00600-高级英语（课文）-上

What Do They Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society?

关于我们和我们的社会，他们告诉了我们什么?

Rock is the music of teenage rebellion. 

-John Rockwell, rock music critic 

 摇滚是青少年叛逆的音乐。

——约翰·洛克威尔，摇滚音乐评论家

By a man's heroes ye shall know him. 

-Robert Penn Warren, novelist

知其崇拜何人，便可知其人。

——罗伯特·佩恩·沃伦，小说家

1972年6月中旬，芝加哥 圆形剧场 挤满了大汗淋漓、疯狂摇摆的人们。

Onstage, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones was singing "Midnight Rambler."

舞台上，滚石乐队的米克·贾格尔正在演唱《午夜漫步者》。

Critic Don Heckman was there when the song ended.

当歌曲结束时，评论家 唐·赫克曼 也在场。

［Exercises-B］ 1 "Jagger," he said, "grabs a half-gallon jug of water and runs along the front platform, sprinkling its contents over the first few rows of sweltering listeners.

★1他描述道：“贾格尔抓起一个半加仑的水罐，沿舞台前沿，边跑边把里面的水洒向前几排汗流浃背的听众。

 They surge to follow him, eager to be touched by a few baptismal drops.“

听众们蜂拥般跟随着他跑，急切地希望能沾上几滴洗礼的圣水。

Some 14,000 screaming fans were crunching up to the front of the stage at Capital Center, outside Washington, D. C.

1973年12月下旬，在华盛顿市区外的首都中心剧场，大约14000名尖叫的粉丝聚集在舞台前。

Alice Cooper, America's singing ghoul was ending his act.

He ends it by pretending to end his life ——with a guillotine.

美国的恐怖歌星艾利丝*库珀 的表演正接近尾声。

他表演的更后一幕是假装在断头台上结束自己的生命。

His "head" drops into a straw basket.

他的“头”落入一个草篮中。

"Ooh,"gasped a girl dressed in black.

" Oh, isn't that marvelous?"

“哎呀，”一个穿黑衣服的女孩，喘着气说。

“啊！真是了不起，不是吗？”

Fourteen-year-old Mike Perlie was there too, but his parents weren't.

14岁的迈克·佩利也在那里，但他的父母不在。

"They think he's sick, sick, sick," Mike said.

 " They say to me, 'How can you stand that stuff?'"

“他们认为他恶心，恶心，恶心，”迈克说。

 “他们对我说，‘你怎么能忍受那些东西?’”

Inside the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, Bob Dylan and The Band were tuning for a concert.

Outside, in the pouring rain, fan Chris Singer was waiting to get in."

 This is pilgrimage,"Chris said.

"I ought to be crawling on my knees."

When Mick Jagger's fans look at him as a high priest or a god, are you with them or against them?

Do you share Chris Singer's almost religious reverence for Bob Dylan?

Do you think he——or Dylan——is misguided? 

Do you reject Alice Cooper as sick?

［Exercises-B-3］Or are you drawn somehow to this strange clown, perhaps because he acts out your wildest fantasies?

［Exercises-B-4］ Some sociologists say that your answers to them could explain a lot about what you are thinking and about what your society is thinking——in other words, about where you and your society are.

Music expresses its times," says sociologist Irving Horowitz.

Horowitz sees the rock music arena as a sort of debating forum, a place where ideas clash and crash.

He sees it as a place where American society struggles to define and redefine its feelings and beliefs."

The redefinition," Horowitz says," is a task uniquely performed by the young.

 It is they alone who combine invention and exaggeration, reason and motion, word and sound, music and politics.“

"Rock music," he says," is really a sociological expression rather than a musical force.

Even Elvis Presley wasn't really a great musical force.

［Exercises-B-5］It's just that Elvis managed to embody the frustrated teenage spirit of the 1950s."

Of course Presley horrified adult America.

Newspapers editorialized against him, and TV networks banned him.

But Elvis may have proved what Horowitz and Rundgren believe.

When he appeared on the Ed. Sullivan Sunday night variety show in front of millions, a kind of "debate" took place.

 Most of the older viewers frowned, while most of the younger viewers applauded.

Bob Dylan touched a nerve of disaffection.

He spoke of civil rights, nuclear fallout, and loneliness.

He spoke of change and of the bewilderment of an older generation.

" Something's happening here," he sang.

 " You don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

The Beatles, Horowitz said, urged peace and piety, with humor and maybe a little help from drugs.

The Rolling Stones, arrogant street-fighting men, demanded revolution.

The Jefferson Airplane's  "We Can Be Together" and "Volunteers (Got a Revolution)" were two further statements of radical youth.

★ 6 Feelings, always a part of any musical statement, were a major subject.

感情，总是任何音乐表达的一部分，是一个重要的主题 。

Janis Joplin sang of her sadness.

The Beatles showed there were a range of emotions between love and hate.

Then came The Band, mixing the more traditional ideas of country and western music into the more radical "city "

ideas of the hard rock.

★ 7 This country element, Horowitz feels, helped its audience express an urge to "get away from it all," to "go back 

to the old days."

One of the best current examples of what Horowitz is talking about is John Denver.

 His most notable songs

——"Sunshine on My Shoulders", "Rocky Mountain High", and "Country Road"

—— combine the musical drive and power of folk rock, 

while the lyrics celebrate the simple joys of "the good old days."

 Like all artists, these rock musicians mirror feelings and beliefs that help us see and form our own.

Applause and praise, of course.

★ 8 In one 1972 national opinion poll, more than 10 percent of the high school boys and 20 percent of the girls said their hero was a rock superstar.

We also give them money.

 "The fastest way to become a millionaire these days," says Forbes, a business magazine," is to become a rock 'n'roll star."

"And I laughed to myself at the men and the ladies.

Who never conceived of us billion-dollar babies."

 The particular"culture hero"who sings that is Alice Cooper.

What does he——or any other current rock success——tell us about his fans?

About ourselves and our society?

  Where it is, where it was,where it's heading?

★2How do you feel about all this adulation and hero worship?

★3Or are you drawn somehow to this strange clown, perhaps because he acts out your wildest fantasies?

★4 Some sociologists say that your answers to them could explain a lot about what you are thinking and about what your society is thinking——in other words, about where you and your society are.

★ 5It's just that Elvis managed to embody the frustrated teenage spirit of the 1950s."

★ 6 Feelings, always a part of any musical statement, were a major subject.