Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Lester Bangs on how the sixties happened.

Fate of Nations / Notes From Underground - Where Were You When Elvis Died? (How Long Will We Care?) (and Robert Johnson, too)

Elvis on Ed Sullivan via musicalbites.com

I will say this: Elvis Presley was the man who brought overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America (and thereby to the nation itself, since putting "popular arts" and "America" in the same sentence seems almost redundant). It has been said that he was the first white to sing like a black person, which is untrue in terms of hard facts but totally true in terms of cultural impact. But what's more crucial is that when Elvis started wiggling his hips and Ed Sullivan refused to show it, the entire country went into a paroxysm of sexual frustration leading to abiding discontent which culminated in the explosion of psychedelic-militant folklore which was the sixties.
kottke.org


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