I remember years ago I had this book on rock 'n' roll style. Written and published in the early 1980s, it covered the looks of various rock stars and fans from the rockabilly beginnings to the early New Wave/Post-Punk era. Not surprisingly, the book was British.
What I especially remember is the chapter on glam rock. Or just glam, because the author used "rock" as a kind of pejorative. He loved Marc Bolan and Roxy Music and had more restrained admiration for Bowie, but thought glam rock was a vulgarization. Not all that fond of Elton John and absolutely loathed Queen.
Does all this sound idiotic? Well, that's kind of my point. There have always been gatekeepers, and they've always been pretty dense about what other people enjoy. Anyway...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvB2MnIIdMw
2 comments:
Well, it's true that some people just don't understand fun. I can understand having opinions but why write a book sure to alienate a big part of your target audience?
It's a huge fixation of the west about what's better than what - a contest if you will. After all when you consider fine art made in other cultures ie., Chinese, Sumerian, Egyptian or whatever how do you decide between them? As Jer said, it's reminiscent of Rolling Stone determining who's the best band of 50 in any given year or decade. Bad enough deciding who's number 1 or 2 but by the time you're trying to choose who gets to be number 47 or 48 the subjective element is obvious.
Yes, we always like Queen too. Have you seen Freddie Mercury and the opera singer Monserrat Caballé perform How Can I Go On?
Why write a book sure to alienate a big part of your target audience, you ask? The thing is, they may have thought their audience was people with the same biases, and they may have been right (although that could be kind of limiting.) There's also general love of argument, I guess.
We think in our culture that we've seen it all and that for better or worse we're the ones with the great final knowledge. Of course all cultures have believed that, and especially so when they've been in their deteriorating stages. It's almost impossible to imagine taking the collective opinion at Rolling Stone seriously at this point. Whatever creative currents are going on they don't know about. It's just trading on a name.
I'd seen Mercury and Caballé singing "Barcelona" but I hadn't been familiar with this. It's a great collaboration.
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