Rock ’n’ Roll Music as

a Timepiece
Joseph A. Kotarba
University of Houston
This essay illustrates the value of time in
understanding baby boomers’
experiences of rock ’n’ roll. In a
distinctively interactionist st yle, I use
time
as a sensitizing concept in my research on
this phenomenon. The orienta-
tion that guides this research is
methodological tourism, by which the
researcher treats something as common
and taken-for-granted as rock ’n’
roll music in everyday life as strange if
not exotic. Structurally, songs about
time constitute the most visible temporal
structures in the world of rock ’n’
roll. Interactionally, I will argue that the
concept of the cohort is more use-
ful than that of the decade for an
interpretive analysis of musical nostalgia,
a key feature of t he phenomenon in
question. Illustrations of the reexive
relationship between rock ’n’ roll and
time in middle age include using
awareness of recent deaths of rock ’n’ roll
performers to interpret the exis-
tential signicance of aging; using rock
’n’ roll songs as benchmarks for
signicant events such as birthdays and
anniversaries, as well as gift giving
for these events; and using rock ’n’ roll
music to pass the time.
Given the pervasiveness of time in
everyday life, it should come as no
surprise that most
sociologists include at least an
implicit sense of time in their writing.
As Reese and Ka-
tovich (1989:160–61) note,
sociologists have approached the
study of time both structur-
ally and interactionally. Structurally,
we focus on time as observable yet
typically taken-
for-granted features of social life, or
“temporal structures.” Temporal
structures orga-
nize social life for us, and it is our
responsibility as competent members
of society to
abide by normatively approved time
markers. Interactionally, we view
time as an inte-
gral tool in everyday life (Couch
1986; Mead 1932). We use time—
time frames, timing,
and timeliness—to make sense of
situations, events, and relationships.
We use time to
make sense of the world and to
create social order, for as Reese
and Katovich