In the documentary Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres, Fong-Torres recounts the feeling of flipping through the jukebox at his father’s restaurant stating, “Inside jukeboxes, there was no segregation…Rock and Roll was an equalizer.” Music gave voice to the disenfranchised as a form of protest. These principles of rock and roll shaped Fong-Torres’s writing sensibilities, making him a rockstar journalist within the music industry.

This is not to say artists shouldn’t be criticized and that the origin of a piece of art doesn’t matter, but rather that authorial intent doesn’t necessarily define a piece of art in and of itself. The meaning one takes away from art is extremely personal and has much more say in how it affects the real world than how it was made. This all ultimately trails back to the classic bout between high and low culture – a conflict that  often boils down to a battle over cultural capital.

Its subject matter is endlessly fascinating, and the interviews Clem captures are special relics of musical history. The stories provided are engrossing. Clem has a clear adoration for the subject and his passion transcends the screen.  The biggest issue with How They Got Over is simply that Clem’s scope is far too ambitious for such a short runtime. In covering everything, nothing feels particularly significant.

On Fidlar’s latest album “Almost Free,” released in 2019, the title track is an entirely instrumental blend of funk and big band music. A track like this seems to contradict the Alt Rock angst they call back to however it seems to fit into the album perfectly. Similarly, SWMRS “Berkley’s on Fire” and “Lose Lose Lose” use groovy basslines and interesting rhythms that separate them from the standard order Alt Rock, but still have enough attitude and Punk guitars to be described as anything else. It feels almost disrespectful to compare these bands with each other because of their undeniable individuality.

It’s a well-known conundrum in the rules and regulations of the rock’n’roll canon: If it is popular, it must not be good. While AC/DC has millions of fans the world over and can continue to sell out arena tours (even with a completely different and controversial lead singer), they have very few critical accolades to show for it. They’ve won only one Grammy – for a song released in 2010, no less – and even the likes of Billy Joel managed to beat them into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame.

More than 40 years after their initial formation in New York City in 1973, the band KISS is still living – and selling – large. Since their misleadingly-named “KISS Farewell Tour” in 2001, the group has toured consistently nearly every year, performing over 450 concerts in stadiums and amphitheatres across North and South America, Europe, and Japan; their merchandise sales alone within the same 15-year span topple $500 million.

But the Dolls were also tougher, sloppier, and more aggressive than any of those ‘60s rock bands had dared to be, a rambunctious brawl of electric sound that strongly foreshadowed the punk revolution of the later 1970s. Songs like “Looking for a Kiss” and “Trash” dealt with subjects like heroin and drug addiction with an almost perverse nonchalance; watching them perform live, as Nick Kent described it, was “almost as if Donny Osmond ditched his brothers, started taking downers and grew fangs, picked up with a bunch of heavy-duty characters down off 42^nd Street and started writing songs on topics like premature ejaculation.”

But Springsteen is of course no schoolchild, and no stranger to the tradition of the protest song. He openly idolizes Guthrie, and in the early days of his career was often billed as “The New Bob Dylan.” His rendition of “This Land Is Your Land” contains all the original verses, and it’s slow, grisly, and obviously pained. He knows it’s no patriotic celebration song. So what kind of promises are we talking about here? Surely it’s not the promise of a long and well-populated line for the government dole.

To an outsider, the gathering of Beliebers in such large proportions can be dizzying, if not downright menacing: strange words to ascribe mostly prepubescent girls in the awkward middle stages of growth spurts, hormonal changes, and corrective braces and eyewear. But the apparent strength of their allegiance to Justin – whose music and lyrics are mostly innocuous, if not downright dumb, to most grown adults or “serious” music fans – is what is most disorienting. The communal desires, the vast groupthink, and the worship of a (false?) idol smells of blind consumerism at best and fascism at worst. 

To see him play live, you would hardly know that Jake Bugg is just a kid. Feet planted before the microphone, head bobbing up and down to the rhythm of his guitar strumming, he exudes the subdued confidence of a more seasoned performer. His voice – distinctively nasal, irresistibly British – carries strongly over the crowd, sounding impressively similar to his studio recordings. He strolls along the edge of the stage at intervals and glances casually about the room, as if to demonstrate just how easily this comes to him.