“I became especially interested in the new application of the word [survival] in the domain of rock ‘n’ roll, mainly because it appeared everywhere—as a justification for empty song-protagonists, washed-up careers, third-rate LPs, burnt-out brainpans. (This is not even to discuss the use of the word in current fiction, where it has become a surefire way to make vaguely neurotic, white, middle-class characters seem heroic in their depression, inadequacy, and cowardice.) I grew obsessed with the phenomenon: it seemed to me to speak for everything empty, tawdry, and stupid about the seventies, to stand for every cheat, for every failure of nerve. I couldn’t get away from the word: week after week, it arrived in the mail. Grand Funk’s Survival. The Rolling Stones’ ‘Soul Survivor.’ Barry Mann’s Survivor. Cindy Bullens’s ‘Survivor’ (a great recording, and ruined). Eric Burdon’s Survivor. Gloria Gaynor’s cheesy “I Will Survive.” Adam Faith’s I Survive. Randy Bachman’s Survivor. Georgie Fame’s Survival. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Street Survivors” (the only band made to pay for the conceit). Just a couple of weeks ago, the Wailers’ Survival, and then the band Survivor. Every time a performer covering himself or herself with glory (just as novelists continued to celebrate their hapless autobiographical characters and their lack of anything worth saying). So I railed against it all; I wrote about the word every time I came across it, tried to kill it.”
from “Rock Deaths in the 1970s: A Sweepstakes,” Village Voice, Dec. 17, 1979; reprinted in In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992 (a.k.a., Ranters & Crowd Pleasers)
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