Word: alan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Anyone who shifts against the Panama treaties now would look flabby back home," observed Democratic Senator Alan Cranston of California. Added Majority Leader Robert Byrd: "Now that all the Senators have taken a stand, I believe that they'll stay there. We might even pick up one or two votes...
...BEGINNING, there were blues, rhythm and "race music." Then there were Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, as well as a swarm of other young musicians, black and white, singing what was labeled as "black" music. And disc jockey Alan Freed and the record companies looked down upon this phenomenon and realized that white middle-class teenagers went ape over this taboo "black" music that their parents hated. And Freed called it "Rock and Roll," and it was good . . . and profitable...
...most unsettling thing about the movie is its portrayal of Alan Freed as a man who through his vision created a whole new cultural force which he rode to the top without anyone's help. He is shown as a man who helped struggling artists, black and white, and who transcended the race prejudices of his era through his musical vision. He is ultimately seen, in the movie, as a martyr to the forces of evil who would keep black people oppressed, genius and creativity stifled and rock and roll out of American life...
This is just not the case. Alan Freed was a man who, as a disc jockey, had an enormous influence over what the American white teenager would listen to and buy, and he peddled this influence pretty widely for a good fee. He had vision, yes, the kind of vision that knows a profit when it smells one. Alan Freed, and all the disc jockeys and record company executives who pushed rock and roll in the '50s did it because they saw that there was a huge market for music that offended all the stuffy middle-class sensibilities that American...
This sentimental film biography of pioneer Rock Disc Jockey Alan Freed is the work of slobs, but there's no use pretending that it isn't fun. In its own bumbling way, American Hot Wax rekindles the cataclysmic spirit of the rock-'n'-roll revolution of the 1950s. Audiences who care little for rock should stay away, and so should anyone who expects movies to offer a credible plot. American Hot Wax is largely meant for a hard-core crowd-the moviegoers who have seen Saturday Night Fever three times and are desperate...