his hypothesis/theory was something to the effect that r&r music was always about making people dance. When the music derived from that, it died.


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## jimmy c g (Jan 1, 2008)

the beatles killed rock and roll.... before they hit the amount of diverse tunes coming thru the airwaves was amazing, from chuck berry- james brown- elvis- evererlys and supremes -bill haley-stevie wonder-etc, I love the beatles but they were so dominant some times I think a lot of great stuff had to die to make room for the "new rock n roll " which I will say changed and maybe saved my soul with a sound and lyric base I needed to help to help me see there was another side to a crazy world


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Rock and rock and roll is dead? Changed a bit generation to generation but that's about it.


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## Guitar101 (Jan 19, 2011)

Rock & Rock & Roll is not dead. That won't happen until all of us "Baby Boomers" are gone and then I don't care. Our local FM radio station "The Wolf" 101.5 tried changing formats and lost a lot of listeners. They've now gone back to all Classic Rock.

Some of us were there. I remember when Jailhouse Rock was playing a matinee at the local theater in 1957 and my Mother wouldn't let me go because I was too young. My older brother and sister got to go. I've never forgot it.


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## jimmy c g (Jan 1, 2008)

I dont really think rock is dead but the newness and excitment of waiting for something we have never seen or felt has paled perhaps , during the birth, the youth finally got our own music and now that weve had it for so long it perhaps has lost some of the excitement or thrill of getting something brand new and not knowing what could be next especially guitar rock and lyrics that inspired freedom and love and peace and moral themes....


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

The article is a bit of a soup-du-jour of random ideas. Not great writing IMHO.

First, there is an emerging bald spot on my head from scratching it and wondering what exactly people place within the circle of "rock" or "rock and roll". You have to first be able to define what it is you think those terms include and exclude before you can begin to a) measure and document some sort of decline, and b) demonstrate the factors that cause such a decline.

Will there ever be a time when youth-oriented music that expresses discontent and/or reflects emerging sense of identity and sexual awakening does not exist? I sincerely doubt it. The style of what gets called rock and roll is different from what preceded it, but there was a time when music we think of as old and staid was actually the music of youth and rebellion.

Will there ever be a time when such music becomes permanently affixed to a particular style and successive cohorts of young people are content with that style? I doubt that too.

Do the concerns of different ethnic groups overlap enough that they turn into the same sort of youth-music trends? As long as some demographic groups have more social and economic power than others, I doubt it.

Has there been an ongoing struggle between Euro-Caucasian power-brokers and other demographic groups for what popular de-classed music ought to consist of? With the odd exception, yes. Many cities have their "black" stations and "white" stations. Once upon a time, popular playlists were more desegregated, but would eventually move towards racialized formats and playlists. The DJ of my era in both Ottawa and Montreal was Dean Hagopian, who would just as easily play (and interview) Otis Redding and Johnny Nash as he would play The Human Beinz, The Who, or Lesley Gore. It was just music, and it sounded and made you feel good.

While there was a certain bleah quality to some hastily manufactured disco music, part of the disdain for disco and rise of punk in the mid-to-late 70's was a re-partitioning of popular music into black (disco) and white (punk, and eventually new wave, glitter/glamour, and hard "arena" rock), after a decade and a half of unsegregated top 40 radio. In much the same way that the internet has allowed people to seek out like kinds and not stray beyond what is familiar and acceptable to them, the rise of FM radio at first provided a sort of freedom to go well beyond the confines of AM format and 3:11-duration tunes. But it also permitted radio to begin to focus on specific demographics and cater to them. In 1971, I could hear the entire uncut version of Isaac Hayes talking/singing "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (is there a blacker man than Ike Hayes, and is there a whiter writer than Jimmy Webb?) on FM radio. BY the end of the 70's, that would have been next to impossible.

So, I think the constant battle between those in power and those largely out of power has been reflected in the history of rock/pop/jazz/whatever, and the consequences for what we get to hear or hear more of, is a real thing as Dylan alludes to. I think the struggle continues, though, and nothing is really "dead".


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

Guitar101 said:


> Rock & Rock & Roll is not dead. That won't happen until all of us "Baby Boomers" are gone and then I don't care. Our local FM radio station "The Wolf" 101.5 tried changing formats and lost a lot of listeners. They've now gone back to all Classic Rock.
> 
> Some of us were there. I remember when Jailhouse Rock was playing a matinee at the local theater in 1957 and my Mother wouldn't let me go because I was too young. My older brother and sister got to go. I've never forgot it.


Q107 did the same and I now listen to them very seldom. I doubt they'll change back however. As you say, the demographic that wants what I call classic rock the most is starting to diminish.

I pretty much stick to CDs or iPhone for tunes in the car.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

I don't think rock is dead, but I am curious to see what the next big thing is.


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## Guest (Apr 18, 2016)

That's it Budda. Rock wont die, it evolves.

The Wolf, Q107 and other similar stations are owned(?) by Corus Radio.
It's the same repeats of songs. DJ's rarely spin their own selections anymore.
I have Q on my car radio for the 15 min drive to work. 
I know what time it is by the song they play.



Guitar101 said:


> Rock & Rock & Roll is not dead. That won't happen until all of us "Baby Boomers" are gone and then I don't care.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Budda said:


> I don't think rock is dead, but I am curious to see what the next big thing is.


Wait no longer!
National Lampoon Radio Hour had this all figured out over 40 years ago. In the dumper! I'm talking Gump Worsley. Flush it, flush it! Christopher Guest is a genius.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

As long as 'we/they' keep labeling the next big thing as Rock or RnR, rock will never die. 

In the string about the RRHOF, a few mentioned that rap, house, etc. aren't really rock and shouldn't be in the HOF. I don't disagree. So why do we/they classify it under rock. even as a subcategorization of rock (like metal, etc). Is it for the people who have to categorize things: accountants, record people, radios stations (FM radio in Canada is very tightly controlled as far as what genre they play - much tighter than the USA - but I don't allude myself that Canada is the source of the categorization)?

Someone needs to invent the next big thing and call it ??????????? instead of Rock. And then we'll have a ????????????HOF. Just don't ask me how to pronounce ?????????? I'll leave that to the accountants, record people and radio stations.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

High/Deaf said:


> As long as 'we/they' keep labeling the next big thing as Rock or RnR, rock will never die.
> 
> In the string about the RRHOF, a few mentioned that rap, house, etc. aren't really rock and shouldn't be in the HOF. I don't disagree. So why do we/they classify it under rock. even as a subcategorization of rock (like metal, etc). Is it for the people who have to categorize things: accountants, record people, radios stations (FM radio in Canada is very tightly controlled as far as what genre they play - much tighter than the USA - but I don't allude myself that Canada is the source of the categorization)?
> 
> Someone needs to invent the next big thing and call it ??????????? instead of Rock. And then we'll have a ????????????HOF. Just don't ask me how to pronounce ?????????? I'll leave that to the accountants, record people and radio stations.


Victor Borge could tell you how to pronounce ?????????????.


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## jimmythegeek (Apr 17, 2012)

People complaining about NWA in the RRHOF and rap in general strike me as similar to the Disco Sucks movement of the 70s. Some of it is a simple dislike of a genre. Some of it is a black/white cultural issue that makes people uncomfortable. Sometimes I think we need to listen to what we enjoy and not waste time complaining about what we don't.

I'm also inclined to agree with mhammer's take on this question. If we define rock and roll as an expression of youth culture/rebellion/sexual awakening then it has not and will not die. It just sounds a little different than when you were a kid.


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