Rock 'n' roll is drive-ins, jukeboxes, greasers, dances with names, and cars with fins. What lives today is this amorphous blob called "rock music." Lester Bangs wrote rock 'n' roll's definitive obituary in the 70s. Astute Hollywood profiteers helped America grieve its loss with American Graffitti and Happy Days. And in the 80s, just about everyone from Bob Seger to Joan Jett paved over rock 'n' roll's grave with hit songs that were 99% nostalgia.
The Huey Lewis song (op. cit.) was a spasm of comforting denial aimed at his aging MOR soft-rock audience. Same goes for Billy Joel. Neil Young's was about the only credible voice declaring that "rock 'n' roll can never die," and he was talking about something far more subtle than a musical genre, something that survived even on the acoustic side of Rust Never Sleeps.
Yes, punk's flagship newsrag still flies under the banner "Maximum Rock 'n' Roll," but let's not overlook the sneer behind the title-- and practically every word that emanates from a movement whose stated purpose has been to deconstruct everything it can get its hands on.
If that old-fashioned rock 'n' roll is alive and well anywhere, it's in what we now call "country music." So said Wolfman Jack, God rest him.
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