One of the rock & roll pioneers Chuck Berry, has died last Saturday. Though it may sound sarcastic or even insensitive, now that we are mourning the passing of one of the first and true rock & roll innovators, something occurred to me suddenly: today it\u2019s easy for the pop-music veterans, those who survived at least. The contemporary scene is devoid of meaning, the music ruled by endless recycling and everyone quickly fed up with everything (they\u00b4ve see it all before). Every of those legendary old guys, provided they still can walk, are picking up their guitars quickly and hitting the road \u2013 the hunger for the \u201cauthentic\u201d so strong, there\u2019s plenty of work around. Nobody\u2019s selling records any longer being, yet there are many stages, even across the borders practically closed until recently. This has been going on for quite some time, so we tend to forget how different things used to be. This \u201cdifference\u201d was last seen during the \u201880s , and not since. That decade will never be fully explained anyway, nor the extent of, as the late art critic Robert Hughes put it, the \u201cshock of the new\u201d it brought along \u2013 a decade, paradoxically, that prided itself with its postmodern status, i.e. its ability of recycling, its capacity for the ironic reference play, as well as with the impossibility of the new. Now that was a different time for the older generation, survival-wise! Some names, highly modern just shortly before, have vanished in the blink of an eye, blown away by a new scene that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, but even more so by technological expansion, by computers and digital sound. Music studios brought production standards to a perfect, crystal clear levels, which packed the Bauhaus-style songs (both architecture and band), songs sharp as a razor, stylishly carved and sculpted with a chilly elegance. All of this happened, by the way, within the music genre by its nature \u201cmessy\u201d and emotionally \u201chot\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ok, wait \u2013 what does any of this have to do with the old rocker Chuck Berry, the electric (analog) guitar player and tunesmith? Here it comes: critics, retrospectives, and reviews, now after everything, are depicting the \u201880s selectively, as a decade when teenagers grew up listening strictly to the Smiths and New Order, and watching Frears\u2019s My beautiful launderette or Wenders\u2019s Paris-Texas, with Afrika Bambaataa (via Kraftwerk) and Soul Sonic Force, Nick Cave and the Sonic Youth, and with magazines such as FACE, NME and Spin. All this is mere beautification and hindsight. The middle of the \u201880s, for the boys and girls growing up in the western hemisphere (which means us) have been dominated by Rambo, asexuality (no shit, with AIDS an\u2019 all\u2026) in the era of Madonna, by Michael Jackson in his white socks and greasy hairdo, by Zemeckis\u2019s \u2013 Back to the Future and short memory-span. The said movie\u2019s most impressive scene is playing brilliantly with anachronisms: Michael J. Fox, having arrived in the \u201850s by way of his time machine, at some point is showing the teenagers what real rock & roll is by playing a spectacular version of Chuck Berry\u2019s Johnny B. Goode, one of the quintessential songs of the genre, of course. At the finale of the furious scene, one of the musicians is seen speaking on the telephone to someone: \u201cChuck! Chuck, it’s Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Berry. You know that new sound you\u2019re looking for? Well, listen to this!\u201d<\/p>\n
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