The defining music of the first half of the twentieth century was jazz; the defining music of the second half of the twentieth century was rock, but with an ideology and saturation far more pervasive. Only television surpasses its influence. And pretty much from the moment it came into being, people who liked “rock” insisted it was dead. The critic Richard Meltzer allegedly claimed that rock was already dead in 1968. And he was wrong to the same degree that he was right.
