Kay Dickinson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195326635
- eISBN:
- 9780199851676
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326635.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter focuses on rock 'n' roll films in the U.S. during the mid-1950s. The story lines of these films, often starring and largely made for teenagers, revolved around the music industry with a ...
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This chapter focuses on rock 'n' roll films in the U.S. during the mid-1950s. The story lines of these films, often starring and largely made for teenagers, revolved around the music industry with a heavy weighting of musical performances in clubs and television studios, particularly toward the films' denouements. It attempts to explain the reasons behind the popularity of these films and analyzes the film cycle amid in the context of contemporary practices of labor, exploitation, consumer citizenship and decentralization. It also discusses the decentralization and diversification of the media industries and the question of teenage leisure expenditure.Less
This chapter focuses on rock 'n' roll films in the U.S. during the mid-1950s. The story lines of these films, often starring and largely made for teenagers, revolved around the music industry with a heavy weighting of musical performances in clubs and television studios, particularly toward the films' denouements. It attempts to explain the reasons behind the popularity of these films and analyzes the film cycle amid in the context of contemporary practices of labor, exploitation, consumer citizenship and decentralization. It also discusses the decentralization and diversification of the media industries and the question of teenage leisure expenditure.
Uta G. Poiger
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520211384
- eISBN:
- 9780520920088
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520211384.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
When rock 'n' roll crossed the Atlantic to Germany in the second half of the 1950s, it brought only rioting young men and young women into the public eye. Three interconnected concerns shaped East ...
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When rock 'n' roll crossed the Atlantic to Germany in the second half of the 1950s, it brought only rioting young men and young women into the public eye. Three interconnected concerns shaped East and West German reaction to rock 'n' roll: (1) worries about uncontrolled female sexuality; (2) male aggression; and (3) perceptions of racial difference. The public behavior of female rock 'n' roll fans at dances and concerts and in the streets challenged the traditional norms of female respectability that authorities in East and West Germany had made central to their respective reconstruction efforts. Rock 'n' roll challenged East and West German constructions of national identity because Germans saw it as a black or black-influenced music that undermined gender norms.Less
When rock 'n' roll crossed the Atlantic to Germany in the second half of the 1950s, it brought only rioting young men and young women into the public eye. Three interconnected concerns shaped East and West German reaction to rock 'n' roll: (1) worries about uncontrolled female sexuality; (2) male aggression; and (3) perceptions of racial difference. The public behavior of female rock 'n' roll fans at dances and concerts and in the streets challenged the traditional norms of female respectability that authorities in East and West Germany had made central to their respective reconstruction efforts. Rock 'n' roll challenged East and West German constructions of national identity because Germans saw it as a black or black-influenced music that undermined gender norms.
Paul E. Willis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691163697
- eISBN:
- 9781400865147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691163697.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter explores the musical tastes of the motor-bike boys. Pop music was a manifest and ever-present part of the environment of the motor-bike boys: it pervaded their whole culture. However, ...
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This chapter explores the musical tastes of the motor-bike boys. Pop music was a manifest and ever-present part of the environment of the motor-bike boys: it pervaded their whole culture. However, the motor-bike boys had very specific tastes that were not part of the current pop music scene, and were not catered for in the on-going mass-media sources. They liked the music of the early rock 'n' roll period between 1955 and 1960, especially that of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. By current standards in the commercial market and the pop music provided by mass-media channels, their tastes were at least ten years out of date. By deliberate choice, then, and not by the accident of a passive reception, they chose this music. This reveals the dialectical capacity which early rock 'n' roll had to reflect, resonate, and return something of real value to the motor-bike boys.Less
This chapter explores the musical tastes of the motor-bike boys. Pop music was a manifest and ever-present part of the environment of the motor-bike boys: it pervaded their whole culture. However, the motor-bike boys had very specific tastes that were not part of the current pop music scene, and were not catered for in the on-going mass-media sources. They liked the music of the early rock 'n' roll period between 1955 and 1960, especially that of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. By current standards in the commercial market and the pop music provided by mass-media channels, their tastes were at least ten years out of date. By deliberate choice, then, and not by the accident of a passive reception, they chose this music. This reveals the dialectical capacity which early rock 'n' roll had to reflect, resonate, and return something of real value to the motor-bike boys.
