How I Learned To Love Rock And Roll

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I have been spending quite a lot of time listening to rock and roll (and other music from the rock and roll 'era' c.late 50s). This was sparked by a sudden and complete infatuation w/"Chantilly Lace" by the Big BOPPER.

So I wanted to ask - what do my fellow Poptimists think about rock and roll? Do you like it? Do you listen to it? How does it stack up next to pop now (or pop from a more recent then)? Is it pop at all? Is it rock? Does the path of listening to rock and roll lead inexorably to the Stray Cats? etc. etc.

Here are some things about rock and roll which relate to other Poptimist concerns:

- The tracks are generally very short.
- They are often quite goofy.
- They sound like they were done very quickly.
- They mostly came out on single.
- There was a hell of a lot of it.
- There are a lot of boys with guitars around.
- Rock and roll is pretty old.
- Chunks of it are very revered.
- It gets revived a lot.

HMMMMMM. Over to you crazy comments box cats!

Comments

Re: all in all you're just another dime in the jukebox baby

[koganbot]

To call it "pop" may be OK, but doing so certainly does away with a bunch of subtleties, and a lot depends on what you mean by "pop" anyway. Rock 'n' roll challenged pop (also challenged country, r&b, and blues), cut down its sales, took the youth away from pop - if by pop one means the music represented by Jo Stafford and Rosemary Clooney and Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. The word "pop" tended to be used to mean the old stuff that rock 'n' roll was threatening and replacing (and assimilating and copying). Or another way of putting this is that rock 'n' roll divided the pop market into a kind of you're with us or against us.

And then ballads are a whole nother story, since there are black and country and pop ballads, but pop tends to stay strong there, even when the performer is a rock 'n' roller; so there's the feeling among '50s guys that Elvis sold out to the girls by recording all those ballads.