I like this but it seems to me to owe an awful lot to the account Robert Palmer’s account in the PBS/BBC History of Rock ‘n’ Roll series he advised them on and the Unruly History he wrote in the associated hardcover book. One thing put forward, I believe, on the never-released DVD on the MC5 is that part of the corporate follow-through to the lucrative nature of rock was a shift to having minor bands on major labels travel with and open for the big bands rather than having the reigning regional uber-band - the band that had survived making and being challenged in local/regional scenes/venues month after month - open. This killed the regionally distinct, hierarchical, super-competitive and explosively creative scenes of the 60s. Add to that the racial and sonic nichification of everything that you mention, the death of a number of the more synthetic musicians/bands and the rise of overwrought, overproduced and self-importantly flatulent art-rock listened to in seats at shows or with headphones at home (the crap I loved so much in the late 70s) and the glory of rock was tarnished - until punk, reggae and, dare I say it, disco got people out of their seats and into new creative and physical realms. Or at least that’s the take I teach my Pop Culture students. ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:
> "On Thursday, Aug. 14, 1969, two distinct groups packed the bus from
> New York City to Monticello, N.Y. The people in the back were going to
> the Woodstock rock festival; the ones in front were bound for the
> Borscht Belt. One elderly woman turned to me and my two friends and
> asked, in a Brooklyn-Jewish accent almost as thick as my
> grandmother’s, 'What is this, a hippie convention?'"
>
> http://www.indypendent.org/2009/08/13/did-woodstock-kill
>
> --
> "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure
> mægen lytlað."
>
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>