David E. James
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199387595
- eISBN:
- 9780199387632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199387595.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Rock ’n’ roll was initially regarded as a threat that combined aesthetic and social delinquency. Its energies were, however, primary to utopianism of the emerging cultural movements. Just as rock ’n’ ...
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Rock ’n’ roll was initially regarded as a threat that combined aesthetic and social delinquency. Its energies were, however, primary to utopianism of the emerging cultural movements. Just as rock ’n’ roll displaced the hegemony of the Great American Song book, the rock ’n’ roll musical both displaced and recreated the classic film musical. In developing new techniques for representing musical performance, the fans and entire cultural gestalt that the new music sustained, cinema became second only to records in the creation of a rock ’n’ roll culture. But even as cinema developed audio-visual compositions based on the music—forms of rock ’n’ roll visuality—it also had to confront the competition that rock ’n’ roll posed to itself and other components of the established culture industries.Less
Rock ’n’ roll was initially regarded as a threat that combined aesthetic and social delinquency. Its energies were, however, primary to utopianism of the emerging cultural movements. Just as rock ’n’ roll displaced the hegemony of the Great American Song book, the rock ’n’ roll musical both displaced and recreated the classic film musical. In developing new techniques for representing musical performance, the fans and entire cultural gestalt that the new music sustained, cinema became second only to records in the creation of a rock ’n’ roll culture. But even as cinema developed audio-visual compositions based on the music—forms of rock ’n’ roll visuality—it also had to confront the competition that rock ’n’ roll posed to itself and other components of the established culture industries.
David E. James
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199387595
- eISBN:
- 9780199387632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199387595.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Since rock ’n’ roll was expected to be a brief—and very disreputable—fad, the major studios ignored it, and only exploitation producers attempted to cash in. Motivated by Blackboard Jungle’s profits, ...
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Since rock ’n’ roll was expected to be a brief—and very disreputable—fad, the major studios ignored it, and only exploitation producers attempted to cash in. Motivated by Blackboard Jungle’s profits, Sam Katzman hastily produced Rock Around the Clock (1956); but this time Bill Haley and his Comets actually appeared in the film, both in performance and in the narrative. In the narrative, rock ’n’ roll is presented as essentially dance music that emerges spontaneously in the white rural working class, completely free of generational or ethnic tensions. Rock Around the Clock established generic norms that were quickly reproduced in numerous other films, many of them featuring important black rhythm and blues musicians. In this, they imitated the radio and theater spectaculars organized by Alan Freed, Mr. Rock ’n’ Roll.Less
Since rock ’n’ roll was expected to be a brief—and very disreputable—fad, the major studios ignored it, and only exploitation producers attempted to cash in. Motivated by Blackboard Jungle’s profits, Sam Katzman hastily produced Rock Around the Clock (1956); but this time Bill Haley and his Comets actually appeared in the film, both in performance and in the narrative. In the narrative, rock ’n’ roll is presented as essentially dance music that emerges spontaneously in the white rural working class, completely free of generational or ethnic tensions. Rock Around the Clock established generic norms that were quickly reproduced in numerous other films, many of them featuring important black rhythm and blues musicians. In this, they imitated the radio and theater spectaculars organized by Alan Freed, Mr. Rock ’n’ Roll.
James Wierzbicki
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040078
- eISBN:
- 9780252098277
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040078.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter discusses the romantic genealogy of rock 'n' roll and how its style resulted from the happy integration of white hillbilly music with black “race music” or, as it came to be known in the ...
