The 1960s counterculture (if you agree that is the appropriate term) is one of the most mythologized, caricatured, and misunderstood happenings in American history. Alienated from American society, this diverse group of actors transformed it from the inside, radically reassessing the given mores of their parents and the institutions they seemingly represented. Coinciding with the counterculture was the cultural accreditation of rock music. Once perceived as mere noise, rock was now considered not only art, but also a powerful animating social force.

With a reappraisal of rock music came a tacit reappraisal of an oppositional youth culture on the ascendancy. No longer dismissed as trivial or juvenile, the music, style, and worldview of this generation demanded and increasingly received serious critical attention, sparking an intense battle over the legitimacy of both the counterculture and the music which animated it.

The debates this intersection sparked, makes us ask a crucial question: When does culture become transgressive?