Why is it that everyone who posts a topic here looking for material for a school assignment seems so impatient and superficial?
Seems, I say. Note that.
I'm guessing it's the very nature of school assignments- bone up for basically a BS quickie job assuming an authorative air. Then, no reason to remember anything but the distinguished academic tone after the assignment is handed in.
Now a thesis is a bit bigger deal, but same story really, by and large.
If you approach this genuinely trying to understand this indeed remarkable phenomenon, (good call on a topic!), you will be asking more insightful questions, being more patient, understanding that most of those here are in this for life. If you hope for the kind of thoughtful incisive answer that some here can give, including gm, you might want to try to ask worthy questions.
So, I will ignore the specific questions for now (I mean, duh, who hasn't seen somebody hold an SM57 and sing into it?), and hope that behind the rush-rush tone, the ill-considered, leading questions (pump pump iconic pump pump?) and all the SHOUTING in capitals, there is a thoughtful mind and an earnest curiousity, that wants to contemplate independently from the desire to present some finished thing in teacher-pleasing form.
Here it is:
Rock and roll took over the world, and the SM57 is uniquely suited to rock & roll. It understands rock & roll- it IS rock and roll. It is the means to rock & roll, the promise that anybody can get ahold of and *be* the real thing, just like the guy on the TV and the cover of Rolling Stone, now, just like the teenage girl there. A stratocaster with a whammy bar, [what, no footnote?], an SM57.
How is it the perfect tool for rock&roll? Let me count the ways. Better yet, let you.
Can you tell me, what is an icon? A stratocaster has some of that, but it seems more so in the hands of a Hendrix, and thus when hewlett packard runs an add with that icon, they use a picture of Hendrix holding the strat. Hendrix is an icon- but the strat?
You will see little desktop computer images of old RCA mics, those announcer mics who in their day were the icon for live radio. That really is an icon I think, still without defining icon... I don't see the SM57 playing any such role.
What you are looking at is sociology and rock&roll- not a new study, there are numerous works available, many surprisingly scholarly, many misleading and missing crucial points, too many written by editors from, again, Rolling Stone. There are coffeetable books that try to make it seem, through juxtaposition, that eminem and system of a down are the spiritual heirs of Wilson Pickett and Buddy Holly. Of Muddy Waters. Use the sword of bodhi to slice asunder these illusions, and lay bare the real pattern of this singular phenomenon- the work of a lifetime, but a stoned epiphany might get you through, it's worked for me before- since then I've kicked the school habit, but maintained the voracious appetite for knowledge that led me astray in the library every time-
Personally, I never use the SM57 if I can help it, but my take on rock & roll goes clear back to the days of bull fiddles and ribbons and beyond- it might be more accurate to say "rock" for the overblown starstruck extravaganza that the SM57 fits like a key to a lock.
To my mind, it represents the ENTIRE problem! Ah, the lethal legacy of that innocent tool...