Amazon.com Review
It appears that
Flowers in the Dustbin author James Miller has just about had his fill of rock & roll. After chronicling a succession of triumphs in the development of the genre and its allied ancestors and offspring, here the veteran music scribe and editor of the superb first edition of
The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll surveys an environment tainted by "the Muzak of the Millennium" and "artifacts of stunning ugliness" (exemplified by
Marilyn Manson and
Wu-Tang Clan). Miller ponders, "What if rock and roll, as it had evolved from
Presley to
U2, had destroyed the very musical sources of its own vitality?" The erudite yet eminently readable author doesn't answer his query in these pages, but he does prompt a longing for a time when pop culture moved too fast and impulsively to be processed and packaged.
Miller makes it his mission to tell the story of the "explosive growth" of rock & roll by recounting creative and commercial breakthroughs, dating from Wynonie Harris's 1947 recording of the jump-blues hit "Good Rockin' Tonight" through the last-gasp mutiny of the Sex Pistols and the death of Elvis Presley in 1977. In between, the development of top-40 radio begets the payola scandal of the '50s, Norman Mailer's "white Negro" becomes the model in a line of ever-more-self-conscious mavericks, and the 1960s trinity of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan pile remarkable musical and lyrical innovations atop one another like gifted children eager for attention. Once rock had reached its zenith, from the author's perspective, it didn't so much crumble as settle into regurgitated mush. That Miller is able to chronicle these dour developments in such an involving manner is testimony to his talent as a writer and historian, and to the thrill of rock & roll when it's right. --Steven Stolder
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Wynonie Harris's 1948 hit, "Good Rockin' Tonight," popularized the term "rock" but was confined to Billboard's "race" charts and never crossed over to the larger white audience (though a contemporary African-American performer, Louis Jordan, sold millions of singles). The reason, according to Miller (a 1994 NBCC finalist for The Passion of Michel Foucault), is that "rockin'" wasn't merely teenage slang for "having a good time"; it meant "having sex." For Miller, rock and roll's development is best understood as a succession of such contradictions, not as a smooth and continuous progression. Crisply written and carefully contextualized, Miller's story takes into account both the technological and social forces that helped cement rock's position in Western popular culture. In Miller's view, Leo Fender's invention of the solid-body electric guitar and the adolescent restlessness of the baby boom generation played equally important roles. While many of the pivotal moments Miller cites are perhaps too obviousAElvis Presley's first visit to Sam Philips's Sun recording studios, Brian Epstein's discovery of the Beatles at the Cavern, Bob Dylan's electric set at NewportAthere are plenty of less celebrated happenings and characters to keep even the most jaded rock critic turning pages. (The white R&B songwriting team of Leiber and StollerAwho wrote "Kansas City"Aloom almost as large here as Lennon and McCartney.) Particularly refreshing is Miller's attention to the place of such movies as Richard Brooks's Blackboard Jungle and Perry Henzell's The Harder They Come in the development of rock. The portentous subtitle of the book points to rock's "fall"; in Miller's view, this is part and parcel of its cultural acceptability, which has robbed the music of its original revolutionary energy. For him, the genre's bestselling album, Michael Jackson's Thriller, was possible only after the original thrill of rock and roll was gone. Photos. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
