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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not too hip after all,
By Arise Therefore (Orange, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: From Metal to Mozart: The Rock-and-Roll Guide to Classical Music (Paperback)
It's obvious to me that Craig Heller enjoyed putting this book together. His passion for classical music has a quality of fun and delight that can disarm someone expecting to run up against snobbery in their forays into classical music consumption. He obviously is familiar enough with the genre to suggest how someone might go about familiarizing themselves with it. He offers carefully thought out suggestions for acquiring classical music CDs and attending concerts. Much of the book is devoted to a year-long journey of spending each week of the year with recordings of specific pieces (whole works only, of course). And if you don't think you're up to that kind of effort, he offers two less involved, more organic `plans'. He offers an approach to the world of classical music that is both encouraging and disarming. His writing is conversational and at best, an easy pleasure to read.
Where this book fails, and often embarrassingly so, is when he tries to pair classical music with rock and roll. (Which is the whole premise of the book, right?) On the face of it, I'm not sure it could be (or should be) done by anyone. But one thing I am real sure of is Craig Heller ain't the guy to try. His frame of reference for rock and roll only serves to support the notion that classical is for squares. He sites bands such as The Electric Light Orchestra, The Doobie Brothers, Lionel Ritchie, Smoky Robinson, Simply Red, Meatloaf, and Suzie Vega. Not exactly what I think of when I think of `metal'. To his credit, Mr. Heller also references The Clash, Talking Heads, Sex Pistols and Alice Cooper. Pretty hip, but still not metal. The fact that this book was published in 1994 is no excuse. These bands were outdated then. If he had named it differently, I'd have a harder time with this criticism. Might I suggest "From The Beach Boys to Berlioz: the Baby Boomer's Guide to Classical Music and Your Favorite Oldies"? But you know, I'm not sure rock n' roll is the door through which baby boomers are going to discover classical. Bottom line, It's a good two-dollar book. At the time I write this review, there are several copies available for less than fifty cents. Buy a copy and keep it in your bathroom or in the back seat of your car and read it whenever you have three minutes to muse on something.
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