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Rock-N-Roll History

Rock-n-Roll History
Introduction
As a way of setting the cultural stage for the process of comparing and contrasting newer musical groups with older rock groups � since music reflects culture in the same way literature does � it is worth taking a look to see if “The Times (have been) A-Changin,” (or how much they have been changing) as Bob Dylan wrote in the Sixties. The times have changed from yesterday’s consistently progressive, liberal, and into social change activities, to today’s more “party-oriented” young people who espouse a more conservative brand of politics and enjoy music that tends toward the predictable and bland.
“Music once had the ability to appall and shock,” according to an article in the New Statesman (Manzoor, Millard, 2004), but today, “the most radical symbol worn by fans on the streets is the iPod.” In fact, at Rock’s 50th anniversary (2004), the genre “has become unbearably middle-of-the-road. Writer Manzoor picks 1954 because that was the year Elvis Presley released “That’s All Right” on Sun Records. Fifty years ago, the article continues, “Elvis could be filmed only from the waist up because he was considered so sexually potent,” and twenty-five years ago the Sex Pistols “outraged Britain” by cursing on national TV. But music today “is just another form of entertainment and distraction alongside computer games and DVD box sets,” Manzoor writes.
“The stunning rise of rock ‘n’ roll (in the Sixties) as America’s predominant popular music,” writes Richard Welch in History Today, 15 years ago, “not only transformed the nation’s prevailing musical norms, but signaled the triumph of the emerging youth culture.” That rise of rock ‘n’ roll in the Sixties “overlaps with the appearance of the black civil rights movement as a major force in American society and politics,” Welch asserts.
And what were the attitudes in the Sixties compared with today? There is evidence attitudes started changing dramatically in the 1990s. To wit, the...