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

The disco of its day

[koganbot]

Rock 'n' roll was the disco of its day, in its scavenger willingness to incorporate everything. Mambo rock, flying saucer rock, barking dogs rock, chipmunk rock, lunatic balladeer rock. But rock 'n' roll had an edge of violence and a promise or threat of change that disco didn't really have.

Re: The disco of its day

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

Pop though was ALSO the disco of its day, given the startling degree with which non-English music sources had thoroughly (if maybe superficially...maybe?) penetrated the mainstream. I mean, jeez, probably the most popular song of 1950 -- America and worldwide -- was a solo zither track performed by an Austrian. (And if not that, it was the folk-blues waltz covered by those pinkos.) Richard Corliss covers this territory here:

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,127065,00.html

Re: The disco of its day

[koganbot]

I wonder if Corliss listens to much hip-hop?

I think "pop" is too broad of a term here; I mean, late '70s pop was the disco of its day, too, since the pop charts included a whole bunch of stuff, including disco! But disco had the sense that anything could and would be discofied, whereas I'm not sure what it would mean to say that anything could be poppified, pop (as I said) being too broad a term for what I had in mind. )(But then, rock 'n' roll isn't so unbroad a term, either.)