ABSTRACT

There's no denyinq it: RocR and roIl criticism has come a lonq way since the fifties, when the only critical question that mattered was "Can you dance to it?" (or maRe out, you Rnow, "do the do," whatever that happened to be for you when you were younq and fresh and fraqrant). Fifty years down the road, dancinq has taRen a bacR seat to political content, correctness, and fashion death now that rocR criticism has become an arena for respectable hiqh-octane academic politics. Unfortunately, many of these master's essays and Ph.D. dissertations on punR rocR and heavy metal-as weIl as other subcultural divisions-do not focus on the dynamic multicultural universe from whence they aIl carne, but rather hucRster the narrow-casted commercial vision that supplanted it. This new academic perspective, accordinq to Ed Ward, a consistently clear-headed writer on music, has taRen us aIl to a place where

How this transformation from a simple bacRqround accompaniment of adolescence to a cultural foreqround/obsession evolved and when it happened sayas much about how the music's emotional meaninqs have been mutated by the commerciaI environment as the culture into which it has become the predominant soundtracR. 5imply put: In the Post-Elvis Aqe, rocR

and roIl has effectively chan~ed this country's battIe cry of "Give me Iiberty or qive me death" to "Sex, druqs, and rocR and roIl." Or maybe it could be that the two have become covalent-"Give me liberty, sex, dru~s, rocR and roIl, and death!" (probably in that order)-an even odder state of affairs.