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This chapter discusses the romantic genealogy of rock 'n' roll and how its style resulted from the happy integration of white hillbilly music with black “race music” or, as it came to be known in the 1950s, “rhythm and blues.” Supported by recent scholarship that has delved into the files of record companies, analyses affirm that rock 'n' roll represents a blatant appropriation of black music by white entrepreneurs. A postmodern view might regard rock 'n' roll not even as music, but as simply “a marketing concept that evolved into a lifestyle.” The chapter also analyzes how Bill Haley's recording of “Rock Around the Clock” turned the tide of American popular music in late 1955.Less
This chapter discusses the romantic genealogy of rock 'n' roll and how its style resulted from the happy integration of white hillbilly music with black “race music” or, as it came to be known in the 1950s, “rhythm and blues.” Supported by recent scholarship that has delved into the files of record companies, analyses affirm that rock 'n' roll represents a blatant appropriation of black music by white entrepreneurs. A postmodern view might regard rock 'n' roll not even as music, but as simply “a marketing concept that evolved into a lifestyle.” The chapter also analyzes how Bill Haley's recording of “Rock Around the Clock” turned the tide of American popular music in late 1955.
Andrew N. Weintraub
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195395662
- eISBN:
- 9780199863549
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395662.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, Popular
In the early 1970s, the Indian-based music played in orkes Melayu described in chapters two and three crystallized into “dangdut.” The notion of dangdut as the music of “the people”–the majority of ...
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In the early 1970s, the Indian-based music played in orkes Melayu described in chapters two and three crystallized into “dangdut.” The notion of dangdut as the music of “the people”–the majority of society–emerged during this era, and it has been a persistent theme ever since. This chapter argues that notions of “the people” were constructed within social discourse, popular print media, and the music itself. The articulation of dangdut and “the people” operates on three intertextual levels: dangdut is the people; (2) dangdut for the people; and (3) dangdut as the people. Musician, composer, record producer, film star, and Islamic proselytiser Rhoma Irama, a dominant force in the early history of dangdut, is central to this chapter. An analysis of his compositions shows the influence of rock ‘n’ roll, Indian film song, pop Indonesia, and hard rock.Less
In the early 1970s, the Indian-based music played in orkes Melayu described in chapters two and three crystallized into “dangdut.” The notion of dangdut as the music of “the people”–the majority of society–emerged during this era, and it has been a persistent theme ever since. This chapter argues that notions of “the people” were constructed within social discourse, popular print media, and the music itself. The articulation of dangdut and “the people” operates on three intertextual levels: dangdut is the people; (2) dangdut for the people; and (3) dangdut as the people. Musician, composer, record producer, film star, and Islamic proselytiser Rhoma Irama, a dominant force in the early history of dangdut, is central to this chapter. An analysis of his compositions shows the influence of rock ‘n’ roll, Indian film song, pop Indonesia, and hard rock.
Ying Xiao
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812605
- eISBN:
- 9781496812643
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812605.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter observes the conflation of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll music and film at the end of the twentieth century. The chapter begins by probing the genesis of this cinematic-musical alliance on the ...
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This chapter observes the conflation of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll music and film at the end of the twentieth century. The chapter begins by probing the genesis of this cinematic-musical alliance on the cusp of the late 1980s and early 1990s as demonstrated in “Wang Shuo Hooligan Literature” and its film adaptions such as Mi Jiashan’s The Troubleshooters (1988). It, then, turn to a navigation of Cui Jian, the Godfather of Chinese Rock, tracing his voices, images, personas, and iconographies in Chinese films. Close readings of the films such as Beijing Bastards (1992), Good Morning, Beijing (1990), Roots and Branches (2001), and The Sun Also Rises (2007) suggest that the emergence and evolution of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll film shall be seen as a result of widespread and multifaceted transformations in postsocialist China. At the core of this rock imaginary is the aesthetic of cinema vérité and postsocialist realism. The paradigmatic portrayals of rock kids, social outcasts, urban drifters, and postsocialist flâneur therefore herald a new wave of what Naficy has called an “accented” cinema and independent, transnational film practice, whose trajectory parallels the rise of youth culture and popular music in contemporary China.Less
This chapter observes the conflation of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll music and film at the end of the twentieth century. The chapter begins by probing the genesis of this cinematic-musical alliance on the cusp of the late 1980s and early 1990s as demonstrated in “Wang Shuo Hooligan Literature” and its film adaptions such as Mi Jiashan’s The Troubleshooters (1988). It, then, turn to a navigation of Cui Jian, the Godfather of Chinese Rock, tracing his voices, images, personas, and iconographies in Chinese films. Close readings of the films such as Beijing Bastards (1992), Good Morning, Beijing (1990), Roots and Branches (2001), and The Sun Also Rises (2007) suggest that the emergence and evolution of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll film shall be seen as a result of widespread and multifaceted transformations in postsocialist China. At the core of this rock imaginary is the aesthetic of cinema vérité and postsocialist realism. The paradigmatic portrayals of rock kids, social outcasts, urban drifters, and postsocialist flâneur therefore herald a new wave of what Naficy has called an “accented” cinema and independent, transnational film practice, whose trajectory parallels the rise of youth culture and popular music in contemporary China.
