ON THE RELEASE OF ZAN ZONE’S 2026 ALBUM

THE ROCK IS STILL ROLLIN’

“Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, paintings, and music are destroyed - or flourish.” William Blake - English poet and artist, 1757-1827

Human beings have created numerous styles of music down through the ages. It likely started with the voice, moved on to something to bang on or shake, and that all eventually led to the creation of musical instruments, and to choirs, to symphony orchestras - and to Rock n’ Roll bands. Surely, the progression of various ways of making music hasn’t stopped, and music remains perhaps the most incredible, manifest expression of human beings. As Albert Einstein said: “I get the most joy in life out of music.” Confucius considered that: “Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.” Louis Armstrong simply stated that: “Music is life itself.” Regardless of the style and approach, certainly music has soothed and inspired some of the greatest minds of all time. Really, to one degree or another, it has soothed and inspired pretty much every person who has ever lived where there has been music to be played or heard.

Some ways of making music are simple, some are highly complex, but one style in particular, Rock n’ Roll music, evolved to be, perhaps, the most open, the most democratic, and the most welcoming and inclusive of any and all musical styles. From simple beginnings of hyper-rhythmic music, which developed out of jazz music - itself a novel invention - Rock n’ Roll was initially forged by the intermingling of jazz, blues, and country music. It flattened out jazz music’s syncopation, speeded up the blues, and added sophistication to country music. And then, in a few short years, it was off to the races, eventually incorporating pretty much any and all styles of music that human beings have ever created. It allowed for the invention of hybrid musical styles that were completely new, like folk-rock, acid-rock, punk-rock, like Heavy Metal. Classical music, Indian music, indigenous rhythms, and new interpretations of jazz, of blues, of country, of really anything and everything under the sun, have all been welcomed into the Rock n’ Roll world. It has all been fair game. If the musicians are inspired - and it works - go for it! Don’t hold back! Free your imagination and emotions, and let your freak flag fly. It’s only Rock n’ Roll, and millions and millions of folks got it.

Zan Zone’s new album is a tribute to this wonderful, no-holds-barred expression of many of the potential musical attributes and styles imbued in Rock n’ Roll’s unbridled, limitless freedom and joy. Starting with some of the earliest examples of Rock n’ Roll, Zan Zone offers here twelve songs that all reflect the diversity of Rock n’ Roll’s very own,  incredibly diverse oeuvre. From straight up Rock n’ Roll, like the songs created by Chuck Berry and his small groups, to folk rock, hard rock, swamp rock, R n’ B, jazzy rock, prog rock - even in a torch song, Zan Zone covers a good deal of the waterfront, so to speak. It’s a romp through much of the annals of the long and glorious history of Rock n’ Roll. Certainly, they can’t cover everything in one album. Who could? Even in ten albums no one could capture or cover it all. Yet here, on Zan Zone’s sixth album, they don’t just stick a toe or two in the water - they dive right into the deep end, coming up with new and exciting, yet referential, and still refreshing, Rock n’ Roll music. Beethoven isn’t just rolling over anymore - he’s got his dance shoes on and he’s rockin’ around the clock!

But what is the story of Rock n’ Roll? How did it come to be, and how did it evolve? An early champion of Rock n’ Roll music was a radio Disc Jockey and concert promoter named Alan Freed. He postulated that: “Rock n’ Roll is really Swing, with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in Folk Songs, and features Blues, and Rhythm. It’s the rhythm that gets to the kids - they’re starved of music they can dance to after all these years of crooners.” Greg Harris, executive director for the Rock n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, said in 2014: “Freed’s role in breaking down racial barriers in American Pop culture in the 1950s, by leading white and black kids to listen to the same music, put the radio personality ‘at the vanguard’, and made him a really important figure.”

