Mark Steyn, who seems to know everything about music, commemorates the twentieth anniversary of Alan Bloom's classic work the Closing of the American Mind with a paen to Bloom's chapter on the music culture in the U.S.
If you liked Bloom's book - I won't believe you if you tell me you've never read it - and/or you're a student of music and/or music history, you'll be delighted by Steyn's essay which he opens with this:
We are all rockers now. National Review publishes its own chart of the Fifty Greatest Conservative Rock Songs, notwithstanding that most of the honorees are horrified to find themselves on such a hit parade. The National Review countdown of the All-Time Hot 100 Conservative Gangsta Rap Tracks can't be far away. Even right-wingers want to get with the beat and no-one wants to look like the wallflower who can't get a chick to dance with him. To argue against rock and roll is now as quaintly irrelevant as arguing for the divine right of kings. It was twen- ty years ago today, sang the Beatles forty years ago today, that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. Well, it was twenty years ago today-1987-that Professor Bloom taught us the band had nothing to say.
Read the rest. It's very good.
RLC
