By Gene Sculatti

"don't have to be here, you know.
With my vast financial holdings,
I could have been basking in the sun in Florida
This is just a hobby for me, you hear?!”

Handsome Dick's protestations to the contrary, I suppose we're all here because rock 'n' roll is something more than a hobby for us, A Way of Life as the publisher says. The very fact that *** was instigated, and is maintained, points up how passionately a lot of us take the subject and how perturbed we become when we think the music is being taken away from us or diluted in strength.

A flower-child at Woodstock. Does the American Dream include idiots too?

In the '70s specifically, there's been a lot of hand-wringing and agonizing over the state of modern pop and rock; too often it seemed high-crafted pop and manic teenage r&r was losing out to indulgent musicianship, pretense and sententious writer-singers. It’s a line I bought on several occasions. Moreover, Greg Shaw's continuing efforts to convince us "It's All Coming Back” left me cold. How could anything worthwhile 'come back' in an era watched over by middle-aged 'progressive' musicians and fatuous dolts like John Denver? Now, I'm not so sure pessimism is warranted.

Yesterday was the 4th of July. Driving in my car, I had on some progressive L.A. AM/FM rock station. It being the Bicentennial and all, these hipper-than-hip counter- cultural folk were taking a swipe at all the flag-waving going on around them. They played a long spoken rap from the Woodstock album, with some clod droning on about "the beauty of half a million people getting together just to dig music and fun, man.” They segued into some horrendous live jam, cut to some slow-talking gal d.j., herbal hair spots and a newscast whose sole content was news about marijuana and it hit me — this is Old, this sounds dated. It's over for these fossils. Already, finally, late '60s attitudes and music are relinquishing their hold on tastemakers, audiences and, hopefully, the whole music industry.

To stop and think about the volume of high quality rock 'n' roll and pop that is even available in 1976 is to acknowledge a great change taking place. Just the last few weeks have found albums such as the Ramones, the new Beach Boys, the new Modern Lovers, Southside Johnny, Greg Kihn, Thin Lizzy and Agents of Fortune (l'm aware individual tastes will vary; regardless, I think most of these records have more to do with R&R than the bulk of 'hit’ product available today). fighting for my turntable space. Springsteen, the 2-year old Dictators LP and tapes of New York's fine new bands have yet to be filed away; the rotation is heavy and the volume loud.

This is not to say that because rock 'n' roll is available, it's getting bought, listened to or influencing young musicians (as we'd all hope). But it exists, and if you add the current records to the decade's failed experiments — four sides of New York Dolls, Raw Power, Blue Ash, Raspberries, Slade, early Alice Cooper, the Sidewinders, Mott the Hoople, a handful of Roy Wood and Nils Lofgren tracks, Flo & Eddie, Big Star, Stories and various Chinnichap projects — you see the '70s offers some substantial chapters in the history of rock 'n' roll.

Things surely looked bleak at the outset of the decade. *** and FLASH devoted most of their space to retrospectives on '60s giants and tipping readers to bargain-bin treasures. The assumption was that hardcore rock fans would have to band together to "ride out the slump" which was expected to last another 5-10 years. Happily, the perspective has changed a lot since we all spent summer holed up with a copy of Loaded, convinced winter would last forever.

The plethora of activity that seems to be taking place now hardly constitutes an explosion. It's my opinion that what is beginning to take shape now—from the runaway development of nouveau-punk in New York to a return of high-gloss radio pop — has been a long time coming.

Whatever good hands the decade has dealt, there have been bad ones. Hard rock 'n' roll, the backbone of '50s music and the blinding white light of the '60s, has taken its lumps the last 6 years. It's been almost 10 years since the San Francisco bands and the British virtuoso-blues purists showed up and almost singlehandedly introduced a lethal dose of improvisatory technique and "musicianship" into the form. By and large, hard rock has barely recovered; the standard form for bands today is indulgent performances masquerading as High Art.

Whereas the mid-'60s hard rockers worked off tough, electric roots like Muddy Waters, Marvin gaye and Don Covay, the late '60s Brits were fanciers of Robert Johnson and Bill Broonzy. Amplified interpretatios of rural blues offered by Alvin Lee, Mayall, Clapton and every other edition of Savoy Brown has been interminably lame and, served as the godfather of that most tedious of subgenres, Boogie.

