Customer Reviews

Anti-Rock: The Opposition To Rock 'n' Roll

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Growing up with punk rock and having constantly tried analyzing all the reasons why "rock and roll" is so 'evil' according to mainstream, this book gave me the greatest insight to how it all started.

Listening to comedians like Bill Hicks who attack the subject of "anti-rockers" I still never new where rock and roll really came from except it had influences from African American roots in Blues, etc. But who WAS the first rock band. What WAS the first song classified as "rock"? This book defines all that and gives a great explanation for where the hatred came from.

Maybe if you've read a thousand books on the subject like it seems the other reviewers did, then this book is redundant and too extremist, but from a perspective OF an extremist (or at least a listener of extremist music) this is a nice history lesson for ANYONE who is passionate about ANY kind of music.

Anti-Rock is an insightful look at the history of popular music since the '50s. Martin and Seagrave show how since then, parents and other adults have hated the music their kids listened to; even when their own parents hated their own music. Each generation of middle-aged people seeks to find objective reasons for why the music that teenagers are currently listening to is bad, often imagining all sorts of consequences for listening to the music, from that it causes violence (the perennial favorite), to even more hair-brained ideas. Like that Satan inserts Satanic messages in reverse on records which compel the righteous to sin. Nobody ever has any scientific evidencefor their claims and they usually run out of steam. Many of the charges must have been really painful at the time to the artists at which they were directed, some of whom don't seem to have set out to get people to hate them. The text also contains some biographical information about a few influential people who were breifly the sublects of controversy.

Like Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Segrave, I, too, have a strong dislike for the PMRC, Jerry Falwell, and anyone else who would seek to still the voice of youth culture. On the other hand, I understand that rock concerts can get ugly, rock (and lately, rap) lyrics can be disgusting, and disco...

The two authors of this well researched and documented, though tedious and repetitive, book don't seem to realize that there is "another hand." Their permissive, contemporary liberalism is as short-sighted and dangerous as Rev. Falwell's uptight, fundamentalist conservatism. These two seem to think that any criticism of rock and roll music is unwarranted and akin to fascism. Everyone knows disco..., and everyone knows racism isn't the root of that belief - KC and the Sunshine Band will prove that.

I managed to read this book in the span of about two days, due to the fact that I skimmed or skipped over paragraphs and pages of monotonous listing of examples of "anti-rock". Rather than examining socio-economic conditions that incite rock hatred and answer criticisms reasonably, they assume their audience already hates the Conservative Right and is only looking for fuel to their fire.

Imagine the irony forthcoming here; I'll now use rock to critique anti-anti-rock. As Pavement sang in "Type Slowly":
"Cherish your memorized weakness
Fashioned from a manifesto -- lady, I am no futurist"

Pavement would say "Down with your liberal dogma! When you burn the conservative right, you scorch your own leftist behind, while we at the center, we balanced, considerate people stand far, far away from all of you."