Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock'N'Roll [Paperback]

Joe Harrington (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2002

In the tradition of Nick Tosches, Tom Wolfe and Lester Bangs comes an epic and riveting history of rock and roll that reads like a novel. Sonic Cool presents the saga of rock and roll as the closest thing we have to genuine "myth" in the modern world, and it is the first book about rock to be written in the spirit of rock. Immense, fierce, opinionated and hilarious, Joe Harrington masterfully presents rock as a movement of near-religious proportions, against a backdrop of social factors and important events such as the invention of the guitar, the jukebox, LSD, the 12-inch phonograph record, the '70s recession, the Reagan Revolution, and the Internet. This is the history of rock as it's never been told, as the legend of a massive cultural movement, one that had meaning, but ultimately failed because it sold its soul. Radically egalitarian in its assessments - towering figures such as Lennon, Dylan and Cobain stand along side lesser-known but equally influential artists like the MC5, the Misfits and Joy Division - Sonic Cool is gripping reading for anyone who ever believed in the music. Includes a 16-page black-and-white photo insert. Joe S. Harrington began writing at the age of 10, an act that provoked a rejection slip from Mad magazine. He has written about music for the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, New York Press, Seattle Stranger, Lowell Sun, Wired, Reflex, Raygun, High Times, Seconds, Rollerderby and numerous fanzines. He is currently employed as an on-line jazz critic at Amazon, and lives in Portland, Maine. Softcover.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Harrington, music columnist for the Casco Bay Weekly in Portland, ME, sets out to document the entire history of rock'n'roll in the tradition of critics like Lester Bangs and Nick Tosches. While the author's quirky and manic style always engages (and often outrages) the reader, his fixation on rock stars' drug taking and bed jumping often gets in the way of the music itself. Some questionable scholarship also mars the book (e.g., Michael Nesmith was not the only member of the Monkees to play his own instrument; Peter Tork was a multi-instrumentalist). Names of (deservedly) obscure rock and pop bands fly like broken beer bottles in a rowdy roadhouse-perhaps a case of "let's see how much trivia I can pack in." Despite these flaws, Harrington makes some sense out of rock, especially in his analysis of societal response to it and deft deconstruction of famous critics, including Bangs, Tosches, Jon Landau, and Robert Christgau. Biting, opinionated, and take-no-prisoners in approach, this is not a history for the uninitiated. Readers will either love it or hate it. Recommended for larger public libraries as a complement to Charlie Gillett's classic The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock'n'Roll and James Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin.
James E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OH
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Budding rock chronicler Harrington says Greil Marcus', Peter Guralnick's, and Nick Tosches' great books about rock "seldom explained its essential meaning" and aren't "adequate histor[ies]." Hence his book. Harrington is from the let's-make-a-list school of inquiry (remember the original [1970] cover of Charlie Gillett's Sound of the City?). His lists can be lengthy or blithely abbreviated, but they are profuse. Still, like the predecessors he cites, he is given to overtelling the big picture (e.g., he tries--via lists, of course--to make the book an all-inclusive pop history starting in the early twentieth century). Ultimately Harrington aims to produce "an epic that [ties] in all the cultural manifestations that Rock has come to represent, along with its musical legacy." That he ultimately fails is perhaps a consequence of the nature of a subject that is still lurching drunkenly along. Can't blame him for not trying, or for writing an amusing introduction to pop-music history that is positively no more wrongheaded than the scholarly, semiotic approach. A solid choice for pop-music collections. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 596 pages
• Publisher: Hal Leonard; 1 edition (December 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0634028618
• ISBN-13: 978-0634028618
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,886,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Errors galore, but the basic premise holds water, March 17, 2003

By 

Dylan J. Johnson "Professional Silly Person" (Marlton, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock'N'Roll (Paperback)

The basic premise of this book (that rock n roll has died several times and that the next great wave of music arises from the ashes from a totally unexpected direction) is solid and well explained. The problems with the book are two-fold. 1. This guy needed an editor and fact-checker in the worst way. DO NOT use any "facts" from this book as facts until you check them against another source. 2. He gets too bogged down in being comprehensive, and spends too little time on his interesting and well put forward premise. A must read for the music fanatic, but not a good place for a beginner to start. One of the vital points of the book is that most critics take it for granted that certain bands were important and great, when they haven't actually LISTENED to them. They take the word of the critics that they've read. Mr. Harrington, does not repeat the mistake, and his "discoveries" of obscure and forgotten musicians and bands are one of the joys of this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pop history in a believable context, January 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock'N'Roll (Paperback)

Joe Harrington creates a plausible context in which to place developments in 20th century popular music, with the emphasis on post WWII music. I don't care for other rock music writing out there - disconected prose that squeezes dubious meaning from music and lyrics in some overblown, comparative lit PhD wanabe (or drop out) fashion. Mr. Harrington, while clearly passionate about his subject, keeps his feet firmly planted on the ground, always aware of the reader's need for a connection to reasonable thesis. Lou Reed once made some off-hand quip about Robert Chistgau ("dean" of rock crits at the Village Voice) and how pointless his studying of rock n' roll is. However, my hunch is Lou wouldn't be saying that about Joe Harrington. Buy the book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The book rocks, but..., September 3, 2003

By 

theenemy (toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock'N'Roll (Paperback)

I just finished Sonic Cool and as a music history junkie it was probably the most important book I've ever read. For years I have been searching for a comprehensive history of rock, and this fit the bill nicely. Funny how it seems to be the only one of its kind. You think other writers would have tackled the subject before.

So yes, the book is engaging and will increase your knowledge of music, let alone rock music, immensely. Anyone who follows music should read it. But before I say anything else, I just have to get a few negative points off my chest:

1) As a journalism student, I was shocked by all the typos. We're not talking three or four, but one every few pages. I'm confused - I thought there were people called copy editors who checked this stuff before a book goes to print? Sure, you could say it's not a big deal, but all I know is, if I made these kind of errors (he mispells people's NAMES, for crying out loud) I'd fail my assignment. I would also be embarassed to have my name on a piece that makes me look so careless. Apparently Joe employs false bits of information as well - shameless. How do I know what else is untrue in this book?

2) Too much of the time I think he is being obscure just for the sake of being obscure. I consider myself pretty well versed in music, and a very large portion of the bands mentioned meant nothing to me. This kind of bored me at points because I had no frame of reference for the bands he was droning on about. You really have to motivate yourself to keep reading. He seems to think the band AntiSeen is the most significant band in the world, up there with Elvis and Nirvana, and I've never heard of them.

3) His structure got on my nerves. You would think he was done talking about a particular style, such as Folk or Punk, and then he would launch into it all over again. I personally would have liked to have heard more about Electronic Music, which I think also had an effect on the death of rock (thus contributing to his premise). He blathered on about Punk way longer than I was interested. Too repetitive, maybe he should have stuck to a more chronological style.

4) A more minor point: I did like how he wrote in a conversational tone, but some of his phrases were just stupid and juvenile i.e. "smelled the farts", "sniffed the butts". Considering most of the writing was pretty sophisticated, stuff like this broke the tone.

Ahhhh....it felt good to get that all out. Of course, I'm sure Joe would just tell me to "write my own damn book", anyway.