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Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music

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This is a very interesting book for anyone who has grown up paying even a little attention to the disputes about "authenticity" in popular music over generations. I am a classical musician and while the issues are hardly the same in that world, I can understand the notions of what these folks are struggling over and arguing about.

The authors begin with Kurt Cobain singing a Leadbelly song on MTV unplugged. His manner of singing the song, his complaints about being "real" and even his suicide act as a springboard for the whole book. We learn more about Leadbelly and his promoter, John Lomax, and where they actually fit into the music world of their time versus what white people believed about their heritage. John Hurt, who was a legend as an old man among the sixties folk singers. Yet, in his youth he was not nearly as popular nor as "authentic" as the sixties idolizers would have had the public believe.

It turns out that the Black public preferred Jazz and its sophistications to the blues and rural music that Leadbelly, Hurt and others performed. Nor was it as rooted in the slave past as the traditions believed. There was a lot of cross between rural White music and the rural Black music. We also see this in Jazz. It was only later that the schism between what is authentically "Black" or "White" became a fundamental issue, and its conclusions are largely wrong.

We get to compare the truly personal music of Jimmie Rodgers and his "T.B. Blues" against other music of its time and the tradition of autobiographical music. It is not as deep, rich, or lengthy tradition as one might expect. There is a lot of "character" biography, but not deeply personal stuff such as Rodgers singing about the tuberculosis that was killing him.

The authors later show us Elvis and how he created his persona and what traditions that flowed out of along with what Elvis actually invented. The problem is that what he created has become so much a part of what followed that it seems part of the genre now, but it was radical when Elvis created it. Or so the authors state.

We then get a wonderful chapter comparing The Beatles and The Monkees. It isn't quite as cut and dry issue of what is "authentic" versus "fake" as you might first think before you read the book. There is no question that The Beatles changed everything, but there is a lot of artifice that went into their music, too.

There is also woven into this the pop music of the Don Kirshner types and his role in The Monkees and what he did afterwards in creating The Archies and the lasting pop hit "Sugar Sugar".

Then comes a look at Neil Young and his travels through various stages of the search for Authenticity (the capital "A" is needed to describe what he was after). The Disco world and Donna Summer is next, the Punk Rock world, the faux reality of Ry Cooder's "Buena Vista Social Club" and world music. The book ties up with a look at Moby and then Nick Cave's "Mercy Seat" and the even more "real" cover by Johnny Cash.

One of the things that I find odd about the idea of "authenticity" in the making of a song is that these artists go around the world performing these pieces for decades. It is not possible that every performance of the work is equally "authentic" or even retains anything "real" about it after the thousandth time they perform it. The authors do mention Keith Jarrett who actually does make up new music on the spot for that night's performance. Now THAT is authentic. Of course, I find that a lot of his ruminations are just as boring as most of real life. Sure, there are moments of great brilliance, but art is working that up into a work and sharing that rather than all the scutwork that goes into the hard work of composing or writing or painting or sculpture.

I liked this book a lot and agree with the authors that listeners need to play more with the realities and the ideas of authenticity. We need to keep our ears and minds open to actually perceive what is going on rather than quickly accepting or dismissing musical works and musicians because of who we think they are (there is a lot of artifice in the creation of these persona's, too).

Of course, in the classical world, there is some of this, too. What is "real" classical, and what is out of bounds. And that discussion is not appropriate to this review. However, the idea that the piece is a role for the artist to perform rather than something "autobiographical" is rather well established.

One of the things beginning listeners to classical music get trapped in is hearing autobiography in the works of the masters. It is not that it is never there, but that it is rarely there as much as they suppose it is. The key is, does it move us? Is it great music? Does it speak to us about our lives and the human condition? It can also be for simple delectation. Not everything has to be dripping in angst and death. Real life has enough of that. Art should have something more, don't you think?

If you can sustain your interest through the first few chapters, the book succeeds at presenting equal arguments for and against the title "authenticity" in music. The authors avoid "name-dropping" in favor of "situation-dropping," explaining in length the pretexts that surround some of the biggest artists in music. I felt that they managed to present the paradoxical subject with a good personal distance; there were only small portions that were editorialized.

