Will the Rock Keep Rolling When the Legends Die?

The danger of starting a project like this is the unknowing of where it will lead, the utility of it, the senselessness of it, the shouting into the void of it. I've undertaken several artistic projects in my life thus far, and they have all fallen with the mediocre bounce of a rubber ball hardened by extended exposure to the sun or like a tennis ball hit too many times and chewed by a royal standard poodle - perhaps fun for those interested in play for play sake but somehow unfulfilling in that the bouncing slows quickly and stillness comes and there it lies, without a child or a dog to send it rollicking back into movement. But here we are, still writing, perhaps you are reading this and perhaps the you to whom I refer is someone other than me. And it is in this meandering vein that I ask about the future of art, particularly of music, specifically the music known by some as rock'n'roll. We can not go any further with this discussion without a qualification of terms. A dear friend once explained to me the true beauty of rock'n'roll is that it rocks and it rolls. It doesn't just rock and it doesn't just roll, and for a long time-even to this day a faint flame still burns-for a long time I was sure that rock'n'roll would save the world from its steady decay into materialistic thought, consumption based will control, civilly debilitating avarice, sub-human interactions and immorality in the guise of righteousness. From anomalies like Phish and the Grateful Dead, to the icons of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, to the modern torch-bearers of The Flaming Lips, Beck, Sigur Ros and the National, there seems to be a dwindling understanding of what rock'n'roll is and why it is and why it matters. Then there is also the thought, "Did it ever really matter?" For some, understandably, rock'n'roll music gets confused with the lifestyle choices associated with it such as drug use, careless sexual proclivity and questionable hairstyles. But the music itself, the music I characterize as true rock'n'roll has the ability to be both heartful and angry, to be simultaneously counter-culture and popular culture, to both reject the world from which it comes and embrace the human beings inhabiting that world; it is equally a love poem and raging political/cultural vitriol exuding idealist hope and apocalyptic dread. To paraphrase a quote from Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, "You don't sing a song like 'God Save the Queen' because you hate the English people, you sing a song like 'God Save the Queen' because you love the English people and you're sick and tired of seeing them oppressed." I've carried that quote in memory for years. Even though the words may have been slightly different, and perhaps the Sex Pistols could have used a little more roll with their rock, that truly expressed the intention, the will, the ideals behind the music known as rock'n'roll. With this in mind, I've been listening for a call from the future to see if there is any hope on the horizon for a new wave of compassionate and peacefully revolutionary music makers to take to the scene and allow the public a version of freedom nearly absent from today's world. I know there are new albums from the Flaming Lips and the National; I know Neil is still doing it and Bob Dylan continues on his never-ending tour. But I haven't heard or heard of anything new that could even compare to the unprecedented impact of such bands as the Grateful Dead or the Beatles or as musically ground-breaking as Pink Floyd or the Beach Boys or Bob Marley and Bob Dylan. I can't even imagine what life as a young man growing up in the United States of America would have been like without these icons as mostly living, breathing, even touring realities in the environs of my time's popular culture. My pubescent feeling life was defined by giants such as U2 and Bruce Springsteen. Oh, alas, perhaps I'm just getting old, but I do try to pay attention and as a teacher I am around young people every day - the music world, the rock'n'roll world has certainly changed. I feel lucky to have had these figures, this music, this mythology of revolution and love-driven new jerusalem consciousness. As for the future of rock'n'roll, to quote Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, "My hands are in the air, And that's where they always are, You're fucked if you do, and you're fucked if you don't. Five stop mother superior rain." It will rock or it will roll or it will all just fade to black and live as a memory of something that once was on planet earth for historians to study. Or maybe it already saved the world, and our planet would truly be inhabitable without it having ensouled and inspired millions of people who make the world tolerable today. We'll have to ask the historians of the future, when time has made the arc of culture clear, and perhaps some stiff Social Studies teacher in a public middle school will be forced to read from a text book so his students can pass their standardized tests and become productive members of the future cultural landscape, "So you see students, in the late 20th and early 21st century, it was actually rock'n'roll that saved the world."