Customer Reviews

Facing the Music

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Rock'n'roll is fifty years old now, and it shows no signs of slowing down, going away, or even turning off that darn racket. The five lengthy essays in this book discuss many of the elements that have contributed to its longevity: the taboos of sexuality and race, the roles played by radio and tv, how the music now dominates the commercial marketplace (and has been turned into a commodity itself), why it still carries the sense of teenage rebellion. While anyone who listens to Sting may take exception to that last statement, it's certainly true that rap and pop are still being influenced by rock'n'roll forms and formulas. These essays are a bit dated (the book was published in 1988) but they're detailed and thoughtful, informative without being critical of the pop marketing elements that were shaping the rise of MTV. This is a good companion to Frith's 1981 book, "Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll," which examines the spectacular growth of the recording industry in the 1950s and 1960s, and the identification of a youth culture that followed it.

I've always found that intellectual analyses of primarily non-intellectual subjects (like popular music) look completely ridiculous. And nothing has changed here. What mysterious impulse leads writers to mull over and complicate what was originally simple and primal?

They want to tag every song and every album with a sub-genre, a sociological explanation, and a historical context, and to imbue deep and profound meaning where none may have been intended.

One sentence from the book will serve to indicate its pointlessness. "But how Madonna survives into the nineties remains to be seen." Firstly, why did the writer bother to speculate? Why did it matter to her? And secondly, what does its lack of foresight say about everything else she wrote?