Zhou Xuelin
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098497
- eISBN:
- 9789882207707
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098497.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the development of rock ‘n’ roll music in China and its links with the emergent youth culture. It focuses on how young rebels use their own rock music as a means of reflecting ...
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This chapter examines the development of rock ‘n’ roll music in China and its links with the emergent youth culture. It focuses on how young rebels use their own rock music as a means of reflecting their changing attitudes, behaviour, and “mood of living.” It examines Tian Zuangzhuang 's Rock Kids, Zhang Yuan 's Beijing Bastards, and Jiang Wen 's In the Heat of the Sun.Less
This chapter examines the development of rock ‘n’ roll music in China and its links with the emergent youth culture. It focuses on how young rebels use their own rock music as a means of reflecting their changing attitudes, behaviour, and “mood of living.” It examines Tian Zuangzhuang 's Rock Kids, Zhang Yuan 's Beijing Bastards, and Jiang Wen 's In the Heat of the Sun.
David E. James
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199387595
- eISBN:
- 9780199387632
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199387595.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In the mid-1950s, rock ’n’ roll amalgamated earlier black and white working-class musical traditions to displace the Great American Songbook’s hegemony over Anglophone popular music. At the same ...
More
In the mid-1950s, rock ’n’ roll amalgamated earlier black and white working-class musical traditions to displace the Great American Songbook’s hegemony over Anglophone popular music. At the same time, the classic musical was both displaced and re-created in a new form of film: the rock ’n’ roll musical. For the next two decades, the genre’s evolution in the United States and the United Kingdom accompanied and sustained the emergence, flowering, and decay of a counterculture. Cinema was second only to records in the production of the new cultural gestalt that the music generated. An ongoing series of films created a mythic history of rock ’n’ roll, becoming the most important means by which both its utopian folk aspirations and its contradictory relation to the alienating agencies of capitalist culture were disseminated and debated. Films about rock ’n’ roll involved innovations in the two key representational elements of the classic musical. To represent the “numbers,” the spectacles of musical performance, cinema created new visual techniques parallel to specific musical innovations, that is, forms of rock ’n’ roll filmic visuality. The narratives, cinema’s stories about rock ’n’ roll musicians and audiences, entailed proposals about its aesthetic and social meanings. By the end of the 1960s, the biracial social projects of the civil rights and other social movements fell into disarray, and the rock ’n’ roll musical splintered into films about separate black and white music: soul and country. This split was accompanied by cinematic narratives of rock ’n’ roll’s demise.Less
In the mid-1950s, rock ’n’ roll amalgamated earlier black and white working-class musical traditions to displace the Great American Songbook’s hegemony over Anglophone popular music. At the same time, the classic musical was both displaced and re-created in a new form of film: the rock ’n’ roll musical. For the next two decades, the genre’s evolution in the United States and the United Kingdom accompanied and sustained the emergence, flowering, and decay of a counterculture. Cinema was second only to records in the production of the new cultural gestalt that the music generated. An ongoing series of films created a mythic history of rock ’n’ roll, becoming the most important means by which both its utopian folk aspirations and its contradictory relation to the alienating agencies of capitalist culture were disseminated and debated. Films about rock ’n’ roll involved innovations in the two key representational elements of the classic musical. To represent the “numbers,” the spectacles of musical performance, cinema created new visual techniques parallel to specific musical innovations, that is, forms of rock ’n’ roll filmic visuality. The narratives, cinema’s stories about rock ’n’ roll musicians and audiences, entailed proposals about its aesthetic and social meanings. By the end of the 1960s, the biracial social projects of the civil rights and other social movements fell into disarray, and the rock ’n’ roll musical splintered into films about separate black and white music: soul and country. This split was accompanied by cinematic narratives of rock ’n’ roll’s demise.
