I guess rock and roll was rebellion by the biggest generation. But rebellion isn't supposed to be permanent. (String of Pearls was a good soundtrack for reading your piece.)
Richard Kuslan's piece is right on the money. I would say that not only is the Generation of 68 bankrupt now, it was from the beginning. Its bases were false assumptions about human nature. These assumptions, destructive intellectual currency since being put into print by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were and are a civilization destroying cloud of toxins that have shape shifted into ever worsening manifestations. As RK points out, we can and must rebuild in grateful acknowledgment of what the Generation of 68 wished out of ignorant, envious fury to destroy. There exist artists in all genres who cherish their Western roots; they have been excluded and silenced but they can and will not remain excluded and silent forever. They are the artists of a New Restoration.
This was both eye-opening and ear-closing. How you found all of those clips is a mystery to me but you used them effectively.
I am no fan of rock music, and I attended only two rock concerts in my youth, As it happens, one was a show by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in Indianapolis in the summer of 1970 (the opening act was, if I remember correctly, Black Sabbath). I was at a college program for high school students studying chemistry, and the college students who were assisting with the program organized the outing. The music was unbearable but Zappa certainly made an impression. He had a dark charisma. He spent much of the evening mocking the audience (and all of America for that matter) but the audience adored him. The more he sneered at the crowd, the more the crowd ate it up.
Zappa I believe had a great deal of raw musical aptitude. But he rejected not just the ideals of beauty but also his own soul. The Daffy Duck cartoon you posted at the end gets it exactly.
I guess rock and roll was rebellion by the biggest generation. But rebellion isn't supposed to be permanent. (String of Pearls was a good soundtrack for reading your piece.)
Richard Kuslan's piece is right on the money. I would say that not only is the Generation of 68 bankrupt now, it was from the beginning. Its bases were false assumptions about human nature. These assumptions, destructive intellectual currency since being put into print by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were and are a civilization destroying cloud of toxins that have shape shifted into ever worsening manifestations. As RK points out, we can and must rebuild in grateful acknowledgment of what the Generation of 68 wished out of ignorant, envious fury to destroy. There exist artists in all genres who cherish their Western roots; they have been excluded and silenced but they can and will not remain excluded and silent forever. They are the artists of a New Restoration.
This was both eye-opening and ear-closing. How you found all of those clips is a mystery to me but you used them effectively.
I am no fan of rock music, and I attended only two rock concerts in my youth, As it happens, one was a show by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in Indianapolis in the summer of 1970 (the opening act was, if I remember correctly, Black Sabbath). I was at a college program for high school students studying chemistry, and the college students who were assisting with the program organized the outing. The music was unbearable but Zappa certainly made an impression. He had a dark charisma. He spent much of the evening mocking the audience (and all of America for that matter) but the audience adored him. The more he sneered at the crowd, the more the crowd ate it up.
Zappa I believe had a great deal of raw musical aptitude. But he rejected not just the ideals of beauty but also his own soul. The Daffy Duck cartoon you posted at the end gets it exactly.
Thank you, Peter, for this illuminating comment which links actual experience with the thrust of the essay.