Throughout 2005 the celebrity magazines and lifestyle supplements have been telling us that knitting is the new rock and roll. What nobody seems to have noticed is that rock and roll has slowly become the new knitting. Today rock is as safe and acceptable a hobby as knitting, it's done mostly at home by small polite groups of friends. There are lessons and clubs, mothers drop children at after-school rock drumming lessons, the youth go to welcoming and well organized practice-rooms while bands covering the Rolling Stones or The Who play fetes and cruise ships.
Once upon a time rock and roll was dangerous and exciting, aggressive, antisocial, and hated. When people first heard Hendrix's guitar they though it was unlistenable. Once when The Doors performed "The End" there was a riot and the concert had to be closed down by police. Rock music (or heavy metal, or punk, or grunge - pick a decade) used to be a rallying point for the outcasts, the dispossessed, the angry and neglected youth. When a real band was playing the police were on standby, parents were worried.
Forget knitting, it looks more like inner-city gun crime is the new rock and roll.