In the mid 1950s, a now long defunct Music Industry magazine, Cash Box, asked: “What is Pop? Could it be a metaphor for ‘What is America?’” They answered their own question stating that:  “Pop is America without borders.” Two distinct factors that were influencing pop music in the early 1950s were country songs crossing over into pop fields, and also, the continuing impact of what was soon to be universally known as Rock ’n’ Roll. It all likely started from the cross-breeding of multiple styles to become, early on, as what was first recognized as Hillbilly Boogie. Black-oriented blues music crossed over into the country realm and Rock n’ Roll developed from this co-mingling of the blues, country, and the more jazz oriented Boogie Woogie in songs like 1946’s Hillbilly Boogie, and 1950’s Hot Rod Race. Chuck Berry’s very first record, 1955’s Maybellene, was first called Ida Mae by Chuck, and was actually based on a reinvention of a traditional Hillbilly song, Ida Red. The president of Chuck’s record label, Leonard Chess, upon hearing it for the first time, called it “the Hillbilly tune”.

Cash Box also reported in 1955 that: “With Maybellene, Chuck Berry demonstrates that “An integration is taking place so that we are developing a taste which is a combination of all of the regions of the USA, rather than having different tastes kept exclusively for one area, and just for one group of people.”

Maybellene revealed how middle-class whites were forced to become aware of how other Americans were living. Music was, itself, contributing to integrating people all over the country as they began to develop an appreciation of this new music. White audience members, excited and inspired by Chuck’s Rock n’ Roll music, came up on stage, shook Chuck’s hand, with some young women even kissing him. Chuck felt his music was proving the triumph of Art over race, creating a brand new culture in America.

With the release a year later of Chuck’s song, “Roll Over Beethoven”, Chuck was kicking Beethoven down the stairs. As Chuck put it, “ All you had to have was a car and a guitar, and you could make it in the world.” Chuck’s music, as it continued to integrate itself into American society, was able to get into multiple radio formats, including Country, Pop, and R n’B. Rock n’ Roll was taking over the country - and changing it.

The fabulous singer and songwriter, Roy Orbison, described Chuck Berry as “The first singer-songwriter”. Country legend, Buck Owens, said: “If you listen to his words, they are straight country words.” Paul Simon noted that Chuck’s lyrics “flowed in an effortless way”, and that he had “a very powerful imagery at his disposal.” And The Beatles’, John Lennon, speaking on daytime TV’s Mike Douglas Show in February, 1972, put it this way: “If you had to give Rock n’ Roll another name, you might have called it - Chuck Berry.” 

When The Beatles arrived in America in 1964, an article in a Black oriented newspaper suggested that Chuck Berry was the primary force and inspiration of The Beatles’ sound and style, and to a certain degree, that was true. But they also stated that Chuck was the innovator and that The Beatles were just copying him and cashing in on Chuck with FAR LESS TALENT, ultimately asking: “How much do they owe Chuck?”. Perhaps… but really, EVERY MUSICIAN was just looking to see what THEY could do with this wonderful new music called Rock n’ Roll. Elvis Presley was not really an innovator, but that didn’t hide his enthusiasm and love for the music. Plenty of musicians and songwriters, woodshedding and working at it, eventually found their own unique voices. Like Elvis, they all were rockin’ around the clock in their own individual way.

Musicians, critics and fans alike, saw Rock n’ Roll as birthing new stories in a new language, in an emerging rhythmic storm. There’s a famous video clip of some ossified public official in the 1950s, where he warns society about this alarming cultural trend, and proclaims that society must stamp out Rock n’ Roll music as it is social dynamite and a danger to society’s norms (and to its outdated pretensions). The Catholic Church condemned the nascent art form as “Animalistic”, with its “Congo rhythms”, that it was “Jungle music” and “Noise”. Traditionally, Pop music, and Black performers in particular, eschewed anything political, focusing just on the music and its entertainment value. Some artists, like Nat King Cole, were criticized for playing to white-only audiences, and were avoiding anything that might disturb the audience’s current world views. But with a growing America, things were changing. Political developments of the time, like the 1954 SCOTUS Brown vs. BOE Topeka, Kansas, which began the whole process of desegregation in schools, brought more and more diverse communities together. Rock n’ Roll music, exciting and new, was a connective force for the burgeoning baby boomer generation that was just getting started. The building of the interstate highway system made travel easier than ever before and people, ideas - and music - were getting around. Kids took matters into their own hands. Teenage girls chose what music and songs they could dance to. They were tastemakers more than boys of the same age, yet on the music-oriented Television show, Bandstand, the host, Dick Clark, observed, “If you had the girls, the boys would follow”. Ultimately, kids came to rule Rock n’ Roll. It was unstoppable.

