Customer Reviews

The Accidental Evolution Of Rock'n'roll: A Misguided Tour Through Popular Music

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Reading the other reviews on this page, one might well be confused: Some complain about Chuck Eddy's weak grasp of his subject matter, others delight in the obscurity of his numerous references. So what is it?

Well, all of these reviews are accurate. Chuck slings names all over the place, and shows laudable contempt for genre classification (sure, he spends a lot of time on Debbie Gibson, but not everyone would compare her to, say, Von Lmo). But if you're actually going to him for information, you'll be disappointed, as there seem to be very few albums Chuck has actually LISTENED to. References abound, but are restricted to trite observations about song titles; in fact, he doesn't even make observations so much as group songs by some common word in their names. He doesn't seem to have any grasp of his subject matter because he doesn't seem to have grasped the notion that those plastic things inside album covers play music if you put them in a special machine.

Rock criticism has always been pretty grim, being dominated by hacks who prefer to deconstruct song lyrics than listen to the music. (Just look at the praise lavished on Bob Dylan's "poetics" over the years, qualified by blushing "admissions" that "he's really not a great singer": If only these people realized that Dylan's VOICE epitomizes the rock aesthetic, his stoner ramblings being mere frills!) Chuck Eddy, while relatively unpretentious, represents the absolute lowest form of this tendency.

This book is truly abysmal.

The other negative reviews pretty much spell it out, why did I not listen to them. There are some critics that create heated debates as to the weight of their opinion (Bangs, Marcus, etc), but this guy is just bad. I think this book is made for teenagers who can't read more than a page or two without getting bored. I traded it in for a good book on Marvin Gaye, so the experience wasn't all bad.

Chuck Eddy is a Shakespearean Fool, a Court Jester, whose witticisms, stream-of-consciousness critiques and anally-retentive lists sit side by side with a thorough knowledge of musical and cultural history. Not a book for the faint-hearted and the musically or culturally illiterate - he's too savvy for that. The reader might be overwhelmed by his tidal wave of facts, opinions and critical barbs - but dipping into the mind of Chuck Eddy is fun and stimulating.

Chuck: Maybe "Me and the boys are playing all night" means that the band Kiss are playing music.

He mentions that some of this book was written while sitting on the toilet bowl; unfortunately, it shows.

Tho I admire his honesty saying he only owned 4 albums in college, it painfully adds to my conclusion that he is hardly an authority on the subject and that there are lots of gaps in his knowledge. He actually admits that he had never heard any Tricky before, while dissing stupid critics who praise him. But if he never heard any Tricky, then he never heard any of Massive Attack, arguably creators of the best cd of the 90's.

Here is a clue: 11 pages talk about Debbie Gibson, but there is only one mention of the Marshall Tucker Band, 3 mentions of Creedence. So if he can flip off comments about brain-dead hippies, what the hell does he think he is?

Totally tasteless is the way he raps about his own ideations about suicide while knocking Kurt Cobain. Unbelieveable.

Positive side: Not many people are going to know who the Louvin Brothers or Andrea True are. This book is really packed with trivia, so rocknroll fanatics should really enjoy the memoribilia. And chapters about players who are missing various appendages are fascinating for anyone interested in this arcana.

While Chuck Eddy may be knowlegable in every facet of music, I found this book to be rather unsatisfying. Eddy tends to be unfocused in his writing, usually unable to stick with an idea longer than a couple of sentences, the title basically saying it all: it is a "misguided tour" through popular music. In fact, I fail to see how "The Accidental Evolution of Popular Music" even applies here. Connections of ideas from song to song throughout history seem poorly linked, and what the reader basically gets is one man's slanted and garbled interpretation of them. Eddy defends mindless bubblegum music while harping on any that attempts to bring deeper meaning. If your looking for one man's opinion on music, this book is for you--especially if you like Debbie Gibson, Def Leppard, and Donna Summer--but you may be surprised that such acts as Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd are sorely misrepresented because, by the author's belief, they have too much to say.

