Customer Reviews

Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis

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The previous reviewer was clearly expecting something that would be a bit more like music journalism. In reality, this is a true scholarly work, designed for mostly graduate students and professionals in the musicological fields. The title clearly implies a more academic nature because of the "musical analysis" tag. Some of these articles are more geared towards recording practices, some are more music theory, some ethnomusicological, and others in the greater scheme of music history. The previous reviewer commented "this ain't Mahler, y'know," but the point is that these essays are designed for people who do want to use the traditional studies used for the classics of music to apply to current rock too.

This is a great resource for anyone trying to get a sense of how one can write about rock music. It is also an excellent sourcebook with a typically accurate and extensive bibliography for rock scholarship. The field of rock and pop studies in music academia is growing, from Beatles to Beach Boys to Tori Amos to Radiohead. This is a great survey study on a number of broad aspects of music scholarship.

This is a great book for anyone who has always suspected that there is more to rock music than just 3 chords, tough-guy posturing, and stories of wild lifestyles. As a working musician for over 20 years, I've seen first-hand how much skill goes into making even the simplest-sounding records. I especially liked the chapters on Yes and the Beach Boys. Let's have more of this kind of writing!!

Unfortunately, many so-called "rock journalists" are nothing more than sociology majors who let their devotion to an artists or group cloud their vision of unbiased criticism. In this case, we get a bit of that from the contributing writers as well as a bias toward progressive "rock," which is in most cases nothing more than classical music composer wannabees who don't want to miss out on the fabled rock lifestyle. Perhaps "Understanding Irrevalent Prog Rock" would have been a better title. And why would anyone analyze a four-minute song in 20 pages? Does any true rock song need more than a couple of paragraphs? This ain't Mahler, y'know!