Slang, youth subcultures and rock music

The hippie movement of the late 1960s in the United States--tied up with Vietnam War service and anti-Vietnam War protests, the Civil Rights Movement, and sexual liberation--fed back into the British rock scene. British beat groups also defined their music as art, not commerce, and felt themselves to be constrained by technology rather than markets. The Beatles made the move from pop to rock on their 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, symbolically identifying with the new hippie era, while bands such as Pink Floyd and Cream (Clapton's band) set new standards of musical skill and technical imagination. This was the setting in which Hendrix became the rock musician's rock musician. He was a model not just in his virtuosity and inventiveness as a musician but also in his stardom and his commercial charisma. By the end of the 1960s the great paradox of rock had become apparent: rock musicians' commitment to artistic integrity--their disdain for chart popularity--was bringing them unprecedented wealth. Sales of rock albums and concert tickets reached levels never before seen in popular music. And, as the new musical ideology was being articulated in magazinesnew musical ideology was being articulated in magazines such as Rolling Stone, so it was being commercially packaged by emergent record companies such as Warner BrothersWarner Brothers in the United States and IslandIsland in Britain. Rock fed both off and into hippie rebellion (as celebrated by the Woodstock festival of 1969), and it fed both off and into a buoyant new music business (also celebrated by Woodstock). This music and audience were now where the money lay; the Woodstock musicians seemed to have tapped into an insatiable demand, whether for "progressive" rock and formal experiment, heavy metal and a bass-driven blast of high-volume blues, or singer-songwriters and sensitive self-exploration.

4. Rock in the 1970s

Corporate rock

The 1970s began as the decade of the rock superstar. Excess became the norm for bands such as the Rolling Stones, not just in terms of their private wealth and well-publicized decadence but also in terms of stage and studio effects and costs. The sheer scale of rock album sales gave musicians--and their ever-growing entourage of managers, lawyers, and accountants--the upper hand in negotiations with record companies, and for a moment it seemed that the greater the artistic self-indulgence the bigger the financial return. By the end of the decade, though, the 25-year growth in record sales had come to a halt, and a combination of economic recession and increasing competition for young people's leisure spending (notably from the makers of video games) brought the music industry, by this point based on rock, its first real crisis. The Anglo-American music market was consolidated into a shape that has not changed much since, while new sales opportunities beyond the established transatlantic route began to be pursued more intently.

Challenges to mainstream rock

The 1970s, in short, was the decade in which a pattern of rock formats and functions was settled. The excesses of rock superstardom elicited both a return to DIY rock and roll (in the roots sounds of performers such as Bruce Springsteen and in the punk movement of British youth) and a self-consciously camp take on rock stardom itself (in the glam rock of the likes of Roxy Music, David Bowie, and Queen). The continuing needs of dancers were met by the disco movement (originally shaped by the twist phenomenon in the 1960s), which was briefly seized by the music industry as a new pop mainstream following the success of the film Saturday Night Fever in 1977. By the early 1980s, however, disco settled back into its own world of clubs, deejays, and recording studios and its own crosscurrents from African-American, Latin-American, and gay subcultures. African-American music developed in parallel to rock, drawing on rock technology sometimes to bridge black and white markets (as with Stevie Wonder) and sometimes to sharpen their differences (as in the case of funk).

Rock, in other words, was routinized, as both a moneymaking and a music-making practice. This had two consequences that were to become clearer in the 1980s. First, the musical tension between the mainstream and the margins, which had originally given rock and roll its cultural dynamism, was now contained within rock itself. The new mainstream was personified by Elton John, who developed a style of soul-inflected rock ballad that over the next two decades became the dominant sound of global pop music. But the 1970s also gave rise to a clearly "alternative" rock ideology (most militantly articulated by British punk musicians), a music scene self-consciously developed on independent labels using "underground" media and committed to protecting the "essence" of rock and roll from commercial degradation. The alternative-mainstream, authentic-fake distinction crossed all rock genres and indicated how rock culture had come to be defined by its own contradictions.

Second, sounds from outside the Anglo-American rock nexus began to make their mark on it (and in unexpected ways). In the 1970s, for example, Europop began to have an impact on the New York City dance scene via the clean, catchy Swedish sound of Abba, the electronic machine music of Kraftwerk, and the American-Italian collaboration (primarily in West Germany) of Donna Summer and Giorgio MoroderGiorgio Moroder. At the same time, Marley's success in applying a Jamaican sensibility to rock conventions meant that reggae became a new tool for rock musicians, whether established stars such as Clapton and the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards or young punks like the Clash, and played a significant role (via New York City's Jamaican sound-system deejays) in the emergence of hip-hop.