New technologies and inventions were an integral aspect of the period. With the advent of vinyl records, both the two-song 45 rpm records (singles) and the 33rpm records (albums), which allowed for much greater sound quality and length than the previous shellac-based 78rpm records, birthed the notion that a record could utilize sounds that nobody had ever heard before. Until that point, a record was a literal rendering of whatever musical instruments and vocals sounded like in a given room without any pretense that there might be other ways of recording sound. An early record, “Peg-O’-My-Heart, utilized a newfangled approach where reverberations - or echo - were able to make music sound close up or far away. Now, the sound could be coming from anywhere. A record could be its own manifest thing triumphantly celebrating the power of artifice, and leaving those that questioned whether or not it was Art or just a novelty, in the rear-view mirror. Records became more unique than ever before; talismans, really. The great singer-songwriter and performer, Bruce Springsteen, put it this way: “ We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school.”

Energy, in the 1950s, both liquid and electrical, was fairly cheap, and optimism was quite abundant. In the music world, besides the constantly improving recording techniques and equipment, the electric guitar was a real game changer. You didn’t just hear it, you felt it through your feet and up your spine. Electric guitars and the amplification of eventually, every instrument, allowed for three to four musicians to make more sound than Big Bands, who often were staffed by a dozen or two members, had in prior decades. This created a situation where very small ensembles could form, and lots of young people wanted to try. The result was an explosion of bands (particularly after The Beatles came to America in 1964), and a renaissance of new music. Of course, the 1950s - 1970s were an amazing time for life in the western world in general, with all sorts of explorations of art, culture, and so much more. The times were indeed a-changing.

As the 1950s slid into the 1960s, more and more influences became integrated into Rock n’ Roll music. Folk Music, for instance, began to have an indelible effect on Rock n’ Roll, particularly with the lyrics. By the mid 1960s, the Rock n’ Roll music world, and its fans, viewed itself as a movement and social force for change, whereas, the music of the 1950s, good and revolutionary as it was, mostly presented simple, basic themes, and easy to remember melodies. In a 1965 interview, the folk music oriented singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan, noted that Rock n’ Roll’s lyrics were lacking in depth and seriousness despite its catchy phrases and energetic rhythms. The free association utilized in Bob’s and other writer’s lyrics were heavily influenced by the Beat Poets of the previous generation. The soul-searching embodied by poetry, and especially the poetry of the Beat Poets, not only enhanced second generation Rock n’ Roll, but are now also considered to have been a precursor to Rap and Hip Hop lyrics. 

According to Bob, Rock n’ Roll lyrics did not accurately depict real life. Bob found folk music to be more profound and earnest. Folk songs often convey feelings of despair, sadness, triumph, belief in the supernatural as well as other deep emotional expressions, giving way to much deeper feelings and concepts than Rock n’ Roll lyrics usually employed, and which are often not serious, and don’t reflect life in a realistic way. For example, Woody Guthrie’s songs contain the infinite sweep of humanity, often  revealing the true voice of the American spirit. Most pop music lyrics, from the late 19th century through the 1950s, were generally just romantic ditties. John Lennon stated that it was from hearing Dylan that allowed him to make the leap from writing empty pop songs to songs expressing the actuality of his life and the depths of his soul. Paul Simon, commenting on what inspired him to write songs with deeper meanings, said: “ I really can’t imagine it could have been anyone besides Bob Dylan.” Van Morrison called Bob “the world’s greatest poet.” As Rock n’ Roll lyrics matured, gathered more depth, and revealed a broader reflection of life, Bob boldly stated that: “Tin Pan Alley is gone, and I put an end to it.”

