Another Vaccine Side Effect: The Death of Rock 'n' Roll

Music, once a powerful vehicle for social change, is now just another tool by which the establishment perpetuates a culture of spirit-crushing conformity.

I like to think it a symptom of healthy psychological development that, as a man grows older, he should come to more closely resemble his father in two key areas: namely, politics and music.

By my own admission, I am not altogether convinced that my dad and I’s opinions on government ever much differed, at least along any other lines than maturity – the same distrust that informed his large ‘C’ conservatism fueling an adolescent anarchism which, truth be told, I owed less to the philosophy of Max Stirner than to the rants of GG Allin.

My taste in music has followed a similar trajectory. Although my heart will forever remain, deep within this baby carrier-wearing chest, that of an unrepentant punk rocker, I am no longer sure whether my listening habits can best be described as ‘omnivorous’ or ‘insatiable’. I like to consider myself literate in everything from the UK folk scene to early two-tone ska, as receptive to Tchaikovsky as I am to the Sleaford Mods, and yet as I near my contemplative mid-thirties, the more I find my playlists comprised of the same renegade country music me and my dad listened to each time we made the weekly journey to grandma’s.

Despite this general confluence of styles, however, there is one name which remains conspicuously absent from both our record collections: Neil Young. As best I can recall, the only times his voice ever came out of my father’s stereo was on the semi-occasional Cosby, Stiles, Nash, and Young album, and had it not been for the recent Joe Rogan/Spotify saga, I might have gone the rest of my life without ever again hearing the now palpably insincere Rockin’ in the Free World.

And that is precisely why the episode struck the chord it did. You see, while back in the smoke-hazed ‘60s and acid-crazed ‘70s, Neil Young might have been an avatar of youthful rebellion, the reality is that some fifty years later and untold millions of dollars richer, that is a far more difficult mythology to maintain. In fact, it might easily be considered a more accurate description of Rogan himself. After all, if one’s rock ‘n’ roll credentials are measured by the force which opposes them, then today in 2022, there really is no comparison – Big Tech, Big Pharma, and the MSM getting their collective panties in a twist over the podcaster’s zeitgeist-shifting success.

Of course, Neil Young has no idea that the establishment’s shrieks of “misinformation” are purely their panicked projection. He, quite lamentably, is just another old man befuddled by their propaganda. But whether or not “the Godfather of Grunge” possesses the wherewithal to see it, far from the anti-authoritarian icon he so clearly imagines himself, he has instead become, for an entire generation of young people, the face of a dying cultural and political paradigm.

Nevertheless, as I listened to commentators pour scorn on the ageing rock star and skimmed through a newsfeed of merciless memes, my schadenfreude began to wane. It’s not that I felt bad for Neil Young. It’s hard to feel bad for any censorious jackass, least of all one so willfully and triumphantly ignorant.

Who I did feel sorry for was his unvaccinated fans. Understand, I am not for a moment trying to equate the loss of a favorite artist to the litany of shattered friendships, strained marriages, and poisoned family dynamics that have been precipitated by the Covid Hoax. Neither am I suggesting that any self-respecting adult put stock in the musings of some bought-and-paid-for celebritard. What I am saying, however, is that as a music lover, and one who has relied heavily on its soul-restoring properties over the last two years, I cannot help but think there is something uniquely tragic in having a once cherished song – perhaps that Jim Bryson number that got you through your high school break-up, or one of Chopin’s nocturnes which invoked your daughter’s first smile – forever tainted by the same rot which has seeped into every other aspect of our society.