Episode 87: A Meditation on Rock Music

In the November 2023 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, there's a big takedown of rock music by the current generation of music writers who work for the publication. The editor, Noah Shachtman, writers Latonia Davis, Earl Douglas, Darrell McNeill, and Althea Legaspi all call out co-founder of Rolling Stone Jann Wenner for his stupid comments in the New York Times about women and black folks not being articulate or philosophers of rock worthy of inclusion in his book, The Masters: Conversations with Dylan, Lennon, Jagger, Townshend, Garcia, Bono, and Springsteen. Words like "problematic," "accountable," "boys' club," and "exclusion" were peppered into the criticism of Wenner.

The writers are correct.

Rock music from the 60s to the 2000s has been an exclusive club that favored straight white men by elevating their creations as worthy of attention to the exclusion of others. We live in a world where we can't cleanse the past like a Maoist cultural revolution. But even with 99 problems of rock music, there's no denying the cultural significance of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles in the history of rock.

Both bands have released new to newish music into the world this year, and "Planet LP" host Ted Asregadoo offers up his views not only on rock music but also on The Rolling Stones and The Beatles' latest releases. He also brings in his family to react to the song "Now and Then" — and the results of this roundtable of sorts are mixed.