No doubt, while Rock n’ Roll was growing by leaps and bounds, it still maintained its essential roots. Bob revealed that his song, Subterranean Homesick Blues was actually influenced by Chuck Berry’s song, “Too Much Monkey Business”, (itself a subtle dig at social issues in the 1950s). Bob performed Rock n’ Roll as a teenager in northern Minnesota, so it was not a stretch for him to begin incorporating Rock n’ Roll elements into his highly praised - but initially - only acoustic-guitar-based folk music. Bob began quietly dabbling with the electric guitar (if one CAN dabble quietly with an electric guitar - as Bob was soon to find out!) with this song on his fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home. Some of his fans, at first, were taken aback by Bob’s embrace of Rock n’ Roll elements, however, it didn’t take long for most fans to acquiesce, accept, and pretty much embrace the changes. As Bob said himself on a previous album: The Times Were A-changing!

If you didn’t live through the 1960s, it’s likely you can’t quite grasp, in real time, the fundamental and monumental changes that occurred. Fifty years later, so much of what changed and developed then, seems common and obvious. At the time, however, it was often jaw-dropping, life-changing, and downright revolutionary. No, Utopia-On-Earth did not ensue, yet fundamental and foundational changes DID happen, and, for our purposes here, most certainly, in music. The changes were in your face, obvious, and breathtaking. Perhaps the single most salient example of this metamorphosis is the rise and total evolutionary ubiquitousness of the entity known as a Rock n’ Roll band, and most particularly, the band known as: The Beatles. While they began their ascendancy by cleverly presenting an updated version of much of what made the 1950s music so creative, new, and great, they quickly commandeered their own speed-train of creativity to here-to-fore unimagined musical destinations.

For instance, The Beatles’ lyrics went from “I want to hold your hand”, in 1963, to “Turn off your mind, relax, and float down stream - it is not dying”, in 1966. That’s quite a conceptual leap. Yes, that line IS from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead - but what other pop artist EVER quoted from THAT book? And yes, they were highly influenced by Bob Dylan, and also from all of the explorations that young people were engaging in, yet, as the premier Rock n’ Roll band of the era, they were in a unique position to have their music and lyrics front and center amongst all of the various evolutions and revolutions taking place. And they did it naturally, and intelligently, without pretense, as young people often do. Felix Cavaliere, of The Young Rascals said, in 1989, regarding songwriting in the 1960s, that: In those days, people were… more honest in their songs than they are today - like John Lennon. He spilled his guts out in a song. People were telling true stories.” In 1987, Joan Baez, also referencing lyric intent in the 1960s, pointed out that: “At some point, people needed to be serious about saying something”.

A perfect example of the growth in The Beatles’ music can be seen in their 1965 album, Rubber Soul. Two years into their worldwide fame, they recorded this folk influenced, nuanced album. New concepts, new reflections, and the new ideas of the times were beginning to float all around in the air, and were ripe for the taking. Folk music themes, and progressive ideas were casually incorporated into The Beatles’ lyrics, while their lead guitarist’s initial forays into what would become a lifelong interest in Indian music and instruments, altered their music’s sound itself. When George Harrison introduced the sitar (actually, George initially used a more simple Indian instrument, the Tanpura) for the song Norwegian Wood, it opened up The Beatles to one of the many new directions and attitudes that would shape their music for the rest of their career. This choice of a novel instrument initiated a sense that anyone could suggest anything as long as it could make enticing musical sounds, and it enhanced what they already were doing. Stylistically, this translated into writing songs influenced by country music, by folk, gospel and even French style balladry, with lyrics that were increasingly thought provoking, allowing for mournful introspection, emotional longings, and self doubts. Not the usual high spirited boy-girl type lyrics of most of the previous decade’s songs.