This isn't a guidebook on how to "be real," nor a Rolling Stone-esque exposé on (Your Favorite Artist), but serves more like a history of American music with an industry-related context. It explains personal and professional strategies that swayed particular musicians and bands into fakery or reality, and explores those notions carefully.

Most books about music are narrative and follow the thread of a band or music movements arc. Either that or you follow a critics taste. That is fine, however those method doesn't end up telling you much but opinions and facts. They can be entertaining but they don't enlighten. This is a rare book about music that does. It helps you see your own taste differently. It helps show you how your opinions that you have about acts or subjects weren't created in a vacuum. It changes the way you feel about the way you feel about music, which is an amazing accomplishment.
My only hope is that they make good on the idea of an exploration of authenticity in hip hop.

FAKING IT comes from two music critics who here examine a range of genres, from blues to rock, in the quest to answer issues of authenticity and cultural reality in music. Popular music's impact is wide-ranging and its ability to effect cultural and social changes has been documented - but is music's authenticity another pop image, born of marketing - or does it reflect real change and underground sentiment? FAKING IT offers a blend of history and cultural criticism and is a pick for any collection strong in popular music history and culture.

The book is very insightful, some chapters more so than others. As a participant in the folk revolution in the first half of the 1960s, the chapter on "Mississippi" John Hurt particularly resonated with me. However, I can readily see how other chapters would affect readers who came of age in other musical periods.

My only problem is definitional; the authors were too Manichean about authenticity versus the lack thereof. As I see it, while a second edition of Moby Dick may lack the authenticity of the first, it is nevertheless a desirable artifact. In other words, such other factors as age and popularity (i.e., staying power) may compensate for missing authenticity. Accordingly, while the authors would classify as "inauthentic folk music" such songs as Early Morning Rain and City of New Orleans, I would be a less restrictive; they are destined to join such equally inauthentic folk songs as Camptown Races and This Land Is Your Land in the great American folk canon.

Similarly, the authors define as "authentic" a song by Kurt Cobain and an album by Neil Young that were each recorded in one take and display all kind of [authentic] imperfections and angst. However, I question whether that makes them more authentic than a perfect opus by Pink Floyd or Miles Davis, or for that matter, Sinatra's perfect cover of I've Got You Under My Skin, which reportedly took over 30 takes to complete. And, if it is angst that confers authenticity, then that goofy pop tune, It Never Rains In California, takes the cake ("Out of work, out of bread, out of self-respect, I'm out of my head, I'm under-loved and underfed, I want to go hoooome").

Buy the book; just pretend that its title is Random Thoughts On Post-60s Music; you'll enjoy it and it will make you think.

This book addresses the motivation of music fans in a way that resonates. I recognized my logic (or lack of) in the choices I made. Here's an example.

I discovered Soft Machine on 22 December 1967 at the Christmas On Earth Continued show at Olympia in London with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burdon, Traffic, Tomorrow etc. The Softs played 'We Did It Again' for about 15 minutes. I wasn't clear on my own reaction to them at the time. A few weeks later someone played their (first) LP for me and I decided that I liked what I heard (although the album version of 'We Did It Again' is only about 4 minutes long). I became a major fan for the next few years.

Why did I become a fan? What was it that hooked me? Perhaps it was the fact that they weren't easily accessible. Many of the people around me at the Olympia show were as bemused as I by the eccentric (even for the time) performance. I realized that I could be COOL by being a fan of someone that most people couldn't get into. Of course I did like the music but COOL was definitely a factor.

This kind of motivation is, I believe, common. A friend of mine is the biggest Lou Reed fan in the world (well, at least one of...). Before that, he was heavily into Canned Heat. In both cases his trigger was that the first piece he heard by each of them was the longest/most abrasive cut: The Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray' and Canned Heat's 'Fried Hockey Boogie' (Later CH put out a live version 'Refried Boogie' at
41 minutes - ULTRA-COOL). This parallels my attraction to the Softs and 'We Did It Again'.

The trouble with presenting a COOL front is that it limits what else you can get behind. You have to be consistent and this consistency is not just for public consumption. Your tastes tell you what kind of person YOU think you are. So you hide guilty pleasures (e.g. Petula Clark). It took me years to get over this.
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