Point-counterpoint: rock-and-roll bands.
“Rock-and-roll bands reconstitute the ideal of the American family in its original, nineteenth-century form, as a quasi-democratic, mercantile unit (the family farm, the family firm, the vaudeville act) — as a collective endeavour in which the static rigor of single-provider patriarchy is mitigated by issues of competence and merit, by the exigencies of collaboration, and, finally by the ethics of the task at hand, which in rock-and-roll, is the affirmation of American innocence in the face of pervasive guilt and complicity.”
- Dave Hickey, Air Guitar
“In the beginning of rock ’n’ roll, the artist was either a star/singer or a featured instrumentalist like Duane Eddy. Soon, these characters were replaced by ’groups’ who more resonantly mirrored the boss class. The group was a construct that sounded large, democratic and inclusive, but was by nature actually fixed and exclusive. More importantly, as with a board of directors in the industrial superstructure, the group had no culpability; its multifaceted and liquid person could slither from scandal and irresponsibility in an eternal buck-passing session. It took a collective name, which would serve as a brand or corporate flag and which could sometimes be used to designate a succession of personages.”
- Ian Svenonious, The Psychic Soviet
(February 5, 2009)
