Why Rock?

Those of you who are my fans and/or followers in various formats, be it SL, Twitter, here, Netrock, Radio Riff, or anywhere, know that my bread and butter as a DJ is rock, especially old school and classic rock and metal.  The why is a little larger than some typical “it’s what I know” in this case, so I felt a urge to write about it.

Music has gone through possibly more iterations than any other art form.  From the halcyon days of smacking rocks together in a cave to the salad days of the Baroque, to the current mega-pop, money-fuelled glitz, it’s found a range within every culture from traditional to experimental, and every step in between.  Music is as unique as its creator, or even as the ear of the listener.  It is a base essence within us, one that needs expression but is not limited by physical forms.  It can be rearranged, fused, disjoined and re-fused once again into entirely new things over and over… and that’s exactly what it has been since the dawn of time.

Music is the language of our soul.

Long about the middle of the 20th century, rhythm and blues took a turn towards the aggressive.  Now there have always been the “rebels” and “rock stars” of music in their day, but what set this apart was the entire anti-culture of the movement.  Walls began to crumble as expression found out that it didn’t need the so-called subtlety of past rebels, and fans flocked and screamed to a new civil disobedience that would never have been imagined in Walden.  Here was music that didn’t hint, didn’t insinuate; rather directly told listeners to cast off the shackles of their inhibitions and revel in it as free beings.  Here was Rock n’ Roll.

From it’s earliest days it inspired passion, freedom, rebellion… as well as fear, uncertainty and outrage.  It was the knife come for the butter, and audiences found themselves on one side or another.  You loved it, or you hated it.  Thankfully most loved it.

Rock evolved from the hip-thrusting of original RnB (not the crap that claims the moniker now), to the straight out rebellious attitude and counter culture we still see today in a short time, attracting a huge following of fans for whom the day-to-day boringness was simply not enough.  Soaring guitars erupted, singers stood and strutted, iconic; audiences surged, danced, sang and for a song at a time felt free from the constraints that bound them.  Rock took us to a better place, sometimes on fantastic journeys, always to a stylized and idealized version of whatever it was we found within ourselves.  Rules didn’t matter, musically or otherwise, as long as we were riding that wave of guitar magic.

That was the magic of rock.  That was the intensity of it, the feeling of freedom.  A musical open road, a blank canvas.  All music is designed to convey emotions and ideas, but rock stands alone in the freewheeling rebellion.  No other music has been as wide open and free, and 50 years of history will back up the staying power it has engendered.

So why rock?  Putting aside the shoegazing emo fluff that comes out today, it’s because rock is the spirit of freedom.  The opening up and shedding of inhibition.  It’s not just sex, not just art, not just intellectualism and not even just rebellion… it’s an amalgam, a confluence of effects that can open our spirits up like nothing else.  It is good times and bad times and the summation of the things that music itself tries to achieve.

Sound heady?  I guess in a way it is.  Rock has never claimed to be the depth of music, nor the height.  Rock has always been exactly what it is, and nothing else.  Defining it is nigh impossible, and a thousand rock fans will have different opinions on what is “rock”.  That’s one of it’s charms.  It morphs with the age, but the fundamentals remain.  We can always rock, if nothing else.  That’s why 50 years later, we still are.

That’s why I look back on the golden age of it, that period of 70’s brilliance and even the 80’s excess, and indulge.  It defined the genre perhaps at it’s best.  Freedom, fun, good times and adventure broken down into 5 minute chunks.  There’s nothing else like it, and it will never die, much to the chagrin of those who pronounced it as a fad, or have even said it’s already dead.

People wanna rock.  People will rock.  That light will never go out.