One of rock'n'roll's starting point was the movie The Wild One, that came out in 1953. Young Marlon Brando, wearing the coolest outfit ever (boots, jeans, T-shirt, black leather coat), leads a biker gang that descend on a small peaceful town and wreaks havoc in it. The bikers call themselves B.R.M.C, and when a local girl asks them for the meaning of the initials, they replay: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The girl then turns to Brando and asks him: "hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" "What d'ya got?" he shoots back, in a quote that became one of the youth slogans of the era.
Rock'n'roll hit shortly after, and for several years it did to American culture what Johnny and his buds did to that small town. By the end of the fifties, the first wave of rock'n'roll subsided, but was not forgotten. There were kids who remained loyal to rock'n'roll, and formed the subculture that was known as "Rockers": bikers who adopted Brando's look, and danced only to the most unruly and rebellious rock'n'roll records. With their records and bikes, the Rockers made a noise that sent chills down the public's spine, and made them feel like they are rocking the foundations of the dominant culture. The Rockers were the ones who kept the flame burning, those who purified rock'n'roll and left only the essence, those who turned it into a religion. And yes, they were the ones who gave us the Beatles, the band that saw to it that it will never be forgotten.
But even if rock'n'roll was not forgotten, it always had to battle for its soul, since humans have the tendency to get used to any type of noise, and even learn to like it. Whenever rock'n'roll started to become acceptable by society at large, it ceased providing its fans with the original experience. But there was always a new generation that came along and created rock'n'roll anew, as a style that once again sounded to previous generations like unmusical noise, and made its fans feel like their soul is surging against the world. In the middle of the seventies, this process generated punk, which regarded rock'n'roll as anti-music, whose essence is eruptive noise. And punk kept recreating itself, through increasingly extreme noise, and for a couple of decades didn't do bad at all.
But in the beginning of the new millennium, there was nowhere left to go. When even your grandfather danced to rock'n'roll, it can no longer be the voice of teen rebellion. And if it isn't rebellious, it loses its breath. This record, by a band that named itself after Brando's gang, presents the problem: the singer tells us that he converted to rock'n'roll, and experienced total spiritual elation, but now can no longer feel the same ecstasy. For me, this is the record that best represents rock'n'roll's current status.
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