Soon after Rubber Soul came out, the American band, The Beach Boys, led by an introspective - and introverted -  genius named Brian Wilson, released a now classic album of the era, Pet Sounds. Brian and his band, like The Beatles, and well, like practically everyone in the 1960s music scene, were also progressing by leaps and bounds, reveling in the free spirit of the times. They too, began to use “strange instruments”. Their inspiration, intern, inspired The Beatles right back even more so as the next two Beatle albums, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, bore this out. It was only just the mid-1960s, 1965-1967, but the floodgates opened. Everything was changing in western culture: music, fashion, art - and attitudes. Even substance abuse was changing whereas, in the Jazz era, many musicians, struggling with money and life-issues, turned to drugs like alcohol, marijuana and heroin in order to escape challenging situations and conflicting emotions. In the 1960s, however, while marijuana remained, mind-expanding drugs like LSD contributed to a flowering of ideas and directions. Non-western philosophies were embraced; exploration was the tenor of the times. A Harvard professor, Timothy Leary advised social and cultural explorers to “Tune In, Turn On, and Drop Out”, of the previous generations seemingly staid values and lifestyles. Duane Allman, founder of the great blues-rock band, The Allman Brothers, stated that records were gifts to everyone, and that music, especially rock music, was supposed to be fun. The unspoken implication was that certainly, it was also going to be enlightening. Rock n’ Roll music and Rock n’ Roll bands became a force that suggested and proved you could change the world through its power, to one degree or another (at least some of the time!) BUT - you had to live it. Bands like The Grateful Dead showed that while music was the underlying foundation to all that was going on, that a new paradigm of living was also a big part of the new zeitgeist.

Examples of this flowering of awareness and newfangled personal manifestation could be found in many if not most musical projects. For example, Van Morrison’s 1968 album, “Astral Weeks”, blended blues, jazz, classical and folk elements with hyper-poetic lyrics that obliterated convention in a genre-defying sound, written and sung by a long-haired non-conformist. Almost everyone in the music world was getting it. The great jazz guitarist, Pat Martino, once said that he found it very confining and difficult to relate to labels on music as music is a universal language. He characterized music as a plate of food and you use your spontaneous integrity to taste one thing or another, enjoying the gestalt of it all.

In a group interview in 1970, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones said that: “Rock musicians are the broadest minded musicians in the world, and the most aware of the complete world of music. Today, there are so many things that one group can encompass, so much broader horizons, and so much more quality. As long as you put the right feeling into it, music can now be in any style, but the feeling is all-important and the old rock styles are at the bottom of it all. Guitarist Jimmy Page pointed out that, briefly, after the initial Rock n’ Roll surge in the 1950s, that: “There was a period when a more sophisticated thing tried to push its way back into popular music, adding strings and things. That was when you’d get Pat Boone singing “Tutti Frutti”. But The Beatles and The Rolling Stones swept that all away. The basic, raw beat always comes back, but as we’ve done more and more different things, we’ve just encompassed more varieties of music.” Singer Robert Plant added: “We’ve gotten to a point where people can expect virtually anything from us. It’s a feeling of being alive.” Mr Jones, finishing the conversation, simply stated that: “To us, new directions come very naturally.” Two years into their career, Led Zeppelin were truly an embodiment of the great awakening that had occurred just over the previous five years or so. Renaissances don’t come along very often, but the 1960s, corresponding with the general birth of Rock n’ Roll music, most certainly has to be noted as one of humankind’s most profound examples of a true renaissance.

The lauded Rock n’ Roll musician and songwriter, Sting, discussing the impact of the 1960s in an interview in a 1985 issue of International Musician magazine, said that: “Pop music at its best is a great mongrel, taking in sources from everywhere. I think that pop music was at its best in the 1960s when there were no barriers, no demarcation lines of jazz, classical or whatever.” Brian Wilson proclaimed that the 1960s were “very contagious to creativity”. Laura Nyro, reflecting in 1994 about the intents of the 1960s, remembered that: “If you think back to music then, it was very, very open. There was great variety in music. There was great abundance in the universe as far as music was going. I remember a time when pouring through my little radio was Coltrane’s ‘My Favorite Things’, and wonderful harmony groups, soul music, R n’ B, folk music, great singers, all at the same time. It was ALL happening. There was just more freedom and abundance in music. Today, the capitalist business thing is just way too present.”  The great songwriter, P.F. Sloan commenting on the 1960s, said that they embodied “living art captured for all time. The juice from the Rock n’ Roll of the 50s and 60s seemed to be the only things in this world that were worth having any consequence and we literally changed the world”.