Eddy's writing itself is rocknroll, and some readers just can't handle that. If you're looking for footnotes and pseudo-erudite analyses, go to school. This one's for rockers. Read while listening to Ragged Glory, etc.

The Supreme form of Courage is the One against the All.

Chuck Eddy's writing style alone puts him in a different realm than most critics who would give a favorable review of a sampled fart over a Dr. Rhythm Drum Machine loop for the money.

The fact that he stands alone and is NOT a trendy Sheep yet has been a critic at The Village Voice, Creem, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and Chief Editor at Billboard should tell you something.

I am willing to bet that all of the one star reviews are from disgruntled musician turned "Rock Critics" who do piecemeal "Internet Rag" reviews from their parents basement. You should really read the book before spewing your jealousy.

Chuck Eddy has the courage to go against the mob without being contrived which puts him way above you haters. What are your accomplishments besides scouring Wikipedia, Youtube and Amazon to give bad reviews to anyone who has made it to the top of their field without being a sell out?

This book will never be a best seller. Neither was "Walden Pond", "Leave's of Grass", "Notes from Underground" or even "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (until recently). This book is not written for the masses who would rather buy the "Tao of Paris Hilton".

Most Pop/Rock/Hip Hop/House/Trance/Progressive/Underground/ad infinitum songs are nothing but unoriginal variations on a few tracks. The fact that there are thousands of divisions for the same sounding junk is an indicator that music has really gone South. This is nothing new, commercialization works this way and this is what the brainwashed herd craves. Todays music is not inspired. It is totally contrived like your negative reviews. Your taste is not esoteric, it's just trendy.

Put on your Ed Hardy hats and keep plugging away D-Bags. One day you may get a permanent non-paying position on an internet magazine. Chuck Eddy has already made his mark. You are not even a blip on the radar screen.

Chuck Eddy is a hoot. An intellectual hoot, and a hoot you may have to read two or three times to get, but a hoot nonetheless. If real people wrote rock crit books, they'd be like this. But Chuck isn't real. He's that nerd from high school who turned out to be smarter, funnier and cooler than everyone else. The thing I like best about this book (with the possible exception of the cover) is that he doesn't hand the thesis to you on a silver platter. He makes you work for it. And if you don't get it, you'll be doomed to a life of reading reviews in Rolling Stone and thinking that they're good--and that they aren't bought with record company money. If I had to fault the book at any level, it does get a little "samey" from time to time, but then some brilliant Eddy-ism will pop up and you'll be laughing...or running to your stereo to hear something you'd missed. And the cover is just too brilliant! But then, I'm biased...

This book is unbelievably bad by a writer who possesses possibly absolutely no talent or intelligence. Unfortunately, it's a sad reflection on rock criticism and writing in general. This book doesn't merit me sitting here wasting my time writing or thinking of it, I want to forget this book, this writer, everything about the experience as quickly as possibly and just pretend it was a very bad dream. I have nothing good to say about this book, except if I'm trapped in a bathroom with only this book, I could come up with one useful thing to do with this book. What's his next book going to be: how boogers are responsible for some of the greatest literary works of this century? I wish this was just some bizarre comment coming off the top of my head, but I could actually see this joker writing such a book of 'weighty scholarship'. Peace out, music lovers, the X Man

Only two books published -- three if you count the updated and revised edition of _Stairway to Hell_, which you also need -- and Chuck Eddy clearly is just about the only worthwhile rock critic out there at all. The first review in this list says it all, but to add to it a bit more -- when it comes to challenging some of the stupidest preconceptions about enjoying music, especially the two real problems (making up your mind before actually listening to the music and staying locked in predetermined 'genre' categories), Chuck is The Man. More worthwhile than the collected works of _Rolling Stone_, _Spin_ and _Q_ combined, and a damn sight funnier than all of them as well.