Yeah because no one ever said those things about Jazz, flappers, or Speakeasy’s. And I’m sure that’s just a movie myth that there were so many illegal activities surrounding that era...all those machine gun drive-by’s never happened.
“When my grandmother found out that I was playing jazz in one of the sporting houses in the District, she told me that I had disgraced the family and forbade me to live at the house... She told me that devil music would surely bring about my downfall...” Jelly Roll Martin, one of our earliest Jazz musicians. PBS did a show called Culture Shock, one was about the beginnings of Jazz called The Devil’s Music: 1920’s Jazz”. Even the New York Times thought it was Satanic.
Like I said, every generation thinks the youth of their generation are going to Hell, more Satanic, corrupt, terrible, etc. If you listen to Jazz lyrics and it’s very NEW beat you can see why that generation would be shocked. They talked about many of the themes in music today, imagine that!
Cindie
I lived through the beginning of rock n roll in the 50s. There were no lyrics glorifying Satan, or drugs, or communism in those days, I guarantee you. The whole cultural scene was downright corny and innocent by today's standards.
Yes, I know that much of jazz can be traced to whorehouses, but once it went mainstream there were only mildly suggestive lyrics, and again, no antipatriotic or Satanic lyrics. Even in raw old blues lyrics I don't hear explicit profanity, while today that is commonplace. No "pop musicians" pranced around the stage nude as does Flea today. Mainstream entertainment was not the same as the subculture of the slums back then. Today, some of the best-selling "artists" are straight from the slums, and wallow in flagrant use of the f-word, the n-word, the mf-word, incitements to violence, etc. etc.