-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:From: Robert Millegan [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: November 25, 2005 6:12:30 PM PSTTo: ctrl CTRL CTRL@LISTSERV.AOL.COM, [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: The New Rock http://home.online.no/~corneliu/life.htmThe New Rock by Frank Zappa June 28, 1968Our present state of socio-sexual enlightenment is, to a certain extent, attributable to the evolution of rock and vice versa. Our story begins back in...the good old days, at the recreation centers, no Levis or capris please. "School functions" and "teen hops" were real swell and keen and acceptable to Mom and Dad. They were also dull unless you liked to dance a fox-trot as the high school swing band fumbled through an evening of Combo Orks and reprocessed Glenn Miller. The kids would be holding on to each other desperately and sweating. The chaperon would come along and say, "Seven inches apart please," and hold a sawed off ruler between you and the girl.Society was very repressed, sexually, and dancing was a desperate attempt to get a little physical contact with the opposite sex. Free love, groupies, the Plaster casters of Chicago and such bizarre variants as the G.T.O.s of Laurel Canyon in L.A. didn't exist then. Preoccupation with sexual matters accounted for a disproportionate amount of the daily conscious thought process and diverted a lot energy from school work.This, and the low quality of teaching in many schools, caused kids to seek education in the streets. Youth gangs with marvelous names and frightening reputations cruised the streets at night, searching for ways to compensate for the lack of sexually approachable girls. Vandalism and assorted manglings became acceptable substitutes for "teen sex." Young men would compete, like cowboy gunfighters, to be "the baddest cat." This dubious honor would generally entitle its bearer to boss the gang and, in some instances, preferential treatment from those few daring girls who would go "all the way."Parents, unfortunately, have a tendency to misunderstand, misinterpret, and worst of all, ridicule patterns of behavior which seem foreign to them. When they noticed a growing interest among teenagers in matters pertaining to the pleasure-giving functions of the body, they felt threatened. Mom and Dad were sexually uninformed and inhibited (a lot of things wrong with society today are directly attributed to the fact that the people who make the laws are sexually maladjusted) and they saw no reason why their kids should be raised differently. (Why should those dirty teenagers have all the fun?) Sex is for making babies and it makes your body misshapen and ugly afterward and let's not talk about it shall we? The Big Note: Digression ILook at the kids in school, tapping their feet, beating with their fingers. People try, unconsciously, to get in tune with their environment. In a variety of ways, even the most "unconcerned" people make attempts to "tune up" with their God. Hal Zeiger (one of the first big promoters of rock entertainment during the 50s) says, "I knew that there was a big thing here that was basic, that was big, that had to get bigger. I realized that this music got through to the youngsters because the big beat matched the great rhythm of the human body. I understood that. I knew it and I knew there was nothing that anyone could do to know that out of them. And I further knew that they would carry this with them the rest of their lives."Rock around the ClockIn my days of flaming youth I was extremely suspect of any rock music played by white people. The sincerity and emotional intensity of their performances, when they sang about boyfriends and girl friends and breaking up, etc., was nowhere when I compared it to my high school Negro RB heroes like Johnny Otis, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Mae Thornton.But then I remember going to see Blackboard Jungle. When the titles flashed up there on the screen Bill Haley and his Comets started blurching "One Two Three O'Clock, Four O'Clock Rock" It was the loudest sound kids had ever heard at that time. I remember being inspired with awe. In cruddy little teen-age rooms across America, kids had been huddling around old radios and cheap record players listening to the "dirty music" of their life style. ("Go in your room if you wanna listen to that crap... and turn the volume all the way down.") But in the theatre, watching Blackboard Jungle, they couldn't tell you to turn it down. I didn't care if Bill Haley was white or sincere... he was playing the Teen-Age National Anthem and it was so LOUD I was jumping up and down. Blackboard Jungle, not even considering the story line (which had the old people winning in the end) represented a strange sort of "endorsement" of the teen-age cause: "They have made a movie about us, therefore, we exist..."Responding like dogs, some of the kids began to go for the throat. Open rebellion. The early public dances and shows which featured rock were frowned upon by the respectable parents of the