By stripping hard rock to its primal blues roots, however, one interesting stylistic stream was discovered and, for about 18, months, worked energetically: Heavy Metal. Regardless of its often inhuman decibel level, Metal, as practiced by Zep. early Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Grand Funk, had its moments. (As a subgenre, its proximity to minimal punkrock can't be overestimated, ie. Stooges, MC5, Shadows of Knight and any number of Velvets-Doors-Standells-influenced groups.)

Metal's bright flame burned out quicky, however, leaving the blues-based outfits to complete the torturous task of grinding Hard into Heavy. The proliferation of thick guitar groups fronted by husky, 35-year-old singers (Bad Co., Nazareth) has brought hard rock 'n' roll to its knees in the nid-'70s, a condition ripe for improvement. The antidotes will almost surely be administered in the coming months by bands like Television, the Planets, the Ramones, perhaps Talking Heads or a reformed Heartbreakers, or solid, Velvets- with-vision acts like Boston's Marc Thor and Fox Pass. It's already getting dark out and the streets should soon be alive.

Likely to be a factor in a rock resurgence is radio. Now for the most part the sole broadcast domain of hard, heavy rock, FM radio was originally designed as an alternative to constricted Top 40 formats. In defining its scope over some 8 years, however, FM has continued to address itself to an increasingly limited audience—basically 18-26 year-old males, the ones who buy Kiss and Zep, but also Wakeman and Gentle Giant and "progressive country." In doing so, FM has tightened up as much as the AM it sought to counter. Conservative, possessed of the power to break acts and mired in a fading 'counterculture' viewpoint, FM is beginning to look like the format with limited vision.

In the'meantime, AM, long-criticized but actually the grandparent of rock radio, is emerging as the dynamic force. Intent on satisfying a wider audience than FM (a particularly acute problem for AM now is the loss of teens), Top 30 is beginning to take more shots, move faster. AM is hot, popular; it's given us Abba, the Bay City Rollers, a rejuvenated Bee Gees and a ready-to-rock Beach Boys, Henry Gross, Thin Lizzy, good sides by the Carpenters, the Four Seasons, the Hollies, the Eagles and Elton.

Unlike rock 'n' roll (which in its purest form is more impulsive), pop music has cherished certain values for a long tine. Perhaps because commercial pressure is greater, pop has maintained its standards, adhered to a handful of virtues for upwards of 20 years: the emphasis is on melody, brevity of statement and conciseness of arrangement. If an artist expects big success and longevity, he'd best be prepared to play the hit single game. As time goes on, there are fewer and fewer acts who can sustain a career without paying attention to that game's rules.

All of which means that, no matter how 'far out' or tangential a pose an artist succeeds with initially, sooner or later- through natural growth or artificial means (coupling himself with hot singles material and a wily producer) — he's going to gravitate toward the pop aesthetic. Elton's early, long-winded poetics have given way to delightful disposables like "Island Girl" and Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and trans cendent pop like "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me." Even bad-ass Grand Funk proved they could go pop with the superb "Bad Time."

The overall increase in quality pop and rock & roll is getting hard to ignore. For every bombastic Neil Diamond single and every disco hit, there are two good records being cut by new acts or acts you may have given up on. The fact that good records are becoming available again means that they'll eventually shoulder themselves onto radio, into the hearts of audiences. No matter how disparate, all these sides — from Springsteen to the Modern Lovers, from "Mama Mia" to the dozen home-made singles that have come out of New York and Boston the last 6 months — are restoring a focus to rock & roll; a focus both in terms of musical structure, and in terms of working closely off of sturdy roots, particularly those which have gone untapped or have been buried under a decade of senseless indulgence and high artifice.

It may not be "all coming back," but a statement like "Rcck's best years are yet to come" is beginning to look like a valid, accurate rejoinder to "It'll never be as good as it was." 1964 will never come again but neither will 1971 or 1976 and, with any luck at all, we'll never have to listen to "Woodstock" or "Love to Love You Baby" ever again.

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