I mentioned this on the show over the weekend \u2013 this past Saturday was the 60th anniversary of the recording of “rock around the clock”, by Bill Haley and the Comets. That song’s appearance on the Billboard top 40 later on in the year is generally considered the beginning of the “rock ‘n roll era” \u2013 and, more significantly, the beginning of “youth culture”, the existence of a separate culture for adolescents in this country, something that never really existed before.<\/p>\n
Having a nice round number like 60 makes it very easy to play the mental game is played for years regarding music history; seeing what side of pop music history’s “halfway point” different milestones fall on.<\/p>\n
The halfway point in pop music history, as of last Saturday, was April 12, 1984.<\/p>\n
What that means is “Hungry like the Wolf” by Duran Duran, “I Ran” by Flock of seagulls, “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits, “Message in a Bottle” by the Police, Thriller\u00a0<\/em>by Michael Jackson, and Bruce Springsteen’s first six studio albums – up through Nebraska <\/em>(and in about six weeks, Born in the USA<\/em>) are all closer to the beginning of rock ‘n roll history than to the present day.<\/p>\n You can also break rock and roll history up into thirds; 1974 and 1994. \u00a0That means “Baby Blue” by Badfinger, “Imagine” by John Lennon, the entire golden age of Motown and Stax,\u00a0Who’s Next<\/em>,\u00a0Dark Side of the Moon<\/em>, and most of the Rolling Stones’ best stuff is twice as far from the present day as it was from “Rock Around The Clock”.<\/p>\n Or maybe into quarters? \u00a01969, 1984 and 1999 are the cutoffs. \u00a0That means Woodstock, Tommy<\/em>, most of the Beatles’ catalog…pretty much everything “Sixties” is three times from the present day as it was from the beginning of the era.<\/p>\n I think I’ll stop this train of thought at the next station…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I mentioned this on the show over the weekend \u2013 this past Saturday was the 60th anniversary of the recording of “rock around the clock”, by Bill Haley and the Comets. That song’s appearance on the Billboard top 40 later on in the year is generally considered the beginning of the “rock ‘n roll era” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43080"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43083,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080\/revisions\/43083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}