Friday Random Tree of Life


 


1. They Might Be Giants - Narrow Your Eyes
2. Tori Amos - General Joy
3. Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks - Summer In Monterey
4. The Temptations - I Wish It Would Rain
5. The Capitols - Cool Jerk
6. The Who - Christmas
7. George Clinton - There I Go Again
8. Richard & Linda Thompson - Died For Love
9. Gothic Voices - Ave Maria [Anonymous]
10. Clarence Carter - Slip Away

And number 11: 10,000 Maniacs - These Days.

I remember, oh I remember, when "Cool Jerk' came out on the radio. It was the summer of 1966. July, according to Wikipedia , and that feels about right. There was something miraculous about those R&B singles to a white suburban kid: There were the big groups, The Beatles, The Supremes, the Mamas & the Papas, the Temptations--we understood them, and waited for their next song. But nobody had heard of the Capitols, and this song came out of nowhere, and was everywhere. In that summer of rock'n'roll radio, before albums, with everybody listening to WABC in New York, that bass line filled the summer air like the dance steps of God. It was this strange gift, unasked for and accepted in that long summer cornucopia of Top 40.

Of course what seemed to be a great opening was actually a great restriction. There was this whole world of R&B, and it was being filtered down, drop by drop, to our hungry teenage soul-starved mouths. 1966 was before FM and before albums predominated--my brother and I would hike down through the woods, across the aqueduct (the great long buried hump that brought water to New York City) and down into Elmsford to buy 45s at 59ยข a pop--and none of us ever saw or heard anything other than those things that WABC bestowed on us. At that point, it was all we knew of Rock'n'roll, and all we needed to know.

It was also wonderful, I'm sure, for the entertainment industry. For all the promotion to a thousand radio stations and all the false starts, Top 40 rock'n'roll was a single stream: the youth of America weren't being offered anything like a choice--but they were buying it with enthusiasm. Sure, if you backed the Dave Clark Five against the Beatles you didn't make out so wonderfully, but the whole ladder was pretty narrow--and the judgment was issued by the big market DJs and not Those Crazy Kids. WABC said the Cool Jerk was it, and who were we to disagree?

And of course that narrow stream is gone forever. It bred its own destruction, as soon as it made John Lennon bigger than Jesus, and begat the Grateful Dead and Cream and the MC5: not just a cultural revolution (number 9? number 9?), but, worse, a world of free-form FM and concept albums and choices that were out of the industry's control. Along with three network television, it had made its mark on American culture, and was over.

It seems, though, that our nostalgia for the Cool Jerk was as nothing compared to that of the Big Media for that Summer of Rock'N'Roll Control. Over the last 20 years, Big Media has been clawing and hissing its way back up to something approaching that Grand Old Time of consolidation. Better: for Murray the K and Alan Freed no longer had a seat at the table, nor did Roulette Records or Sun. The big guys had it to themselves. And they were able to charge for TV! By the 90's, the way America got their culture seemed once again to be a nice narrow stream.

The problem was, all that toothpaste wasn't going back in the tube. Three reasons: 1) In contrast to 1966, the geezer generation had not ceded its place to the youngsters. The boomers were not about to allow Britney Spears to get to the Top Of The Pops on the grounds that it was 'that new stuff.' (Helped, of course, by the fact that it was the same old warmed over shit.) While kids were willing to go for the Hip Happening Now scam and take whatever's given (and Big Media make very nice money off it) it had no exclusivity. 2) Technology subverted the concentration (Napster et. al.) which was not only Piracy! but a new way of streaming popcult into one's life; and 3) It all got political. What might have been a good deal in terms of getting back in control for music, TV and movies became naked and ugly when the folks who owned It All decided to sell a war and call half of America (and most youngsters) stinking liberal traitors. Suddenly there were real good reasons to view Big Media as the enemy.

So we're never going to get a Summer of 66 again, with everybody hearing Cool Jerk from a thousand little loudspeakers--as well as all that other miraculous rock'n'roll and R&B. And there's something sad about that. But the last few years have showed us that the price is just too high

Posted: Friday - March 02, 2007 at 03:27 PM        

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