1. Traditional Rock And Roll Existed For A Very Brief Time
Most of the time when you hear someone talking about "rock and roll," they're using it as an interchangeable term for "classic rock." That's to say, the music chosen from the album-oriented rock format from the 60s, 70s, and 80s that radio stations have decided to grant the tag of "real" rock music. But that's not even the most popular time span for rock and roll. Honest-to-goodness rock and roll exploded in the late 40s and lasted for another decade or so before getting diluted and splitting into dozens of sub-genres. Most music historians agree that the purist form the of the genre pretty much fizzled out in the waning years of the 50s. Once The Big Bopper, Richie Valens, and Buddy Holly went down in that plane crash, that was pretty much the final nail in the coffin of "traditional" rock and roll. ("The Day the Music Died" should really be called "The Day Rock and Roll Lost Its Way.) But it doesn't matter. The spirit of rock and roll has lived on in various forms ever since, even if it's not exactly the same as it used to be. So...maybe we should all stop trying to recapture something that was already lost more than 50 years ago?
