Well here we are in 2018 and The Lovin' Spoonful is still playing gigs and the audiences are still enjoying hearing the songs we recorded back in the 1960's. Back in that great decade of music and social change most of us thought that once we turned 30 it would be time to find a new occupation perhaps still in music but surely not in Rock and Roll. It was the heyday for the baby boomers and the vicissitudes of popular music from the 50's to the Beatles onward made it difficult for the creators of pop music to project much into the future as far as a career goes. The Vietnam war had changed the face of social mores for many draft age men and the women's movement was beginning to gain steam. The combining of folk style lyrics with the beat music of rock and roll had it own dynamic and technically the advent of multitrack recording had made much more complex albums possible and the future for rock was in the balance. Motown was cranking out hit after hit and country music was also growing legs that could reach far beyond WLAC and Nashville but by 1969 was Rock and Roll still a viable term to use for popular music.
Beginning back in the early 1950's small combos that were mostly guitar, keyboards, bass, horns and drums along with lead and back up vocals were moving from clubs and lounges to the recording studio where the adaptation of delta blues and Irish/Scottish folk songs to a simplified beat and where the guitar was a lead instrument along with great vocals began producing hit records that was popular with the young folks. However this music had a hard time reaching an older audience due to consternation caused by the beat. At this time television was becoming a household appliance and where before listening to the radio was how one consumed most popular music, you could now turn on the "tube" and see performers playing and singing and OH NO moving to the beat of the music.
This did not sit well with many tastemakers as the beat was deemed 'devil's music' or some variation of that theme and would surely lead to the end of civilization as it was then known.
Bill Halley and The Comets had what was called by many the first Rock and Roll hit record with Rock Around The Clock in 1954 which may have led to calling this new music Rock and Roll but nonetheless the flood gates were opening and Rock and Roll was here to stay...but was it?
I need not review how Rock flourished for the next 50 years as technology advanced so did the quality and complexity of the recorded music the only slight glitch was the band's ability to perform accurately on stage what they had created in the studio.
Then in the 1990's computers which had been becoming more and more user friendly since the mid 1980's evolved into the lap top computer and music production software that could in fact be used as a recording studio.  Rock and Roll was now on death watch as the computer with its digital precision was about to take away what may have given Rock its bona fides.
It is important to make clear that I have fully embraced the digital world. I use both desk & lap top computers as well tablets and todays music creation software is the bomb, photography has become user friendly for even the most novitiate photographer and research has become beyond easy with digital strength.
So is there a problem here? Is it still rock and roll? I will leave commenting on that to readers of this blog. I will however make clear that however complex the recording of both the music and the visuals become, the art of playing that music in front of a live audience is still rock and roll to me.
So whether you don't like today's music or embrace it fully, I would love to hear from all about what their feelings are. Is It Still Rock and Roll?