Paul E. Willis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691163697
- eISBN:
- 9781400865147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691163697.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter presents the politics and experiences of identity as exercised by the motor-bike boys. It first discusses the author's approach to studying the motor-bike boys' culture at large, by ...
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This chapter presents the politics and experiences of identity as exercised by the motor-bike boys. It first discusses the author's approach to studying the motor-bike boys' culture at large, by making contact with a motor-bike club in a large English city in 1969, thus producing an account based on general observation, conversations with individuals and groups, participation around the club, often with the group just described, and tape-recorded sessions. It then embarks on a more intimate examination of this particular culture. The world of the motor-bike boys was above all else concrete and unequivocal. They perceived it without ontological insecurity, without existential angst.Less
This chapter presents the politics and experiences of identity as exercised by the motor-bike boys. It first discusses the author's approach to studying the motor-bike boys' culture at large, by making contact with a motor-bike club in a large English city in 1969, thus producing an account based on general observation, conversations with individuals and groups, participation around the club, often with the group just described, and tape-recorded sessions. It then embarks on a more intimate examination of this particular culture. The world of the motor-bike boys was above all else concrete and unequivocal. They perceived it without ontological insecurity, without existential angst.
Jerry Zolten
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195152722
- eISBN:
- 9780199849536
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195152722.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
By the middle 1960s, doo-wop and the early rock 'n' rollers were supplanted by new styles. While many white artists including Bob Dylan and the Beatles were changing rock music, the African American ...
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By the middle 1960s, doo-wop and the early rock 'n' rollers were supplanted by new styles. While many white artists including Bob Dylan and the Beatles were changing rock music, the African American community brought gospel-inflected Motown and southern soul to the airwaves. The Impressions, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Miracles, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, and the Reverend C. L.'s daughter Aretha Franklin were among the genre's pioneers. This generation of performers would also carryon the influence of the Dixie Hummingbirds.Less
By the middle 1960s, doo-wop and the early rock 'n' rollers were supplanted by new styles. While many white artists including Bob Dylan and the Beatles were changing rock music, the African American community brought gospel-inflected Motown and southern soul to the airwaves. The Impressions, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Miracles, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, and the Reverend C. L.'s daughter Aretha Franklin were among the genre's pioneers. This generation of performers would also carryon the influence of the Dixie Hummingbirds.
David E. James
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199387595
- eISBN:
- 9780199387632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199387595.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Elvis Presley was the greatest of rock ’n’ roll performers, combining both black and white cultural traditions and the secular and religious components in the music of his own family. His early ...
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Elvis Presley was the greatest of rock ’n’ roll performers, combining both black and white cultural traditions and the secular and religious components in the music of his own family. His early performances on Milton Berle’s and other television shows made him a national figure, and also caught the attention of producer Hal Wallis, who brought him to Hollywood. Before he was drafted, he made Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, and two other films that unapologetically mobilized the truculent delinquency innovated by Marlon Brando and James Dean. Magisterially directed by Michael Curtiz, King Creole is the best of them, a fully realized noir thriller that presents Elvis at his most exciting, dramatizing the complexity of his music and his debts to African American culture.Less
Elvis Presley was the greatest of rock ’n’ roll performers, combining both black and white cultural traditions and the secular and religious components in the music of his own family. His early performances on Milton Berle’s and other television shows made him a national figure, and also caught the attention of producer Hal Wallis, who brought him to Hollywood. Before he was drafted, he made Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, and two other films that unapologetically mobilized the truculent delinquency innovated by Marlon Brando and James Dean. Magisterially directed by Michael Curtiz, King Creole is the best of them, a fully realized noir thriller that presents Elvis at his most exciting, dramatizing the complexity of his music and his debts to African American culture.
Paul E. Willis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691163697
- eISBN:
- 9781400865147
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691163697.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
A classic of British cultural studies, this book takes the reader into the worlds of two important 1960s youth cultures — the motor-bike boys and the hippies. The motor-bike boys were working-class ...
