Realizing the Scene; Punk and Meaning’s Demise

Joplin and Hendrix set the intensive norm for rock shows, fed the rock audience’s need for the emotional charge that confirmed they’d been at a “real” event... The ramifications were immediate. Singer-songwriters’ confessional mode, the appeal of their supposed “transparency”, introduced a kind of moralism into rock – faking an emotion (which in postpunk ideology is the whole point and joy of pop performance) became an aesthetic crime; musicians were judged for their openness, their honesty, their sensitivity, were judged, that is, as real, knowable people (think of that pompous rock fixture, the Rolling Stone interview)’. -Simon Frith, from `Rock and the Politics of Memory’ (1984: 66-7)