Australian Rock and Roll of the 1960s - Essay Example

Australian ‘Rock and Roll’ of the 1960s ‘Rock and Roll’ music of the 60s in Australia had beenhighly impacted by the American and British acts which brought about the ‘Folk Rock’, ‘The British Invasion’, and ‘The Beach Craze’ with its stomp fad. These origins had greatly shaped Australia’s ‘Rock and Roll’ genre which actually started in the early 50s when the first rock & roll concert was organized in Cleveland by Alan “Moondog” Freed, featuring mixed-race performances as early signs of its popularity. Then came the contributions of Lee Gordon along with other famous American idols such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochrane, and Gene Vincent whose musical styles helped lay foundations to the pop culture of rock & roll in the country (Jitterbug, 2009). By the start of a new decade in the 60s, a significant number of the youth population in Australia were engrossed about the American ‘Rock and Roll’ which started hitting their airwaves also through artists like Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Bill Haley and His Comets who inspired the Australians to initiate modern popular music recordings (Creswell & Fabinyi, 1999). As one product of this shared genre, Johnny O’Keefe became the first Australian rock star to have notched the first in the charts. Australians further gained appreciation of the ‘Twist’ and the ‘Stomp’ fads, the latter being based on American surf culture and about this time, 'The Beach Boys' earned wider acclaim on touring Aussie populace. Out of this influence emerged the surf rock band Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs. ‘The Beach Craze’ likewise was drawing Australian teenagers to consider spark for surfing and this new heap idea did make it to a trend among the youth at the time who looked up to Midget Farrelly after winning the Surfing World Championships at Bondi aside from the relevant music of ‘The Beach Boys’ and Little Pattie (Batstone & Pyne) which all the more enhanced the ‘Stomp’ fad era. The presence of Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley in the scene of pop culture and world tour served as another blast of sensation for Australian followers of the enduring American ‘Rock and Roll’. Because the American craft with music as such truly bore heights of motivation for the Australians to establish their own identity with rock & roll, the level of enthusiasm rose up in quest of individuals with the right set of potentials. Besides Johnny O'Keefe and Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Jimmy Little also managed to have gone the same way, becoming known with ‘Royal Telephone’ (Creswell & Fabinyi, 1999) and these Australian artists obviously adhered or at least exhibited significant inclination to American themes as reflected in the contents of their songs and general outfit thereof. Invasion of Australian culture by the British, in the similar manner, amounted to an equivalent degree of reception marveling at ‘The Beatles’ which essentially made Australians begin weighing options in the market where British and American alternatives coexisted. Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs dominated the Australian Top Ten charts with the Beatles. British acts had turned out to be more influential over the American acts in the long run especially upon the arrival of ‘The Rolling Stones’ to the sellout crowds and such events with the British idols marked the reception of Britain's prevailing ‘Mod’ fad during the mid-1960s in major cities as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth (Creswell & Fabinyi, 1999). ‘Beatlemania’ obtained enormous fanaticism of hundreds of thousands while several other bands from Liverpool like the ‘Merseyside’ (Batstone & Pyne) also made quite a remarkable impression to still numbers after numbers. As another consequence, Australian rock & roll group AC/DC was formed in 1967 through Malcolm and Angus who obtained production support from their guitarist brother, George Young of ‘The Easybeats’ whose pop song ‘Friday On My Mind’ hit no. 16 on the U.S. Pop Charts then was recognized to be the best Australian song of all time. During the latter part of the decade, rock and roll artists Normie Rowe and Johnny Farnham, like Elvis Presley, each wore ‘King of Pop’ title due to the exceeding adoration particularly of female fans (Jitterbug, 2009). Only in 1956 did the television get promoted to the Australians with a general economy that was less likely to assure one in each household thereby maximizing the use of radio for updates on entertainment, so at first it seemed difficult to publicize musical shows to distant audiences who relied heavily on listening. This implied that without seeing the physical appearance of the vocalists or instrumentalists, the medium that channeled musical performances either augmented curiosity of the audience or their degree of interest. Fortunately though, the majority were rather far more stimulated than disillusioned so the anxious industry witnessed the absence of television as a social factor that drove people to go after acquisition of the device through which seven, nine, ten, and ABC networks may be accessed. Another social factor is population which affected the penetration of qualified individuals aspiring to become rock & roll stars with unique personalities that set each of them at an edge above the rest. Due to the small size of Australian population, doing demos had not been conducive as a means to discover potential musicians, thus compelling them to join in talent contests for a certain opportunity of recognition. The 1960s ‘Rock and Roll’ required concerns aimed at revolutionary approach on composition in order to aid Australians in seeking to be uniquely and appropriately identified by their own rock & roll culture despite the occurring advantage of fusions with external inputs alien origins. American and British pop acts had unconsciously facilitated Aussie composers by helping them perceive how to filter out unnecessary components from the pertinent ones out of these combined acts. Institutions were then built and designed to proceed with the endeavor to develop music other than rock & roll as shaped by the nation’s character after which experimentation was conducted by the Composers’ Conference in 1963 at Hobart and this incorporated assistance by post-war and indigenous composers alike (Australian Music Centre, 2009). These efforts gradually enabled flexibility in compositions as Australian composers looked for ways to improve and resolve issues with electronic music utilized for lyrical schemes. Furthermore, ‘British Invasion’ and ‘Folk Rock’ paved avenues for Australian composers to examine such insights in comparison with the ones derived overseas pertaining to forms and styles that constitute the cultural framework of a country within the Asia-Pacific region. By exploring Japanese and Indonesian contexts in terms of their preferred system or fashion with music for example, some relation or common attribute with European version of the sound came to be determined. Experimental music had been evident in the works of young Australian innovators of the 1960s like Charlie Munro who treated his own style with oriental elements and John Sangster whose obsession for jazz (Green, 2009) was relieved of confinement from single to various alternatives. At its blossoming stage during the 60s, Australian music at the peak of ‘Rock and Roll’ was even encouraged by the government since this was also a period of political, economic, and social change altogether as a result of ethnic diversity through post-war immigration (DFAT, 2008). For one, the government expressed support for launching new projects of the Opera House believing in its capability to contribute to nation's future progress (Australian Music Centre, 2009). Back in 1955, the New South Wales administration came up with a provision allowing pubs or bars the freedom to showcase additional rock & roll performances with a four-hour extension prior to closing. A national referendum of 1967 may be highlighted also for its chief essence when the people of Australia gathered to empower the government on passing a legislation for indigenous Australians to be counted in later censuses (DFAT, 2008). This guided action of the government eventually designated them on the status of giving these natives a chance to inject exertions depicting their kind of music and arts into the non-indigenous mainstream as part of seeing how else Australian music may stand out and increase in aesthetic and cultural worth out of this mixture, in addition to the enhancement rendered for the Australian ‘Rock and Roll’ of the 1960s. References Jitterbug, 2009. Rock & Roll – A Short Australian History. [online] Available at: [Accessed 8 May 2011]. Creswell, Toby and Fabinyi, Martin (1999). The Real Thing: Adventures in Australian Rock & Roll, Sydney: Random House . Batstone, Kay and Pyne. Influence of British & American Culture. [online] Available at: [Accessed 8 May 2011]. Australian Music Centre, 2009. Australian Music in the 1960s. [online] Available at: [Accessed 9 May 2011]. Green, C., 2009. Australian Experimental Music in the 1960s. [online] Available at: [Accessed 9 May 2011]. DFAT, 2008. Australia In Brief. [online] Available at: [Accessed 8 May 2011]. Read More