Letter: Rock music has had its day, daddio

Letter: Rock music seems to be in terminal decline.

Last year only three rock records made the 100 bestselling singles list and one of those was a re-issue.

Some of us will be saying "And not before time".

I'm 70, so I was 15 or 16 when rock became popular with the white public, first in the USA then rapidly worldwide.

Although a slum kid, I was never seduced by it as already I was digging jazz, which is far more subtle and profound, although often difficult to fully appreciate.

When listening to rock you are in effect listening to a vulgarisation.

Rock is rhythm and blues watered down, diluted, cheapened, sanitised, commercialised, even sentimentalised.

In its turn R&B was a mixture of the raw blues and sophisticated swing music, diluted, cheapened, sanitised, commercialised in many ways.

Rock, with all its attendant drug-taking, was the worst thing to happen to popular music.

But, as has often been suggested: "Few people have ever lost money under-estimating the taste of the public."

Also Lord Tennyson was never more mistaken when he wrote: "We needs must love the highest when we see it" - or hear it.

Sidney Evans

Chirk