Sex Drugs & Rock and Roll: Subversion and Conversion

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Subversion and Conversion


Once a force for rebellion, rock and roll was feared to be a great moral panic to teenagers and society; it was dangerous, it was fun, it was a lifestyle to be experienced. Parents, senators, police, teachers, and squares abroad all united in their decree against rock music because it was far-out and a cognitively influential force to be reckoned with. The union of squares to trample rock and roll let to expansion, variation, and eventually overwhelmed the moral majority. Rock music was here to stay because people liked it and it required social isolation from some others to immerse one’s self in it. Time passed, and as rock and roll was accepted, it began to get into safe hands, where the music was akin to a factory produce: manufactured, purged of impurities, and the danger left absent. As time continued to pass, people fell for the trap, be it a bigamist marriage between the moral majority, consumer corporations, and the record industry or not. People got into safe, acceptable rock and roll, thinking they were an outcast while they were simply a white sheep who got the idea it was black. People like being “cool” or being given an elevated social status without work, so they bit the bait and accepted cleansed rock and roll as a faux dangerous product, subverting the human attempt to rebel. To date, there has not been a more effective tactic of mental subversion, or ‘brainwashing’, if you will. New, dangerous music came back and was too subverted and converted into safe sounds for the masses. Man is too easily tripped up in delusions of grandeur, and safe music marketed as dangerous rock and roll has put forth the movement into subverted, castrated, lobotomized versions of itself. Dangerous music will always exist, but the dangerous music of the outsiders, as much as I hate to exclude, must be protected and the original message of individual freedom fighter with a singular conscious must be preserved.

What was the catalyst to the dilution of danger in rock music? One can generally draw one of two conclusions: Either it was the product of an alliance between RIAA record labels and radio stations that produced music for the masses of people to consume and ingest, or it was the inverse that was true, where musicians seeking fame and fortune would seek to play music that was utilitarian in nature, opting to create a product versus to express one’s self, one’s beliefs, one’s experiences by way of music. This watering down of values for monetary gain has been the downfall of dangerous popular music, and each genre of music is slowly unraveling because of the tainted nature of these musical pursuits.

Some bands ran with the idea and turned the original idea from a unique derivative into a diarrhea of words, chords and drum beats. Green Day with pop punk, NOFX with political punk, Lil Wayne (and he’s just the shining star of shit mountain) with hip-hop, Jawbreaker with hardcore, Catch 22 with ska, Metallica with thrash metal, Cinderella with hair metal (it wasn’t great to begin with, but it was at least enjoyable for a while), Dropkick Murphys with Oi!/street punk, and Van Halen with 70s era rock and roll. What could have been saved if these bands had more than a one-track mind of an American capitalist consumer?

-Aunty Social