Selling Out: What Happened to Folk?

Folk couldn't be contained to a small audience anymore, it had too much to say. But how to get into a larger market? The sad truth is that the average consumer in the music industry has no real social agenda, no inner conscience begging for some purpose to be given to it. (This is why Britney Spears and *NSYNC rule supreme now.) If the music had not beat, no real rhythm to it, it didn't fare too well. So folk, in order to become the international (United States and Canada are as two separate nations, so I'm calling that international) success that it was, had to change to meet these demands. At the time when folk was trying to break out of its containment, rock and roll had resurfaced with the coming of the Beatles and other British bands who understood the whole rhythm concept. Ever heard of the old saying "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em"? It's not as far-fetched as it seems. And thus, folk-rock was born. As you may have noticed, I've begun to focus on two main artists, or groups, Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel. This is because they were the ones who best adapted to the change, if not indeed propagated it. Bob Dylan is the foremost example of this. He is generally recognized as the first folk artist to "go electric", and he did so in spectacular fashion at the Newport Folk Festival (for more on this read the article on Folk and Dylan). He soon became quite the experimenter, joining with various rock bands such as the Hawks (soon to become The Band) and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing; Dylan never really compromised his message, even in the (and I assure you I have copyrighted this term) "crazy organ years", as can be seen by "Like A Rolling Stone". Dylan was also assisted a little bit in this conversion of acoustic to electric by various artists converting his previously written folk songs, such as the Byrds ("Mr. Tambourine Man", "All I Really Want to Do") and, albeit much later, Jimi Hendrix ("All Along the Watchtower", which, in my opinion, is the best cover of a song ever.) Folk purists weren't happy with this; in fact they were quite upset. But it didn't matter, the dye had been cast, and the new form of music was certainly a

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