Reason To Rock-It's All About The Music (Part 2)
one of my reviews. I have kicked myself ever since because I let another student nominate a lightweight Seals & Croft tune as the best song of 1972, in a year when "Layla" was on the top 40.
I majored in English in college, and it was great for me to be in an environment where classic and modern literature, philosophy, psychology, American and foreign films, Rolling Stone magazine, and rock music all seemed to be part of a cohesive and stimulating blend. I had a couple of good friends who got me starting writing rock reviews, Richard Glatzer and Neil Gabler. They were both writing film reviews at the time, and both have gone on to careers in writing and film.
7. Are you working on any book/web projects in addition to Reason To Rock?
I have one or two in mind, but nothing really ready to talk about. I'd like to write some kind of work of modern philosophy, but I haven't really started on it yet. I'd also like to write a mystery novel.
8. Why do you think there has been such a resurgence commercially of older rock music? New releases by Led Zeppelin outsold current rock and rap groups their first week on the charts, the revamped "Doors" are selling out venues, and many of the fans seeing them weren't born when Jim Morrison died. Is there an energy, a focus, in the music of the '60s and '70s that is lacking in today's music?
I remember reading a story about Jim Morrison once throwing a television through a window in a recording studio, because the engineer for the sessions was watching a sporting event on television. It is easy to dismiss this as the act of an egomaniac, but I think it was more than that: there was a feeling in those days that rock music mattered in some very essential way, that rock artists were engaged in an important and vital activity. Part of this feeling could be attributed to a sense that we were changing the world for the better, but part of it was due to an accurate perception that very significant artistic advances were being made very rapidly. In the late sixties you had The Beatles, The Band, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Velvet Underground, The Kinks, The Buffalo Springfield, The Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Traffic, Bob Dylan, The
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