Word: roll
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...gives us a clue towards the origins of this kind of consciousness. We can approach it, I think, if we imagine a child playing, totally involved, and then imagine an adult playing at that game, or at some game adults consider equaly childish like painting, writing, or Rock and Roll. The artist develops a kind of dual consciousness totally involved and serious with one part of his mind, very detached and half-mocking with the other...
...hard to remember now what a departure this was for performers. But in the years after Presley, white Rock and Roll became a very restrained affair for the most part. At the time the Beatles really began to make it, the English scene was dominated by a group called the Shadows. The Shadows wore "sober, terribly neat stage dress of gray suits, matching ties and highly polished shoes. They did little dance steps, three one way and three the other. Everything was neat, polished but restained in their appearance as well as their music...
...they played with different styles. The Beatles version is the one most of us probably remember of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven," or Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me." Or "Please, Mr. Postman." Or "Act Naturally." They were the first to turn us on to a lot of things we later grew to love for their own sake. But their version was always something special. There was a quality of ironic distance or dual consciousness in their version. It was a sense of the Beatles playing wholeheartedly at the being black, at being Chuck Berry...
...Graham said he'd broken his strict rule and watched television on the Sabbath just to see them. 'They're a passing phase,' he said. 'All are symptoms of the uncertaintly of the times and the confusion about us.' "Oddly prophetic on Graham's part, for the rock and roll army was just about to be born, and the Beatles (touring phase) were to be the midwives. A generation of kids was about to be turned on to their own youth, their beauty and their energy. And they were going to notice the deadness around them and be truly...
...music provided a momentary transcendence, a feeling of liberation. But the Beatles gave us more than that. The Beatles created the first music that reached almost all while teenagers. They were our communion. They provided the sense of unity that created the rock and roll army. The Beatles reached everyone on whatever level they were. They were kids themselves. So they were ours and they were us. A certain pride in being young--they were the first real bloom of the sub-culture of youth--a sense of community, a feeling of joy and liberation. All were, in part...