The 1981 movie, “My Dinner With Andre”, brought this observation: “I think it’s quite possible that the 1960s represented the last burst of The Human Being before he was extinguished. This is now the beginning of the rest of the future. Question: Is anything different today? We’re all bored now and possibly subject to a self-perpetuating, sub-conscious form of brainwashing based on a world totalitarian government with everything based on money. Cities like New York are the new model for modern versions of concentration camps where the citizens don’t even recognize that they’re prisoners. (15 minute cities anyone?) 

Of course, the reality of it all reveals that there was plenty of shuck and jive around, and that all of the usual human conundrums and foibles were absolutely in extent. Music, or the financing and promotion of it certainly had it’s dark side. There had long been an on-going struggle between art and commerce, and between materialism and idealism. Todd Rundgren, in 1989, said that “The music business is basically corrupt. They can make the public conscious of anybody they want if they spend the money. They have no imagination or integrity, and they’re just looking for repeats of previous formulas.” Leonard Cohen, in a 1992 interview, said that he felt that: “The 60’s were finished before they had barely - if ever - begun. I think the whole 60s thing lasted maybe 15 - 20 minutes in somebody’s mind. I saw it move very, very quickly into the marketplace.” At least we had those 15 - 20 minutes…

As the 1960s, with it’s bohemian flag tattered a bit, morphed into the 1970s, the burgeoning music business grew to the point where the all-mighty dollar got the upper hand and became the driving force on the business side. The revolutionary spirit that the 1950s, and especially, the 1960s had birthed began to be diluted and pushed aside. It was a business after all. Yes, there was still plenty of great music being made, but as the money changers began to really exert their materialistic influence, the unbridled and unabashed creative joy and expression of the 1960s slowly started to be distracted and diminished. Certainly, as the decades have continued to unfold, there have been many musicians who have tried to hold on to those creative feelings and often rebellious intentions of the spirit of the 1960s - but it is not quite the same. Renaissances, by their nature, do not last all that long. With the advent of digital technology in the 1990s, a great deal of the ways in which musicians earned a living for themselves have been stripped away, and the music scene is a very different animal today. Certainly, a multi-volume set of books could be written to document all of this, and, of course, there ARE many books around now which tell of this demise, but that’s not the intent here. This is just a relatively brief overview of the changes that have occurred in the western music world over three decades, the 1950s through the 1970s. This is just a short treatise to discuss the observation that Rock n’ Roll music allowed for an incredible flowering of ideas and creativity, and was - and still is - a wonderfully, open-minded art form. And, this essay is also an announcement of sorts to alert music fans of Zan Zone’s new album, a tribute to that time period, a tribute, not just to the music itself, but also, absolutely, to the spirit of those times. One album cannot possibly express, reflect, and review all of that, but at least it’s an acknowledgment of what still has a pulse, of what’s still breathing, and what still exists if anyone is willing to dig in deeply, to observe, to keep their eyes and ears open - and their minds as well; and to just listen. The Rock Is Still Rollin’!

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“The Blues had a baby and they named it Rock n’ Roll” - Muddy Waters

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Rob Siltanen - 2011 for an Apple Computer Advertising Campaign

“We are the music makers.

And we are the dreamers of dreams

Wandering by lone sea breakers -

And sitting by desolate streams.

World losers and world forsakers

On whom the pale moon gleams.

Yet we are the movers and shakers,

Of all the world for ever, it seems.

Edgar O’ Shaughnessy 1844 -1881