5. Rock in the 1980s and '90s

Digital technology and alternatives to adult-oriented rock

The music industry was rescued from its economic crisis by the development in the 1980s of a new technology, digital recording. Vinyl records were replaced by the compact disc (CD), a technological revolution that immediately had a conservative effect. By this point the most affluent record buyers had grown up on rock; they were encouraged to replace their records, to listen to the same music on a superior sound system. Rock became adult music; youthful fads continued to appear and disappear, but these were no longer seen as central to the rock process, and, if rock's 1970s superstars could no longer match the sales of their old records with their new releases, they continued to sell out stadium concerts that became nostalgic rituals (most unexpectedly for the Grateful Dead). For new white acts the industry had to turn to alternative rock. A new pattern emerged--most successfully in the 1980s for R.E.M. and in the '90s for Nirvana--in which independent labels, college radio stationscollege radio stations, and local retailers developed a cult audience for acts that were then signed and mass-marketed by a major label. Local record companies became, in effect, research and development divisions of the multinationals.

The radical development of digital technology occurred elsewhere, in the new devices for sampling and manipulating sound, used by dance music engineers who had already been exploring the rhythmic and sonic possibilities of electronic instruments and blurring the distinctions between live and recorded music. Over the next decade the uses of digital equipment pioneered on the dance scene fed into all forms of rock music making. For a rap act such as Public Enemy, what mattered was not just a new palette of "pure" sound but also a means of putting reality--the actual voices of the powerful and powerless--into the music. Rap, as was quickly understood by young disaffected groups around the world, made it possible to talk back to the media.

The global market and fragmentation

The regeneration of DIY paralleled the development of new means of global music marketing. The 1985 Live Aid event, in which live television broadcasts of charity concerts taking place on both sides of the Atlantic were shown worldwide, not only put on public display the rock establishment and its variety of sounds but also made clear television's potential as a marketing tool. MTV, the American cable company that had adopted the Top 40 radio format and made video clips as vital a promotional tool as singles, looked to satellite technology to spread its message: "One world, one music." And the most successful acts of the 1980s, Madonna and Michael Jackson (whose 1982 album, Thriller, became the best-selling album of all time by crossing rock's internal divides), were the first video acts, using MTV brilliantly to sell themselves as stars while being used, in turn, as global icons in the advertising strategies of companies such as Pepsi-Cola.

The problem with this pursuit of a single market for a single music was that rock culture was fragmenting. The 1990s had no unifying stars (the biggest sensation, the Spice Girls, were never really taken seriously). The attempt to market a global music was met by the rise of world music, an ever-increasing number of voices drawing on local traditions and local concerns to absorb rock rather than be absorbed by it. Tellingly, the biggest corporate star of the 1990s, the Quebecois Céline Dion, started out in the French-language market. By the end of the 20th century, hybridity meant musicians playing up divisions within rock rather than forging new alliances. In Britain the rave scene (fueled by dance music such as house and techno, which arrived from Chicago and Detroit via Ibiza, Spainvia Ibiza, Spain) converged with "indie" guitar rock in a nostalgic pursuit of the rock community past that ultimately was a fantasy. Although groups like Primal Scream and the Prodigy seemed to contain, in themselves, 30 years of rock history, they remained on the fringes of most people's listening. Rock had come to describe too broad a range of sounds and expectations to be unified by anyone.

Rock as a reflection of cultural change

How, then, should rock's contribution to music history be judged? One way to answer this is to trace rock's influences on other musics; another is to attempt a kind of cultural audit (What is the ratio of rock masterworks to rock dross?). But such approaches come up against the problem of definition. Rock does not so much influence other musics as colonize them, blurring musical boundaries. Any attempt to establish an objective rock canon is equally doomed to failure--rock is not this sort of autonomous, rule-bound aesthetic form.

Its cultural value must be approached from a different perspective. The question is not How has rock influenced society? but rather How has it reflected society? From the musician's point of view, for example, the most important change since the 1950s has been in the division of music-making labour. When Elvis Presley became a star, there were clear distinctions between the work of the performer, writer, arranger, session musician, record producer, and sound engineer. By the time Public Enemy was recording, such distinctions had broken down from both ends: performers wrote, arranged, and produced their own material; engineers made as significant a musical contribution as anyone else to the creation of a recorded sound. Technological developments--multitrack tape recorders, amplifiers, synthesizers, and digital equipment--had changed the meaning of musical instruments; there was no longer a clear distinction between producing a sound and reproducing it.

From a listener's point of view, too, the distinction between music and noise changed dramatically in the second half of the 20th century. Music became ubiquitous, whether in public places (an accompaniment to every sort of activity), in the home (with a radio, CD player, or cassette player in every room), or in blurring the distinction between public and private use of music (a Walkman, boom box, or karaoke machine). The development of the compact disc only accelerated the process that makes music from any place and any time permanently available. Listening to music no longer refers to a special place or occasion but, rather, a special attention--a decision to focus on a given sound at a given moment.

Rock is the music that has directly addressed these new conditions and kept faith with the belief that music is a form of human conversation, even as it is mediated by television and radio and by filmmakers and advertisers. The rock commitment to access--to doing mass music for oneself--has survived despite the centralization of production and the ever-increasing costs of manufacture, promotion, and distribution. Rock remains the most democratic of mass media--the only one in which voices from the margins of society can still be heard out loud.

