This USA Today article on Robbie Robertson (former member of The Band) made me feel a little sad.When The Band called it a day in 1976 and Martin Scorcese filmed their last concert together as The Last Waltz, rock n' roll, records, whole albums, record stores, FM radio and the like were still the standard bearers of youth culture.
Now the standard bearers are commercialized corporate pop music, digital downloads, web sites, and You Tube or other download sites on the web.
Rather soulless and alienating for me.
Listen, I know these trends were all ready in place by 1976.
FM radio was a far-cry from the free-form days of the 1960's, record companies were stealing millions from bands while promoting as much soulless corporate music as they could (Boston, Foreigner, Styx and Journey would all be at the top of the charts in a year or so after The Band called it quits), and the music business was
ALWAYS about making money over promoting artistic expression.
I'm not naive about that.
But the music and popular culture have gotten so fragmented, so soulless, so alienating to me these days that whenever I put the The Last Waltz on for a spin, what I hear is not only The Band calling it quits from "the road," I hear an American culture and society veering toward the corporatization that took root in the 80's and now rules every aspect of our lives - from how we eat to how we work to how get our information to how we educate our children to how live and die.
I'm not quite articulating the feelings I want to with this post, but the overall sense I get these days is of something lost, something gone awry, something wrong - with American society, with Western culture, in the universe itself.
I feel a little like old Willie Boy about to crash on the reef, dreaming about that ole' rockin' chair down in old Virginia, knowing he'll never get back there again.
RIP: Richard Manuel, Rick Danko
Do yourself a favor,
buy Robbie's record - just for old time's sake.
And
Levon's too.And don't
forget Garth.
