Yes kendall, that IS your problem--a closed mind. Just because you personally don't like it doesn't mean that that it's not worthy of recognition. I personally hate "Leave her Johnny, Leave her," but it's still part of the pantheon of important traditional music.

Rock and roll, like it or not, has far more cultural relevance than folk at this point. Mikefule is correct. By definition, rock is the new "folk" music. What most of y'all consider folk should really be called old time, traditional, Appalachian, Irish, roots music, etc.

Consider this "Franklin D. Roosevelt's Back Again" (Bill Cox and Cliff Hobbs, 1936) was considered to be folk music a mere 25 years after it was written when the New Lost City Ramblers rerecorded it on Songs from the Depression in the late 1950s. Early rock and roll has longer legs than that at this point.

Moreover, lots of rock and roll, especially the Beatles, Yes, Grateful Dead, King Crimson, et al. is far more musically complex than the beloved folk songs everybody loves so much. It's pretty hard to make a case that music that is more technically demanding is "grafitti."