Loony Toons

THE MYTH OF THE VICIOUS CIRCLE

Rock and roll begain in a twilight zone, a pure thing swirling in out of a pretty pristine void. That it grew from blues and rhythm and blues, and that those were pretty much musically pure mediums, as well as being culturally pure, is well known. How it chanced to come again and again to the fucked up Paul Anka state of the late fifties and early seventies is another story.

When rock originated as a radio idea, it was done by disc jockeys who had freedom to choose their own music, who felt no commercial responsibility to do other than entertain. Alan Freed, for example, didn’t work on a station

with a “rock format” because that didn’t exist... there wasn’t anyone else around in radio who could conceive of such a show, let alone call it a “format”. It wasn’t a form, the music was a form — and the form of the show was to expose the music in a manner (witness the language the earliest jocks used) that had to do with the audience. Not talking down to the audience., as the later jocks did, but talking with them.