Pirate Radio **

Just How Important Is Rock-n-Roll?

When the words ‘rock and roll will never die’ are sung, no one is making an assertion about a style of music, or a form of entertainment; it's a fundamental affirmation of life. The phenomenon of pirate radio counted on that affirmation, but I don’t think that the movie does. It finds the radio personalities on board rather dated, and it wants us to know that the best days of our life our over. The movie is embarrassed that people actually took rock and roll so seriously; consider its treatment of Bob, the graveyard shift DJ, who would rather drown than abandon his albums.

But as my wife pointed out to me, rock and roll changed the way generations are. People twenty and thirty years younger than the Woodstock generation can understand and appreciate its music whereas those ten years older cannot be bothered. The divide is abysmal, because music ceased to be a form of entertainment, something for diversion or recreation, and became a way to envision the world and find one’s place in it. Now most of the Woodstock generation has probably become the 401k generation and like the movie makers is uncomfortable about its memories of 1967. Whether these baby boomers have the honesty to realize that 401k’s are less worthy to contemplate than say “Blonde on Blonde” only time will tell. The extent to which this movie "rocks our boat" is the extent to which it is good. The objective of the movie should have been to convince us to get out the discs and spin them again; but you tell me if it has the courage of its conviction.