Word: rocked
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...questions went deeper than chronology. Rock wasn't just the sound track for the '60s. It spurred on and helped shape a whole culture. It was central to change in a way that nothing -- certainly no music -- has been since. Rock was always a music of turbulence, and history, for a while there, caught the beat. Woodstock was a dodge, a growth industry that tie-dyed much that was fierce and righteous in the music into something stuporous and evasive. The seeds of nostalgia were planted in those sodden, trodden New York State fields before the festival was over. Memories...
Nostalgia was the only dirty word in the rock vocabulary. This music had never looked back before. But history could walk away from rock once it had been put snugly into that Woodstock pasture. Rock reacted by turning inward, to the softer personal speculations of the '70s singer-songwriters, then reacted again, first by exploding (punk), then by chilling out into the cerebrations of the New Wave bands like the Talking Heads and the slick, slightly spooky amusement-park soul of Michael Jackson...
...nostalgia that is keeping the sound of the '60s alive in 1989? It has to be something more. Something like . . . that sound on the radio now. Some kind of homing signal. Coming in strong now, and now you know the sound. It's only rock 'n' roll, but no mistake: it's their rock 'n' roll. It was even once the title of a Stones song, a hit . . . forget the exact date. Not so long ago, after...
...boat starts to move. That's encouraging. After all the band's public bickering and rheumatic concertizing, after all this time and all these damn years, the Rolling Stones can still rock the boat. They are back all right...
...heard it right away. The Stones still have the stamina, but there's always at least a hint of strain in the music too, a self-consciousness about the energy, as if they were the oldest guys at the gym and trying to look good on the Nautilus. Rock 'n' roll may be their life -- and their business. It may come naturally to them still, but it sure doesn't come easy. That's what's different. That old winning smugness -- their magisterial self-assurance -- is gone. There's a lot of sweat in these songs...