America killed rock 'n roll but only after it created.
By Lloyd Hart
What was rock 'n roll in the first place but a teen sexual and young adult territorial rebellion. A chance to form one's own sexual territory by getting on the dance floor and gyrating to the beat of one's own heart and hopefully the heart of another in complete defiance to one's own parents as a young adult.
Well, to the Nixon's and Reagan's of the world and to anyone who felt the patriarchy was under threat from such open displays of sexuality especially that of the sexuality of young women this phenomenon that seemed to be bringing it all out called rock 'n roll had to be stopped.
And because a great deal of rock 'n roll was associated with and had roots in Black music or Race Music this made the white patriarchy even more insecure about rock 'n roll.
So with what seemed divine wisdom within the white patriarchy the savages in Congress passed the controlled substances act and Nixon signed it into law with Nixon sneaking cannabis into Schedule one in the controlled substances act beside heroin as cannabis was the most widely used substance within the counter culture of rock 'n roll and it's devotees gyrating on the dance floor. In many respects cannabis was being used by almost everybody that disagreed with Nixon and the white patriarchy all through the 1940s 50s and 60s. Hell, my dad smoked a ton of hash fighting the Nazis in North Africa.
Along with canceling music programs in Black, Latino and White working-class neighborhoods neighborhoods the controlled substances act was an extra tool in law-enforcement toolbox to maintain racial and class segregation in America but also to go after the white counterculture that had formed in the 1960s and was directly confronting the white patriarchy and it's ability to wage war on poor nations abroad and most importantly confronting, the draft. Which was disproportionally leveled on the shoulders of African Americans.
With the white patriarchy's culture war well under way by the late 1970s a phenomena had cropped up encapsulating youth anger to an ever more aggressive law-enforcement presence in their lives, Punk Rock attempted to fight back. With Punk Rock and now New Wave and other forms of more interesting lyrical and musical stylings making their money in the clubs and bars all across America the white patriarchy realized that they had to do something more in order to stop this phenomenon of youth rebellion through Music. Music of course being a far more powerful tool than anything the white patriarchy had in their tool chest short of troops on the streets. The white patriarchy had to move to more extreme measures of youth culture oppression.
Greater youth culture oppression was made even more urgent in the minds of the white patriarchy as a result of the phenomenon of Black artists who couldn't get access to proper musical instruments and a musical education in their schools and who took two turntables and put them on either side of a mixer and began stealing back their music from the white controlled music company's vinyl records creating Rap and Hip Hop.
This is when it occurred to the white patriarchy to go after rock 'n roll's source of money just as they went after Hollywood's source of money, it's writers and actors in the 1950s, the white patriarchy went after the youth itself as a whole. This is when Mothers Against Drunk Driving or MADD veered off their objective to end drunk driving and focused on raising the drinking age to 21 having been taken over and financed by White patriarchy billionaires and millionaires.
By raising the drinking age to 21 state-by-state the white patriarchy succeeded in completely bankrupting the singer-songwriter/band economy in bars and clubs all across America by removing billions of dollars that flowed from the hands of teenagers into the pockets of bands and singer songwriters which had been a successful proving ground from the times of Ragtime and saloon singers for musicians and singer songwriters to work out the bugs in their sound. Receive precious feedback from their live audience who maybe could later become signed acts with the record companies of the 20th century but always be able to make a living in the clubs and bars.
By removing this layer from the music economy it made it impossible for singer-songwriter's and bands and musicians in general to make a living in America as they had always done in clubs, bars and saloons. As maybe not the most populous people in clubs and bars but clearly the ones creating the most excitement on the dance floor were the ones that drank that first drink to get a little bravery together, enough to get on the dance floor and then would come back for a second drink once they sweated out the first one, the teens. The teens, pumping those precious green backs into musician's pockets.
Besides the white patriarchy's fear that their white daughters might come in contact in bars with Black males and have sex with them they too were also afraid of the "message" in the music that had proliferated in the 1960s as a result of singer-songwriter's writing protest songs against the white patriarchy's war in Vietnam, the white patriarchy itself and of course any future wars they might be planning. This was even more pronounced later on with Punk Rock and Political Rap of the likes of Public Enemy.
With this body blow to the counterculture of rock 'n roll from the white patriarchy the white patriarchy later moved on to actually filtering out what music would get airplay through companies like Clear Channel buying up all the radio stations and homogenizing or bleaching the playlists taking away the independent voice of the DJs to promote new acts. In many instances Clear Channel would simply just buy a station in a small market and pump in another stations's format from larger markets's airwaves narrowing the field of performing artists down to those that would simply be compliant with today's 360 degree record contract deals where the record company tells the artist what to sing, what to wear, how to dance and controls the live performance revenues basically returning the music business back to the bad old days of exploitation contracts. Rap of course has to been rendered by the corporate stooges in the Record industry to Gangsta Rap. God help us if Dead Prez ever got a record contract and had their songs played on the radio waves nation wide, the white patriarchy seems to be saying with all this culture war.
I watched for years as singer-songwriter's and bands tried to break through into the music business to make a living, banging their heads against the wall desperately seeking a record contract that never comes let alone earning a living playing in clubs and bars.
Clearly though, the worst effect raising the drinking age to 21 had was the white patriarchy saying to an entire generation of youth, that they weren't smart enough, they weren't good enough, they weren't capable of handling the responsibility of drinking and all of life's other responsibilities. I watched as my kids struggled through the era of zero-tolerance when it came to alcohol and pot and I myself began to co-conspire with them to acquire them alcohol and turn a blind eye to their use of pot just to give them some semblance of respect that they weren't getting from the legislatures in America. I am still amazed my kids seem to make it through to having their own kids with all the scar tissue the culture war left on them. But millions were not so lucky and languished in jail for years and many of them still there as a result of this disgusting culture war the white patriarchy has waged on the American youth which now must come to an end if we are to have any self-respect whatsoever let alone the respect of our children and our grandchildren.
America, you are narcissistic fucking assholes if don' teach your kids how to drink by the time their 14. Lower the drinking age to 16 you loser mother fuckers and give us musicians back our fucking livings. Ok? Ok.