Rock Music Era

On the subject of Cleveland today, where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is located, let's have a look at the era of Rock Music. These are just general observations.

I see the Rock Music era as lasting from the 1950s to around the new millennium, although that is open to definition. During the latter part of the era rock music had a lot of competition from other forms of music, particularly Rap. The peak of the Rock Music era was 1970-72, although it's heyday is generally considered as the 1960s.

The real challenge of Rock Music has got to be names. There were countless bands and innumerable songs. Every band and every song had to have a name that was different from every other. At first it must have been easy but as time went on it got more and more difficult.

The Rock Music era was the result of several factors converging. The first factor was demographic, the Baby Boomers born after the Second World War were reaching their teens and Rock Music was to be their anthem. Portable inexpensive transistor radios came along at just the right time, along with tape players and vinyl records. Young people having cars was a very important element of the Rock Music era. Finally it was a relatively prosperous time, although certainly not peaceful, there was no world war or economic depression. Young people mostly had the leisure to enjoy music.

Choosing the best song of the Rock Music era is impossible. A hundred different people may well make a hundred different choices. It cannot fairly be judged by record sales because changing demographics might be a factor, there might have been more people of the age demographic most likely to buy a record when one song was popular, as opposed to another. At one point in the Rock Music era a song might have sold more records because there was less competition from other popular songs. A song that became popular when economic times were good would have an advantage over one that became popular during a recession, because people would have had more money to buy the record.

Demographics is a clear factor in two music movements that emerged during the late 1970s. Disco and New Wave emerged at just about the time that the children of the first Baby Boomers were reaching their teens. They heard their parents listening to the new movement of Rock Music and now they had their own new movement. The music that came before Rock, such as Jazz, was more "nightclub" music than to listen to while at the beach or riding in the car. Disco went back to the nightclubs in that it was more about dancing than Rock was.

Rap music follows the same pattern. It is widely believed to have originated with the early 1980s Blondie song, "Rapture". This is just about the time that the children of the Baby Boomers, having grown up hearing their parents listening to Rock and Motown music, were ready to start their own style of music.

The ultimate ancestor of Rock songs are the Psalms in the Bible, but the songs are usually about romance rather than God.

I have a spiritual theory about the 1960s, generally considered as the heyday of Rock Music. Jesus foretold that the countdown to His Return to establish His Kingdom on earth begins when the original city of Jerusalem comes back under Jewish control after a long time of being ruled by Gentiles. This occurred in 1967, with the Six-Day War. This means that there will be people alive when His Kingdom is established that were alive when Jerusalem came back under Jewish control, Jesus said that in the first three Gospels. But the nation of Israel had been reestablished in 1948, nineteen years before Jerusalem came back under Jewish control. The Tribulation Period, the worst time the world will ever see, has to happen before Jesus' Return. The world will put it's faith in the Antichrist but he will be unable to save them from the Tribulation. The Baby Boomers inherited a world that had recently seen world war, genocide and, economic collapse. My theory is that the nineteen year delay before Jerusalem came back under Jewish control was to give this idealistic new generation a chance to build the Millennial Kingdom themselves, without going through the Tribulation Period. It was only when God saw that it wasn't going to work because we were just too sinful that the countdown moved forward with Jerusalem.

The idealism of the 1960s really showed at Woodstock, in 1969. 400,000 young people got together for three days and there was not a single act of violence.

The Temple Mount and other holy sites in Israel became much more open to pilgrims in 1967. Maybe God was hoping that this idealistic new generation would find Him, it might even be possible to avoid going through the Tribulation Period before the Millennium, instead of finding drugs along the Hippie Trail and at Woodstock.

Rock Music can, of course, be dangerous. Charles Manson believed that the Beatles' White Album was especially communicating with him. His "family" committed horrific murders of white people in Los Angeles in order to make it appear that black militants had done it, which would start the race war that he believed would be Armageddon and would conclude with him ruling over the world as Christ.

There is much more on my spiritual perspective on the Rock Music era and the 1960s in the compound posting on this blog, "The Aztec Prophecy" April 2018.