oded heilbronner explores music & protest in the long 1960s.
A review of The Republic of Rock by Oded Heilbronner from the Journal of Contemporary History as part of his investigation of the relationship between music and political protest in the 1960s: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022009416642708.
i’m not sure if oded is a man or a woman but whoever it is has not a clue. also oded could use some help with writing as far as backing up things with evidence. a song title or two would have helped. it’s like all those people who tell you dylan revolutionized poetry and that’s as far as they go. no explanation whatsoever.
other than that congrats
Trying to get at this stuff: it’s tricky, it’s slippery, and the relationship between culture and politics defies typical assumptions people conventionally make.
I’d be curious for your take on a book I’m currently reading and reviewing: Josh Hamilton, Just around Midnight
Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination.
josh hamilton was a helluva player, in spite of the booze and drugs.
i am not familiar, however, with jack hamilton or his work, including the book you mention.
you say “this stuff” but what do you mean? how/why is it “tricky, slippery”?
conventional never gets you anywhere except convention. and that’s no place to learn anything (especially about something new). it’s like what neil young said about harvest after it began to haunt him: “(it) put me in the middle of the road. traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.” it ain’t no fun walking in other’s footsteps; you got to head out to the frontier on your own and break a new trail. different when it’s your avocation rather than your vocation
so how do you take it all out of the hands of people like ricks and his museum of anachronism and communicate the reality of this new (experiential) thing in other non-New Critical ways. that’s what i’m interested in, particularly in the days before there was a “counterculture.” and roles and definitions. no interest per se in politics as they relate to psychedelic music.
how do culture/politics defy typical assumptions and what are these assumptions. (25 words or less. lol)
the idea of fun/play, etc. is it seems never a part of the equation for the “experts.”
as far as the idea of the whole racial thing, i’ll let john lennon do the talking: “We were descendants of rock ‘n’ roll,” lennon explained, after the group had strayed far from its origins and discovered its own musical identity. “We sort of intellectualized it for white folks.”
and there you have it. if i knew about hamilton. . .
remember that elvis’ first single on sun had that’s alright mama and blue moon of kentucky on it. and what sam phillips said: “I always said,” Phillips told everybody, “that if I could find a white boy who could sing like a black man I’d make a million dollars.”
what does it mean to sing like a black man because Elvis sure doesn’t sound like one on the sun sessions. at least not to me. but there was something cause everyone is still chasing the sun sessions.
resist!
If you want me to react to that book, i’lll need to find a (complimentary or returnable) copy. Let me know.
Almost forgot. Just as “oscilloscope” was added to the second part of the description of the Trips Festival poster’s graphics, the first part should have been revised as well.
Where it initially read:
“Wes Wilson’s Op-Art Trips Festival poster pulls you in. Or does it spit you out? It’s a vortex. It’s a technological cave. It’s a broadcast signal. It’s a gyroscope.”
It might have worked better to change it to something like:
“Wes Wilson’s Op-Art Trips Festival poster pulls you in. Or does it spit you out? Actually, it appears as something more along the lines of the blades of an intake fan on a turbine engine. These blades spin at high speed and compress the air. The compressed air is sprayed with fuel and an electric spark lights the mixture. The burning gases expand and blast out through the nozzle, at the back of the engine. As the jets of gas shoot backward, the engine and the aircraft are thrust forward.”
This is more in keeping with the jet-age context of the event and your account.
As for “It’s a vortex. It’s a technological cave. It’s a broadcast signal. It’s a gyroscope,” these objects neither fit nor resemble the graphic. It’s not a spiral either.
Sorry about the lateness of this; it got lost on my desk.
R.I.P the poet laureate of rock n roll as he duck walks off into the sunset. Johnny B Goode, indeed.