Customer Reviews

Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977

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2 star:		(1)
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This book was a great read. I recommend it for folks, like me, who do not know much about early rock 'n' roll or its evolution. I really had a sense of awe and discovery at reading about 1940s and 1950s rock. The author effectively captures the excitement that the new music generated and the cultural revolution it spawned. The chapters on the early years, 1947 and Jump Blues, the 1950s and Elvis, and so on, were excellent and made me want to go out and buy some of these records. Believe me, no book has ever made me want to buy an Elvis recording, but this one has. Most of the book is taken up with the 1940s-60s, and are the best parts. I lost some interest at the point where I was familiar with the music personally, having started collecting records in 1972, and could relate to the 1970s music and artists myself.

Jim Miller brings his deep knowledge of rock across in this engrossing cultural history by exploring essential moments in the genre's rise--from Dylan "going electric" to American Graffiti, from Elvis discovering his body to "Anarchy in the U.K."--in entirely fresh and fetching vignettes that convince even hard-core fans that they've hardly skimmed the surface of what made rock the cultural watershed it was and the commercialized washout it was to became. If you're weary of the slavish celebrity pieces or muckraking music-mag stories that define most rock "criticism," give the clear-eyed accounts and ardent intelligence of Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin a try-‹it's a book that might strike you with the novelty and power of your first 45.

Frank Zappa is supposed to have once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture--it doesn't make sense. He might have revised his opinion had he been able read Miller's latest work. Even if you have been weaned on music magazines and think you know everything there is to know about America's preeminent cultural contribution (just an opinion), you're going to get an education. But that's not the real reason to pick up this book. The bottom line is, it's just a good read--entertaining, challenging, provoking.

Some rock & roll books have an ear for the telling anecdote. Some have an eye for factual accuracy. Some have a voice to give their subject a larger context. This book has all three.

I thought I knew this stuff, but Jim Miller makes the story sound fresh and new again. If you want to discover how rock & roll became what it is, read this book.

This is an excellent book. Miller takes us to the behind the rock scenes where the real decisionmakers managed and provided our 'authentic' experience. Much of what we want from rock is pretty simple, just rhythm to dance to and some dreams to escape into. But rock's managers hyped it into so much 'more' than that. It's good and refreshing to read something that brings down the overblown edifice that rock is in many minds.

A key scene in the book is when a be-feathered 'hippie' Jimi Hendrix runs into a record exec who'd known him a couple years earlier as a 'normal' rhythm-n-blues guy. Jimi sheepishly explains, "It's for the show."

Miller probably should've given punk some recognition that it was intended as a rejection of the indulgent, decorated, overly pretentious rock of the early 70s and late 60s. Yeah, maybe a short chapter on the Ramones woulda been nice. But I can see the point that they never had a big impact, never had the numbers.

And as for criticism of Miller for stopping at the end of the 70s: I think that is perfect, since the rock 'culture' had really ended, split forever into multiple subcultures. In fact, the split had occurred in the early 70s, but Miller rightly marches on for several of the 'great hopes', the next Beatles, who never panned out.

...

This whole book is obviously one man's perspective and I didn't agree with all of it, but I respect Miller's choice of emphases and do understand his feeling that rock "died" a long time ago. His is a thesis that is at least internally consistent and does seem to hold together, although admittedly he is free to cherry pick the rock "historical moments" that make it thesis work.

Any reader is going to find points of disagreement here. I always heard that "Rocket 88" was the first real rock song and I had never even heard of Wynonie Harris. I would have thought that the British blues-rock scene would have merited a little more attention. I would have teased the Deadhead readers about the bloated excess of their idols after about 1973.

Most of all I would have given a lot more attention to the downtown New York scene of the mid to late 70s that included the New York Dolls, Neon Boys/Television, the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, Talking Heads and so many other bands and personalities. These people invented punk music and also revitalized rock music. There was an enormous underground music scene throughout the late 70s, through the 80s and into the early 90s wherein music was issued by independent labels, played on college radio stations and listened to in small clubs all around the United States. Different college towns successively took centerstage and one or two of their local bands went richocheting onto the national scene, only to be gobbled up by the corporate music industry (R.E.M. is exhibit A) or to implode as their music-first principles collided with corporate unit-moving "principles" (too many examples to mention).

