Histories of American rock music and the 1960s counterculture typically
focus on the same few places: Woodstock, Monterey, Altamont. Yet there
was also a very active college circuit that brought edgy acts like the
Jefferson Airplane and the Velvet Underground to different metropolitan
regions and smaller towns all over the country. These campus concerts
were often programmed, promoted, and reviewed by students themselves,
and their diverse tastes challenged narrow definitions of rock music.
Rockin' in the Ivory Tower takes a close look at two smaller
universities, Drew in New Jersey and Stony Brook on Long Island, to see
how the culture of rock music played an integral role in student life in
the late 1960s. Analyzing campus archives and college newspapers,
historian James Carter traces connections between rock fandom and the
civil rights protests, free speech activism, radical ideas, lifestyle
transformations, and anti-war movements that revolutionized universities
in the 1960s. Furthermore, he finds that these progressive students
refused to segregate genres like folk, R&B, hard rock, and pop. Rockin'
in the Ivory Tower gives readers a front-row seat to a dynamic time for
the music industry, countercultural politics, and youth culture.