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A classic of British cultural studies, this book takes the reader into the worlds of two important 1960s youth cultures — the motor-bike boys and the hippies. The motor-bike boys were working-class motorcyclists who listened to the early rock 'n' roll of the late 1950s. In contrast, the hippies were middle-class drug users with long hair and a love of progressive music. Both groups were involved in an unequal but heroic fight to produce meaning and their own cultural forms in the face of a larger society dominated by the capitalist media and commercialism. They were pioneers of cultural experimentation, the self-construction of identity, and the curating of the self, which, in different ways, have become so widespread today. This book develops an important and still very contemporary theory and methodology for understanding the constructions of lived and popular culture. Its new preface discusses the ties between the cultural moment explored in the book and today.Less
A classic of British cultural studies, this book takes the reader into the worlds of two important 1960s youth cultures — the motor-bike boys and the hippies. The motor-bike boys were working-class motorcyclists who listened to the early rock 'n' roll of the late 1950s. In contrast, the hippies were middle-class drug users with long hair and a love of progressive music. Both groups were involved in an unequal but heroic fight to produce meaning and their own cultural forms in the face of a larger society dominated by the capitalist media and commercialism. They were pioneers of cultural experimentation, the self-construction of identity, and the curating of the self, which, in different ways, have become so widespread today. This book develops an important and still very contemporary theory and methodology for understanding the constructions of lived and popular culture. Its new preface discusses the ties between the cultural moment explored in the book and today.
Richard Ivan Jobs
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226438979
- eISBN:
- 9780226439020
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226439020.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter explores the centrality of music and rock ‘n’ roll to these travels and how the geopolitical limits of the Cold War circumscribed them but also, importantly, how youth culture and youth ...
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This chapter explores the centrality of music and rock ‘n’ roll to these travels and how the geopolitical limits of the Cold War circumscribed them but also, importantly, how youth culture and youth travel expanded this social space into the eastern and southern peripheries of Europe, including Spain and around the Mediterranean. The New Age Travellers, young nomads of the 1970s and 1980s, who adopted a lifestyle of illegal trespass out of their peregrinations between music festivals and concerts, spread out from Britain to continental Europe, adopting a near stateless existence. Notably, it was the music and travel culture of the young that in many ways was most successful at traversing the Cold War division of Europe with considerable attention focused on Berlin as a kind of unruly frontier space of cultural transfer. The conclusion of the Cold War itself was punctuated by a 1990 performance of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” in the wasteland of Potsdamer Platz with 350,000 young people from all over Europe in attendance. Yet even as the circuits of travel expanded and the exclusions of class, gender, and nationality diminished, those of race and ethnicity persisted in the political context of decolonization and immigration.Less
This chapter explores the centrality of music and rock ‘n’ roll to these travels and how the geopolitical limits of the Cold War circumscribed them but also, importantly, how youth culture and youth travel expanded this social space into the eastern and southern peripheries of Europe, including Spain and around the Mediterranean. The New Age Travellers, young nomads of the 1970s and 1980s, who adopted a lifestyle of illegal trespass out of their peregrinations between music festivals and concerts, spread out from Britain to continental Europe, adopting a near stateless existence. Notably, it was the music and travel culture of the young that in many ways was most successful at traversing the Cold War division of Europe with considerable attention focused on Berlin as a kind of unruly frontier space of cultural transfer. The conclusion of the Cold War itself was punctuated by a 1990 performance of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” in the wasteland of Potsdamer Platz with 350,000 young people from all over Europe in attendance. Yet even as the circuits of travel expanded and the exclusions of class, gender, and nationality diminished, those of race and ethnicity persisted in the political context of decolonization and immigration.
Nathan D. Gibson and Don Pierce
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604738308
- eISBN:
- 9781621037620
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604738308.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter explores the early success of Starday Records in country music. When Starday was first established in the 1950s, it was the only label that released solely country music. Jack Starns ...
