Originally posted by kingdavid
I mean no offence,but I don't know what it is with people and wanting to be seen as different,alternative,cool,whatever. Why is rock being accepted into the mainstream a problem?...

The simple answer is that Rock'n'Roll used to be a very, very, scary thing.

I'm old enough to remember when Elvis Presley appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, and the camera men were ordered to frame their shots so that he was only shown on-air from the waist up.

Take a look at some old photos of Little Richard. Then look at some photos, from the same years, of 'average' white, suburban, middle-class, families! The very term Rock'n'Roll was a sexual reference that came from the black Jazz sub-culture. And there were rumours whirling around that Jerry Lee Lewis (Great Balls Of Fire) had married his 13-year-old cousin! :eek:

I don't mean to sound condesending, but the generation that grew up with the music that came out of this period, and helped to create the music of the 60's and 70's :cool:, just doesn't have quite the same capacity for knee-jerk shock that gratified the rebels of the 50's.

That's a sad thing, in a way, because the rigid, repressive values of the 50's were (rightly) torn down, but they weren't replaced by any set of core values - any belief system to anchor people, or give them a solid sense of themselves, or their role in society.