The Crickets - Honderd Duizend

If the DJs were in fact the champions of the black community only in it for the music and invested in the subversive power of Rock & Roll culture then we should find something more along the lines of Robin Hood and less along the lines of Pied Piper. In other words, the cash payoffs to the DJs did not find their way back to the black artists, songwriters, and musicians. In fact, we would have never heard about any of this if the DJs had only paid taxes on this common expense called radio promotion. The main vehicles that brought this situation into the light the federal payola hearings of 1960 and the anti payola laws from five years earlier are both functions of the fact that the U.S. government was not getting its piece of the action, the DJs were evading taxes, not claiming this as part of their income.

The operation of the subtle, unseen reifications of the status quo, coined by Gramsci as hegemony, is clear in this process of translation. To adopt a Marxist perspective, the base of production maintaining control of mainstream recordings from signing the talent all the way to retail record sales is safeguarded by the superstructure. The first generation of Rock & Roll, ca. 1952-1959, is a disruption to that system of control on many fronts including the economical, social, and educational. The responses to this disruption are made from these very arenas in an effort to regain control of the hearts and minds of the, white, youth. Schools begin to enforce dress codes defined explicitly against Rock & Roll dress, leather jackets, tight skirts, religious leaders reinforced this message by addressing Rock & Roll as a cancer to spiritual sanctity. Grassroots citizen associations spontaneously spring up in reaction to this threat, echoing the language of the educational and religious leaders.

Corporate media outlets cut ties with any employees who had prospered by masquerading as white renegades, embracing this new black music. It is interesting to note that this operation includes its own process of nomination. Once cleansed of its residual contagion from the maternal R&B music, the music would then be repackaged for a more mainstream consumption, under the name of Rock & Roll.

Source: Race, hegemony, and the birth of rock & roll by Paul Linden

The Crickets - Honderd Duizend

• Released: 1973
• Genre: Pop
• Duration: 2:56

"The Crickets singles were CNR International records. The Crickets were a Netherlands band from the 70s, putting out songs classified as Schlager, a kind of easy listening pop music."

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