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This chapter explores the early success of Starday Records in country music. When Starday was first established in the 1950s, it was the only label that released solely country music. Jack Starns pulled out of the company, and Harold W. Daily replaced him with the former president of the 4 Star record company, Don Pierce. It notes that Starday experienced great music success with the release of Joe “Red” Hayes’ “A Satisfied Mind” and George Jones’ “Why Baby Why.” In the emerging trend of rock ’n’ roll music, Starday attempted to make a hit through Thumper Jones’ (an alias used by George Jones) “Rock It,” but it failed due to the fact that country music radio stations did not like playing rock ’n’ roll music.Less
This chapter explores the early success of Starday Records in country music. When Starday was first established in the 1950s, it was the only label that released solely country music. Jack Starns pulled out of the company, and Harold W. Daily replaced him with the former president of the 4 Star record company, Don Pierce. It notes that Starday experienced great music success with the release of Joe “Red” Hayes’ “A Satisfied Mind” and George Jones’ “Why Baby Why.” In the emerging trend of rock ’n’ roll music, Starday attempted to make a hit through Thumper Jones’ (an alias used by George Jones) “Rock It,” but it failed due to the fact that country music radio stations did not like playing rock ’n’ roll music.
Jonathan Weinel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- March 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190671181
- eISBN:
- 9780190671228
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190671181.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter explores how music technologies and electronic studio processes relate to altered states of consciousness in popular music. First, an overview of audio technologies such as ...
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This chapter explores how music technologies and electronic studio processes relate to altered states of consciousness in popular music. First, an overview of audio technologies such as multi-tracking, echo, and reverb is given, in order to explore their illusory capabilities. In the rock ’n’ roll music of the 1950s, studio production techniques such as distortion provided a means through which to enhance the energetic and emotive properties of the music. Later, in surf rock, effects such as echo and reverb allowed the music to evoke conceptual visions of teenage surf culture. In the 1960s and 1970s, these approaches were developed in psychedelic rock music, and space rock/space jazz. Here, warped sounds and effects allowed the music to elicit impressions of psychedelic experiences, outer space voyages, and Afrofuturist mythologies. By exploring these areas, this chapter shows how sound design can communicate various forms of conceptual meaning, including the psychedelic experience.Less
This chapter explores how music technologies and electronic studio processes relate to altered states of consciousness in popular music. First, an overview of audio technologies such as multi-tracking, echo, and reverb is given, in order to explore their illusory capabilities. In the rock ’n’ roll music of the 1950s, studio production techniques such as distortion provided a means through which to enhance the energetic and emotive properties of the music. Later, in surf rock, effects such as echo and reverb allowed the music to evoke conceptual visions of teenage surf culture. In the 1960s and 1970s, these approaches were developed in psychedelic rock music, and space rock/space jazz. Here, warped sounds and effects allowed the music to elicit impressions of psychedelic experiences, outer space voyages, and Afrofuturist mythologies. By exploring these areas, this chapter shows how sound design can communicate various forms of conceptual meaning, including the psychedelic experience.
Danielle Fosler-Lussier
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520284135
- eISBN:
- 9780520959781
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520284135.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
At first the State Department’s Music Advisory Panels rejected popular music, but the Department eventually used blues, rock ’n’ roll, and folk music to attract worldwide audiences. Musicians who ...
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At first the State Department’s Music Advisory Panels rejected popular music, but the Department eventually used blues, rock ’n’ roll, and folk music to attract worldwide audiences. Musicians who were flexible and knew how to entertain succeeded in connecting with audiences. Because of the music’s reputation for social criticism, audiences abroad sometimes expected that the artists would criticize their government, even when the musicians had no such intention. Although the U.S. government called attention to their successes in Vietnam and Eastern Europe, some American audiences rejected Addiss and Crofut and Blood, Sweat and Tears after their tours because of their State Department patronage.Less
At first the State Department’s Music Advisory Panels rejected popular music, but the Department eventually used blues, rock ’n’ roll, and folk music to attract worldwide audiences. Musicians who were flexible and knew how to entertain succeeded in connecting with audiences. Because of the music’s reputation for social criticism, audiences abroad sometimes expected that the artists would criticize their government, even when the musicians had no such intention. Although the U.S. government called attention to their successes in Vietnam and Eastern Europe, some American audiences rejected Addiss and Crofut and Blood, Sweat and Tears after their tours because of their State Department patronage.
