Boss Radio

Rock'n'roll was something totally new, we had no yardstick to judge it by, all the fogeyspeople who predicted it's demise were just as likely to be right as those of us chanting "Rock'n'roll will never die."

As it happens, we were right, and that feels good, but there's no denying that it was just going into terminal decline as the turn of the decade arrived. Indeed, Buddy Holly, whose death triggered the 'Day the music died' theory had already moved into the 'silly season' by recording the decidedly unrock'n'roll I guess it doesn't matter any more, and I think I can safely say it would never have been the hit that it was if Holly hadn't died. His career was already showing signs of decline. In truth the bigger tragedy was probably Richie Vallens, who I'd hardly heard of, but who at least was still unhyped rock'n'roll.

For most of the biz big business had moved in, it was looking at keeping 'the kids' happy with a string of pretty boy pompadoured r'n'r heroes, and keeping the old folks happy by giving them cleaned up radio friendly rock'n'roll. For a lot of the early 60s dross like 7 little girls (Sitting in the backseat), and Itsy bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polka dot bikini were r'n'r radio fodder, and it seemed like 'The Music' was already in terminal decline.

Thank The Lord for The Beatles.

Once again there was no road map, but in fact the pattern had been established. The biz had no more idea of how to deal with The Beatles than it had with rock'n'roll, but by the end of the decade it was coming to grips with it and another silly season was under way.

Let's hear it for The Clash.

Yup, along came punk, the biz didn't know how to deal with it but (Etc. etc.)

Things were much simpler back in the first two decades of r'n'r though. Basically there was rock'n'roll and there was everything else. I blame the arrival of R&B, rock (Pronounced 'Raaawk'), and Motown. It didn't happen immediately, but somewhere in the silly season people started supporting genres instead of 'the music', and didn't the biz love that? It's so much easier to control your release and distribution if you know that your audience will unfailingly like what you do simply because it's what-they-like.

Today the genres themselves have fractured further and the biz now has massive computing power to sort out what-you-will-like, but they're still flapping about trying to keep up. Dekesville's theory of evolution states that we're just about to enter a new silly season before the Next Big Thing arrives around the mid tensies, but don't take my word for it, just watch it happen.

Hey, it's still just rock'n'roll to me.