Posted on 03/16/2006 1:42:40 AM PST by nickcarraway
WASHINGTON -- Those gruesome news reports from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony the other night remind me of a conclusion I came to a few years back. Rock and Roll is dead. Rest in peace.
Through the years the peace of the grave has crept up on a lot of rockers, usually years before they arrived at the average life expectancy of almost any type of adult human being, including skydivers and inebriated jaywalkers. Given how preachy the average rocker became by the late 1960s, this is ironic. In their warbles they lectured ordinary Americans on what to eat, what to wear, even prayer. They lectured us on the value of the great outdoors and of world peace. An astonishingly high percentage of them then found themselves under arrest for random violence or ingesting substances that were decidedly unhealthy. So Rock and Roll, rest in peace. Besides, Rock and Roll has not come up with a worthwhile song in at least a decade.
Happily the replacement for these left-wing nihilists on radio has been the right-wing talker. Rush Limbaugh -- the master of the genre -- and Mark Levin, the rising oracle of the genre, are total opposites from any warbler ever featured in Rolling Stone magazine and both are probably better singers. I have no doubt that they are popular because America is an increasingly conservative country and because conservative Americans are not welcomed by mainstream media with the exception of Fox. Yet there is another reason. Rock and Roll is dead.
Radio is a medium peculiarly suited for music, but there is apparently not much of an audience left for Rock and Roll. I mean, how many decades can we listen to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and other rockers from Rock's better days? They get tiresome, and apparently there is just not a large enough audience opening for earlier musical styles, for instance, big band or swing, jazz, or folk music. Country and Western's audience is not replacing Rock and Roll, and classical music's audience seems to be in decline.
Hence we hear more and more Rush wannabes. Some are dreadful, vacuous, only dimly conservative, shouters. But then as I say we have the rising Mark Levin and doubtless there will be others.
The declining audience for music on radio, however, is a secondary reason for the rise of the conservative talker. The primary reason is politics -- and not any kind of politics but rather conservative politics. The wave toward conservatism still seems to be gaining strength even as the wave for liberalism evanesces. I can recall the late 1960s and the 1970s when talk radio was a very different land from what it is today. Most talk radio hosts were decidedly left. A conservative, for instance, the venerable Bob Grant, was rare. But at some point liberal talk show hosts lost the audience, probably about the time liberalism began to lose out wherever the citizenry's vote mattered. That would be in the early 1980s with the rise of Ronald Reagan.
I think Democrats ought to give this a little thought. Almost nowhere can they start up a successful media alternative to Rush and the gang. Not even Al Gore's opulently endowed television network shows promise. The frightful suffering of the left's Air America is well known. Some say Air America staggers because Al Franken is not funny. But it is more than that. There just are not enough votes out there in radioland to elect a left-wing Rush.
Michael Barone recently gave an analysis of this condition that bodes drearily for Democratic politics. He did not use my radio evidence to foretell a bad day at the polls in the year's off year election. He looked at voter trends, vulnerable congressional seats, and other traditional evidence to predict this fall's elections. He was the first columnist to predict the 1994 takeover of Capitol Hill by the Republicans. The Democrats see themselves duplicating that feat this fall. Barone says no. The votes are just not there. Now let him explain the death of Rock and Roll.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His most recent book is Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House (Regnery Publishing).
Charley Weaver was asked: "If you're going to make a parachute jump, at least how high should you be?
He thought for a while then replied: "Three days of steady drinking should do it."
Seeing the Rolling Stones halftime show is proof that rock's on life support. Give me R & B or jazz any day; if it's not on radio, I'll find it somewhere.....
Rock n' roll is here to stay.
He is quite a guy.
I wonder R. Emmett may be talking about there.
"The best, the most hard-hitting"......... "let not your heart be troubled"
;-)
So, I would imagine, is Keith Richards, even though he's been dead for 12 years.
If you squint and imagine Mick bald it is downright horrifying.
****
I pray that Michael is correct.
Betcha he wasn't moving so well the next day, though!
Rock and roll died when MTV first came on the air, August 1st 1981. That`s when sight replaced sound as the most important thing in the music biz. August 1st 1981 is the beginning of something I call the "music holocaust" and it goes on to this day.
What a picture of Mick! He hasn't had plastic surgery/botox treatments, it appears.
Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll can never die
There’s more to the picture
Than meets the eye.
Hey hey, my my.
Out of the blue and into the black
You pay for this, but they give you that
And once you’re gone, you can’t come back
When you’re out of the blue and into the black.
The king is gone but he’s not forgotten
Is this the story of johnny rotten?
It’s better to burn out ’cause rust never sleeps
The king is gone but he’s not forgotten.
Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll can never die
There’s more to the picture
Than meets the eye.
My my, hey hey
Rock and roll is here to stay
It’s better to burn out
Than to fade away
My my, hey hey.
Out of the blue and into the black
They give you this, but you pay for that
And once you’re gone, you can never come back
When you’re out of the blue and into the black.
The king is gone but he’s not forgotten
This is the story of a johnny rotten
It’s better to burn out than it is to rust
The king is gone but he’s not forgotten.
Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll can never die
There’s more to the picture
Than meets the eye.
Hey hey, my my.
Actually it died when they killed Headbanger's Ball, 120 Minutes, and put Yo! MTV Raps on for 23.5 hours, and the rest of that time was devoted to goofy shows like Real World.
MTV2 is just becoming another clone, VH-1 is following in that trend, no doubt the other spin offs of VH-1 and MTV will follow suit.
Poor Eddie looks like he just jumped up out of a grave.
"RARRGH...BRAINS!!!"
I highly doubt it. The guy works out hard every day.
****
The diet, exercise and fitness regimen of Mick Jagger puts to shame the efforts of most 25 year olds - not to mention the mostly 55-60 year olds
http://www.accessatlanta.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/accessatlanta/reviews/entries/2006/02/09/nonstop_jagger.html
The unbelievable Jagger, 62, pranced and skipped almost non-stop across the Philips stage, flailing his arms, waving his hands and skimming across the floor on his spindly legs like a practiced ballerina.
The group opened with the classic “Jumping Jack Flash” and raced through most hits familiar to baby boomers who’ve grown old with Jagger, reed-thin Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. The Brits, accompanied on both sides by a host of singers, never stopped moving, and neither did the crowd, which undulated like a giant snake, most fans waving their arms and clapping their hands almost continuously.
Jagger, dressed in his trademark skin-tight black outfit, showed no signs of weariness from his appearance at halftime at the Super Bowl just a few days ago. Rather, he seemed invigorated with each new round of thunderous applause.
Richards, puffing on cigarettes, spelled Jagger twice during the non-stop concert, which started a little after 9:30 p.m. — an hour late — and ended two hours later.
Jagger didn’t even appear to sweat, though the hot lights had thousands fanning themselves in front of him. Hundreds took pictures of Jagger and other band members with cellphone cameras.
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