Fri, 07 March 2003
Dancing at Sleater-Kinney concerts and religious ecstasy?

Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s by Camille Paglia is a long scholarly yet readable article.  It's certainly about rock and roll and the ecstasy many experience during Sleater-Kinney performances.

"But the titanic, all-enveloping sound of rock was produced by powerful, new amplification technology that subordinated the mind and activated the body in a way more extreme than anything seen in Western culture since the ancient Roman Bacchanalia. Through the sensory assault of that thunderous music, a whole generation tapped into natural energies, tangible proof of humanity’s link to the cosmos."

"Despite the call for ecstasy in his poem “Bacchus,” he was evidently made uncomfortable by music’s heady rhythms and emotional stimulation. It was the American 1960s that would complete Transcendentalism—through the new, barbaric medium of rock."