This is a transitional time. Summer into fall. Summer into school. Summer into not summer anymore. Well, I say good riddance. It was too hot anyways. Unfortunately, as summer goes so too does Rock and Roll Summer School. We did have a good run. Went all the way from Sam Phillips, Jimmie Rodgers, and Harry Smith (I expect you to know those names by now) to Bruce Springsteen (relatively minor character, don’t worry about it) singing “Tougher Than The Rest”. There is no show tomorrow night, no review session, and also no exam. This was really more of a participatory thing.  The only song I feel fit to sum up such an educational adventure is one that was overlooked until now. One song that contains the decades of rock that came before it, and foreshadows the ones that followed: Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

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I’ll bet most of you went through your day not knowing just how historic and special it was. Well, today marks a special anniversary.

Is it the 21st anniversary of a solar flare that created a geomagnetic storm affecting microchips and leading to a halt of all trading on the Toronto stock market? Well, yeah. But in the rock and roll world, today also marks 48 years since Pete Best was let go as the drummer for the Beatles, and that was a pretty big move.

As well, on August 16, 1977, Elvis died.

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Tonight on Rock and Roll Summer School, a musical grab bag: the seminal albums of the mid-to-late 60′s.  This will function as a way to dive into and say goodbye to the decade. Two weeks ago I took an extended look at required listening band The Beatles, and last week we examined a sometimes overlooked but influential strain of rock music: country rock. Tonight we’ll fly through some of the best albums and artists that would lay groundwork for the wild musical exploration of the 1970′s. Artists to watch out for include the Who, the Kinks, Rod Stewart (the man could do no wrong! Emphasis on the past tense “could”) and Neil Young.

Old fashioned classic rock for everyone tonight on Rock and Roll Summer School. 7pm.

Ian

Now that the Beatles are out of the way, Rock and Roll Summer School can focus on the other important strands of rock music coming out of the 1960′s. The Beatles were their own strand, not only because they set all the benchmarks for pop and rock bands coming after them (the possibilities of the recording studio and the importance of the album among them), but because their career is so self contained. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe we ought to rethink that last damning statement from Little Richard:

“I think that when people want joy and fun and happiness, they want to hear the old-time rock & roll. And I’m just glad that I was a part of that. There’s only a few of us left: myself, Bo Diddley, Chuck, Fats, Jerry Lee, the Everly Brothers. It’s getting thin. So I think this is the last of it, the last of the good days. Soon there’ll be a totally new thing. But it won’t be the same. Never.”

- Little Richard for Rolling Stone

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Last Thursday night was dedicated to a few more of the artists who found the spotlight during rock and roll’s first golden age: 1954-1959. ’54 was the year Elvis Presley recorded his first single, and Bill Haley and the Comets recorded their biggest. These two represent a kind of dichotomy between the so called “first generation” and “second generation” of rock and roll. There is some border crossing, depending on where you get your information from, but the split generally falls between artists who were popular leading up to the crucial year of 1954, and artists who became famous afterward. Of the artists covered on the show, Bill Haley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry fit into the first category. In the second, there is Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, and the Everly Brothers. Some of these distinctions are arguable: Elvis only got more and more popular after 1956, but he cut his first record a year before Chuck Berry made his. Whatever categories you fit them into doesn’t change the fact that 1) there was a great deal of musical innovation and invention during this period, and 2) the golden age would for the most part be over by 1959.

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