I V. ROCK SUBCULTURES

1.    HIPPIE

Main Entry: hip·pie
Variant(s): or hip·py /'hi-pE/
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural hippies
Etymology: 4hip + -ie
Date: 1965
: a usually young person who rejects the mores of established society (as by dressing unconventionally or favoring communal living) and advocates a nonviolent ethic; broadly : a long-haired unconventionally dressed young person
- hip·pie·dom /-pE-d&m/ noun
- hip·pie·ness or hip·pi·ness /-pE-n&s/ noun

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

Hippie, member of a youth movement of the late 1960s that was characterized by nonviolent anarchy, concern for the environment, and rejection of Western materialism. Also known as flower power, the hippie movement originated in San Francisco, California. The hippies formed a politically outspoken, antiwar, artistically prolific counterculture in North America and Europe. Their colorful psychedelic style was inspired by drugs such as the hallucinogen Lysergic Acid Diethylamid (LSD). This style emerged in fashion, graphic art, and music by bands such as Love, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and PinkFloyd.

2.    PUNK

Main Entry: 1punk
Pronunciation: 'p&[ng]k
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1596
1 archaic : PROSTITUTE
2 [probably partly from 3punk] : NONSENSE, FOOLISHNESS
3 a : a young inexperienced person : BEGINNER, NOVICE; especially : a young man b : a usually petty gangster, hoodlum, or ruffian c : a youth used as a homosexual partner
4 a : PUNK ROCK b : a punk rock musician c : one who affects punk styles

Main Entry: 2punk
Function: adjective
Date: 1896
1 : very poor : INFERIOR <played a punk game>
2 : being in poor health <said that she was feeling punk>
3 a : of or relating to punk rock b : relating to or being a style (as of dress or hair) inspired by punk rock
- punk·ish /'p&[ng]-kish/ adjective

Main Entry: 3punk
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps alteration of spunk
Date: 1687
1 : wood so decayed as to be dry, crumbly, and useful for tinder
2 : a dry spongy substance prepared from fungi (genus Fomes) and used to ignite fuses especially of fireworks

Main Entry: punk rock
Function: noun
Date: 1971
: rock music marked by extreme and often deliberately offensive expressions of alienation and social discontent
- punk rocker noun

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

PUNK also known as PUNK ROCK aggressive form of rock music that coalesced into an international (though predominantly Anglo-American) movement in 1975-80. Often politicized and full of vital energy beneath a sarcastic, hostile facade, punk spread as an ideology and an aesthetic approach, becoming an archetype of teen rebellion and alienation.

Black leather jackets adorned with shiny metal spikes and studs, combat boots, spike multi-colored mohawks (mohawk - a strip of hair left on the top of the head, running from front to back), slam dancing, and fast 3-chord rock and roll; all icons of the movement know as “punk”. These are icons that defined the punk movement in the 70’s and 80’s, from the earliest forms to the later forms. These are what many have seen when they saw a “punk” walking down the street.
“Punk” is a word that was originally a term for a prostitute in England, 17 century (you can find it in W. Shakespeare’s play “Measure for measure”), then it was a jailhouse term for a submissive homosexual, and was slapped on as a label for a generation of miscreant mid-1960’s U.S. Garage bands that were experimenting with post-Beatles British influence and early psychedelics . The term later expanded to include the rest of the “miscreants” that erupted in the mid 70’s.
The punk movement emerged in the mid 1970’s. Most people disagree to just where the punk movement started. Some say that it developed in the US in NYC, others say it was an effort for the British youth to rebel against the current UK government. There are some who say that it was an art form, then there are some who believe it was a unorganized, combined effort between the US and the UK, that eventually developed into a sort of a “punk race”. Despite the controversy about whether the punk movement started in the US, the UK, or some other place in the world, it is sure the entire world has felt its force in the emergence of subcultures and its direct influence on the music styles of today.

If it is asked who the first punk band was, and the person answering held true to the belief that punk was born in the UK, many persons would answer that it was the Sex Pistols. SEX PISTOLS – rock group who created the British punk movement of the late 1970s and who, with the song "God Save the Queen," became a symbol of the United Kingdom's social and political turmoil. By the summer of 1976 the Sex Pistols had attracted an avid fan base and successfully updated the energies of the 1960s mods for the malignant teenage mood of the '70s. Heavily stylized in their image and music, media-savvy, and ambitious in their use of lyrics, the Sex Pistols became the leaders of a new teenage movement - called punk by the British press - in the autumn of 1976. Their first single, "Anarchy in the U.K.," was both a call to arms and a state-of-the-nation address. When they used profanity on live television in December 1976, the group became a national sensation.

I am an anti-Christ
I am an anarchist,
don't know what I want
but I know how to get it.
I wanna destroy the passers-by
'cos I wanna be anarchy…

 The Sex Pistols released their second single, "God Save the Queen," in June 1977 to coincide with Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee (the 25th anniversary of her accession to the throne). Although banned by the British media, the single rose rapidly to number two on the charts. As "public enemies number one," the Sex Pistols were subjected to physical violence and harassment.

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