Where Miller sees one long arcing rise and then an inexorable decline, I see shorter-term cycles. The music industry that we live with right now seems very much like the one that existed between Elvis's induction into the Army and the arrival of the Beatles in the US. Record-making companies hold the reins and one-hit wonders of minimal musical talent make insubstantial music that challenges nothing except perhaps good taste. Miller rightly laments the fragmentation of the once-united youth audience, but it possible that the internet may in the near future allow young people to make an end-run around the corporate shibboleth and "get together one more time".

'Flowers In The Dustbin' (published as 'Almost Grown' in the UK) is a significant work. While James Miller seems caught somewhere between the erstwhile rock journalist and the detached academic, it's mostly a very good read.

Miller is selective in his subject matter, but provides rich detail in that context, neatly exploring the emergence and evolution of the music and its recurring themes. He gives almost equal weight to the artists and the star makers (managers, promoters, producers and disc jockeys), always with due reference to the wider culture of the times.

(Some of the criticisms in the Amazon customer reviews are facile, to say the least. Miller did not set out to author an encyclopaedia, nor a comprehensive history of the music. Thus, no chapter on Brian Wilson or Stevie Wonder or Van Morrison or Joni Mitchell - pick your own personal hero.)

Miller makes plausible arguments about rock as a 'finished cultural form' and rightly suggests, to the chagrin of some readers, that the excitement and cultural dominance of rock in the 50s and 60s will not be experienced again. (Part of the excitement, of course, was simply novelty, which - by definition - can't be repeated.)

What's missing, sadly, is a sense of continuing affection for the music. Miller is jaded and largely disinterested in the music that once made his living. Nor does he seem to believe that, although musical boundaries have blurred, great 'rock and roll' music is still being made. Rock - in its myriad variations - is in great shape and the standard of musicianship has never been better. Jim should get out more.

Miller is a great writer, and he conveys an authority about the history of early rock'n'roll that is impressive, but his authority falls off a cliff when he goes past 1975. He has no time for anything recorded after the death of Presley, which means that he essentially snubs everything in the last generation (or more) of popular music.

Don't be fooled by the subtitle. Even if the book is supposedly about the "rise" of rock music, it is even more about the author's opinion that the music died off as soon as it "peaked." While I can understand the point of view, especially as I get on in years and cringe at most of what I hear on the radio, to imply that rock music died in 1977 is the height of absurdity, not to mention a willful ignorance of history.

If you can imagine a history of rock and roll that stops before the mp3 and doesn't mention any independent record labels after Motown written by the former 'music critic for Newsweek'(!) and possessor of a phD in the 'history of ideas' (!!) for a popular, rather then academic audience, then you already know what Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll 1947-1977, a pretentious, fame and sales centered recollection of the key points in the history of the Rock Industrial complex written by a child of the sixties for children of the sixties.

To be totally fair to the author, Flowers in the Dustbin has it's moments, particularly before the Beatles and Hippies show up in the mid 1960s. Flowers certainly solidified my opinion that nothing particularly interesting happened in rock and roll between the Beatles and punk rock/no wave. Miller limits his discussion of punk and post-punk to the Sex Pistols and a sentence about Elvis Costello, but since the book only covers till 1977 he can be forgiven.

Considering this book was published in 1999, the year Napster went online, it's accurate to observe that Flowers in the Dustbin was obsolete before it hit the shelves- through no fault of the Author. How could he anticipate what was to come? Anyway, it's no wonder that this book can be bought for cheap.

This book begins with alternating chapters dealing with the creative and business side of Rock in alternating chapters. While interesting, this dry relating of information is preferable to the idea that very little music of note was created after the Sex Pistols, an idea that seems to grow as the book progresses. Elvis and The Beatles get their due but others whose impact was limited to style are favored over true originals. While Little Richard and Jim Morrisson definitely made an impact, were they true musical pioneers or was this a case of style over substance? The author is making a case for this concept and the idea of "selling out" is bandied about. Were classical composers selling out when they wrote for a fee or circumstance? I wasn't convinced.