Martin Johnes
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719086663
- eISBN:
- 9781781705988
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719086663.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Chapter four examines the emergence and increased importance and impact of youth culture in the 1950s and 60s, a culture that was both delighted and horrified people. For most young people sex and ...
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Chapter four examines the emergence and increased importance and impact of youth culture in the 1950s and 60s, a culture that was both delighted and horrified people. For most young people sex and rock ‘n’ roll were at the heart of that culture but youth crime dominated many older people's reading of what was happening creating some moral panic and further divides between the generations. Yet for all the attention placed on the idea of a promiscuous revolution, changes in behaviour were far from uniform and often over exaggerated. In the end, the swinging sixties were as much about what people talked about as what they did with many suggesting that certain behaviours had always existed, the sixties simply created a discourse for discussing such topics.Less
Chapter four examines the emergence and increased importance and impact of youth culture in the 1950s and 60s, a culture that was both delighted and horrified people. For most young people sex and rock ‘n’ roll were at the heart of that culture but youth crime dominated many older people's reading of what was happening creating some moral panic and further divides between the generations. Yet for all the attention placed on the idea of a promiscuous revolution, changes in behaviour were far from uniform and often over exaggerated. In the end, the swinging sixties were as much about what people talked about as what they did with many suggesting that certain behaviours had always existed, the sixties simply created a discourse for discussing such topics.
Trever Hagen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- July 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190263850
- eISBN:
- 9780190263881
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190263850.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Performing Practice/Studies
Chapter 2 explores aesthetic models, forms, and materials of creative practices in Czechoslovakia from the 1940s to the 1960s. It centers on how people made available aesthetic resources: the ...
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Chapter 2 explores aesthetic models, forms, and materials of creative practices in Czechoslovakia from the 1940s to the 1960s. It centers on how people made available aesthetic resources: the practice of furnishing an ecology. I examine the historical conditions of artistic production of post–World War II Stalinism’s “socialist realism” to the Czechoslovak Prague Spring and its political direction of “socialism with a human face” beginning with Egon Bondy’s work. I focus particularly on his biography as a producer and early poetry works after the 1948 coup, emphasizing two styles he developed with Ivo Vodseďálek from 1950 and 1951: Total Realism (Totalní Realismus) and Poetry of Embarrassment (Trapná Poezie). These poetic styles and content served as a response to the perceived absurdity of post-1948 Stalinist culture felt by Bondy and Vodseďálek. By examining this body of work, I investigate what Total Realism and Poetry of Embarrassment afforded, solved, and transmitted. On the heels of Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956, I continue onto the boom and popularity of rock ’n’ roll during the 1960s and the initial, inchoate formation of the Underground following the Prague Spring of 1968. I analyze people’s engagement with circulating cultural media during this period that contributed to a cosmopolitan music scene in Prague, detailing the proto-underground rock bands of the 1960s and the emergence of psychedelic music in Prague.Less
Chapter 2 explores aesthetic models, forms, and materials of creative practices in Czechoslovakia from the 1940s to the 1960s. It centers on how people made available aesthetic resources: the practice of furnishing an ecology. I examine the historical conditions of artistic production of post–World War II Stalinism’s “socialist realism” to the Czechoslovak Prague Spring and its political direction of “socialism with a human face” beginning with Egon Bondy’s work. I focus particularly on his biography as a producer and early poetry works after the 1948 coup, emphasizing two styles he developed with Ivo Vodseďálek from 1950 and 1951: Total Realism (Totalní Realismus) and Poetry of Embarrassment (Trapná Poezie). These poetic styles and content served as a response to the perceived absurdity of post-1948 Stalinist culture felt by Bondy and Vodseďálek. By examining this body of work, I investigate what Total Realism and Poetry of Embarrassment afforded, solved, and transmitted. On the heels of Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956, I continue onto the boom and popularity of rock ’n’ roll during the 1960s and the initial, inchoate formation of the Underground following the Prague Spring of 1968. I analyze people’s engagement with circulating cultural media during this period that contributed to a cosmopolitan music scene in Prague, detailing the proto-underground rock bands of the 1960s and the emergence of psychedelic music in Prague.
