Rock and Roll and the Youth Tribes of Albion 2

You knew you were part of the '80s when you knew Punk was no longer at the vanguard when it came to epater le bourgeois, and you were scouting around for something to replace it.

 And given that such New Wave acts and artists as Paul Weller, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, XTC and the Police enjoy classic status, it was a canny development. 

 You knew you were part of the '80s when you knew that Punk was no longer at the vanguard when it came to epater le bourgeois, and you were scouting around for something to replace it.

 The New Romantics - Post-Punk Dandies

 The New Romantics were an initially nameless youth movement whose origins lay in the late 1970s, largely among discontented ex-Punks, but who were eventually dubbed Futurists; although it was the New Romantic tag that stuck. Their music of preference included the kind of synthesized Art Rock pioneered by German collectives such as Kraftwerk and Can, as well as the highbrow Glam of David Bowie and Roxy Music. All of these elements went on to inform the music of Spandau Ballet and Visage, who emerged from the original scene at the Blitz Club in Covent Garden, and Ultravox, a former New Wave band of some renown whose fortunes revived with the coming of the New Romantics.

 The name probably arose as a result of their impassioned devotion to past eras perceived to be romantic, whether relatively recent ones such as the '20s or '40s, or more distant historical ones such as the Medieval or Elizabethan. Ruffs, veils, frills, kilts and so on were common among them, but then so were forties-style suits. 

Several of the cult's more outlandish trendsetters went on to become famous names within the worlds of art and fashion. They stood in some contrast to more harder-edged young dandies such as the Kemp Brothers from working class Islington. Their Spandau Ballet began life as the hippest band in London, famously introduced as such at the Scala cinema by writer and broadcaster Robert Elms in May 1980. In time, though, they mutated into a chart-friendly band with a penchant for soulful Pop songs such as the international smash hit, True. 

 Yet, despite its florid decadence, it was always far more mainstream than several other musical movements which arose at the same time in the wake of Punk, such as Post-Punk and Goth. For this reason, several of its keys acts went on to become part of the New Wave, whose mixture of complex tunes and telegenic Glam image partly inspired the Second British Invasion of the American charts. This occurred thanks largely to a desperate need on the part of the newly arrived Music Television for striking videos, and went on to exert a colossal influence on the development of music and fashion throughout the eighties. 

 The New Bohemianism of the 1990s 

 The new bohemianism of the 1990s was simply a revival of the adversary values of the sixties. For far from vanishing around '73, these values had merely gone back underground, where they set about fertilising new anti-establishment clans such as the Anarcho-Punks and the New Age Travellers, who quietly flourished throughout the '80s. And around '92, some kind of amalgam between these tribes and the growing Rave-Dance movement could be said to have taken place.

 Aspects of the Rock Revolution 

 As of the mid 2010s, Rock and Roll, once universally seen as a music of youth, can, at some sixty years old, be enjoyed by all ages, from those who witnessed its birth and rise to prominence in the mid 1950s, and on into the '60s and '70s, embracing Beat, Blues, Acid, Heavy, Progressive, Glam, Punk and so on, onwards.

 But then is that not its final victory?

 Today in Britain as well as every other nation on earth, aspects of the Rock revolution can be seen and heard at any time by anyone of any age on the internet. And Rock...surely the most revolutionary music form in history, could be said it has been tamed at long last. And quietly taken its place alongside Classical, Jazz and Folk as just another facet of the teeming Babel that is the entertainment industry, provoking no more resistance from an exhausted culture than old film footage of Sesame Street.

 But then is that not its final victory?

 Whatever the truth, Rock no longer represents the dark side of popular music, being just one of its many faces with very little ability left to shock. 

Yet, Western society has been irrevocably altered by the socio-sexual revolution it led. 

 But then is that not its final victory?

 Rock and Roll as a Religion

 Young people still worship at the altar of romantic rebellion as they've done since time immemorial, but not to the same extent as the generation that came to maturity to a frenetic Rock soundtrack in the tail-spinning nineteen sixties, and who can say what effect it had on them, this music...tailor-made to inspire a generation scornful of deferred gratification. 

 Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

 Rock was ever more than another mere music form to them…being a total art involving poetry, theatre, fashion, but even more than that…a way of life with a strong spiritual foundation.

 Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

 Clearly more than just another form of Pop, Rock was a way of life of life almost from the outset, a philosophy, an immensely influential international subculture of varying artistic and intellectual substance, one of whose prime components was rebellion against the traditional Christian moral values of the West. 

 Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

 Yet, in the modern sense of the word, Pop is intrinsically tied to Rock, or rather was...until about 20 years ago, when the latter started to decline as the leading voice of youthful rebellion, to be slowly replaced as such by other forms of popular music such as Hip Hop, Contemporary R&B, and more recently, the incursion into the American mainstream of Electronic Dance Music.  Has this Electronica replaced Rock as the supreme music of youth? Or is it itself just another form of Rock?

 Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

 What is certain is that rock has possessed an intellectual dimension since the 1960s. And many would point to one-time Folk singer Bob Dylan as the artist who more than any other helped to invest mere Pop music with genuine intellectual substance.  And since Dylan lent his poetic genius to a Rock scene that had been significantly reinvigorated by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, certain artists operating within Rock and Roll have looked for inspiration beyond the confines of contemporary Pop to past movements within the sphere of artistic Modernism, such as Romanticism, Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Beat, Situationism, and so on, as well as the zeitgeists whichbirthed them. 

 Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

 It could be said that Rock has been the principle repository of the avant garde impulse in the West since the late sixties, with all concomitant rebelliousness and negativity, although it would be false to say that rock has been uniformly negative, when much of it has been positive and uplifting, as well as artistically exalted. And yet the fact remains that rock has helped to disseminate a culture of instant gratification throughout the Western World in the last fifty years thereby significantly contributing to the alteration of its moral fabric, for in addition to an intellectual dimension, Rock is also distinguished by a powerful spiritual one. And there are thosewho'd consider it to be a religion, nothing less. For all its wonders, no art form in history has been quite so associated as Rock with rebellion, transgression, licentiousness, intoxication and death-worship, nor been so influential as such. 

 Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

 There are those who who'd insist that far fewer young people are enthralled by the time-honoured avant gardist exaltation of self-destructive genius than in previous rock eras. How true this is it is difficult to say, but what is certain is the worldview still exists, and may be set to explode once again, as it has done periodically since the late '60s by which time the golden age of youth and pop and had started to reveal a far more solemn visage with hard rock as its new soundtrack.

 Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion...

 ...a religion, nothing less.