Word: rolled
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
American Hot Wax purports to be the saga of this modern cultural genesis, and in some ways it adequately serves this function. However, the movie re-creates the '50s and the upheaval that begat rock and roll with a disturbingly developed sense of ficto-history, portraying as true and factual that which is romanticized and basically false...
...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...
...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 parents stood for, sensibilities that bored the bobby socks off American teenagers...
...scene, but Freed's relationship to it is fudged. The movie ends with an ominous subtitle epilogue which informs us that Freed was indicted and died "penniless" shortly thereafter. This is a truth which is distorted by its context. The real Freed was indeed a Messiah of rock and roll, but not for its own sake alone. He had lots to gain. The treatment of Freed points up the main feature of this movie, its defusing of almost all controversial issues at the time with palpable, very nearly relentless innocence. This spell of innocence is not perfect. Tim McIntyre...