Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Peter Doyle gets the "Heeby-Jeebies: Little Richard, Sputnik 1 and Australia's 1950s"
Extract:
Australia in the 1950s has been generally represented by both conservative and progressive commentators as characterised by cultural conservatism. Yet the facts of the Little Richard rock-n-roll tour of 1957 stand at odds with the construct. With the extravagant Little Richard as headliner, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent as supporting acts, the tour brought together arguably the most 'hardcore' assemblage of rock-n-rollers then possible. With minimal support from press, radio or television, the show attracted audiences of many tens of thousands in cities and large country towns in Eastern Australia. For Richard himself the tour was the occasion of an encounter with the apocalypse. The sight of Sputnik 1 passing overhead in Melbourne convinced him that the end was indeed nigh, and he promptly renounced rock -n-roll music and cut short the tour. (The incident entered rock-n-roll historigraphy as the first of a series of landmark 'death of rock-n-roll' moments.) In terms of cultural utility, the Australian audiences who so spectacularly and passionately participated in the Little Richard tour (and more generally in the early phase of rock-n-roll) did so mostly 'under the rada' of then-reigning cultural institutions. Their choices and commitments -- in 1957 still only minimally serviced by commercial and media interests, and ignored, trivialised or actively opposed by both conservative and progressive cultural commentators -- were marked by a high level of agency on their parts, and are not adequately understood within a simple, passive 'youth culture consumption' model.
¶ 11/25/2003 08:16:00 AM
Extract:
Australia in the 1950s has been generally represented by both conservative and progressive commentators as characterised by cultural conservatism. Yet the facts of the Little Richard rock-n-roll tour of 1957 stand at odds with the construct. With the extravagant Little Richard as headliner, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent as supporting acts, the tour brought together arguably the most 'hardcore' assemblage of rock-n-rollers then possible. With minimal support from press, radio or television, the show attracted audiences of many tens of thousands in cities and large country towns in Eastern Australia. For Richard himself the tour was the occasion of an encounter with the apocalypse. The sight of Sputnik 1 passing overhead in Melbourne convinced him that the end was indeed nigh, and he promptly renounced rock -n-roll music and cut short the tour. (The incident entered rock-n-roll historigraphy as the first of a series of landmark 'death of rock-n-roll' moments.) In terms of cultural utility, the Australian audiences who so spectacularly and passionately participated in the Little Richard tour (and more generally in the early phase of rock-n-roll) did so mostly 'under the rada' of then-reigning cultural institutions. Their choices and commitments -- in 1957 still only minimally serviced by commercial and media interests, and ignored, trivialised or actively opposed by both conservative and progressive cultural commentators -- were marked by a high level of agency on their parts, and are not adequately understood within a simple, passive 'youth culture consumption' model.
¶ 11/25/2003 08:16:00 AM
