If Frank Kogan had assembled his writing a decade ago, by samizdat or whatever, it would be a cornerstone by now, read by every current and former teenage malcontent.

Doesn't this book at least partly fall into the 'academy is doomed/betrayed' genre (albeit way off on its own wing) vis-à-vis 'closing of the american mind'/'tenured radicals'? Certainly one of the questions it persistently seems to be asking is: 'what is college/knowledge for?' Obviously I think Frank Kogan's answer is a bit different from Allan Bloom's. Isn't it also about restoring the grand ambitions and claims for self of ‘60s rock-crit culture/counterculture: refusing to settle for a specialist niche, whether ivory-tower cultstud thinkage or leisure-industry enablage? (I am somewhat projecting my own dreams and hungers onto it for sure.)

Kogan is at his intellectual best when annoying academics like me. I would recommend this book to students and expect any self-defined 'popular music scholar' to have read it.

If there's a book which should make you want to write about (and think about) how you came to music and what you tried to use it for, this is it.

Kogan―himself part of a distinguishable lineage of committed contrarians which includes Richard Meltzer, Lester Bangs, and Chuck Eddy―laid the intellectual foundations for the ‘Blogging’ era with his interactive fanzine. . . . This first collection of his work promises (and delivers).

Kogan is great, for instance, at explaining the dynamics of punk clubs: why the performers have to insult their audiences or else they're ‘contaminated’ by their acceptance. Unlike most music critics, Kogan's omnivorous, willing to consider music that makes him ‘feel things that I don't want to feel, so I have to rethink who I am, where I place myself.’

Frank Kogan dares you not to listen to music in the context of your life. He knows that dare is impossible, and that in itself puts him head and shoulders above pretty much every other rock critic of the past couple decades. As do his tastes, which are impeccable, even though his format is the farthest thing from a consumer guide. As does the fact that he has more ideas worth stealing than anybody else writing about music; in fact, I kind of hate that this book is coming out, because now everyone will know where I stole all of mine. The book is a mess, full of trap doors, just like the music Frank likes best. He knows none of it is as simple as people pretend.

To label Kogan a music journalist understates the philosophical and exploratory qualities of his verbiage. . . . He draws out pre-conceived notions and puts them under the microscope. It's in this process that Kogan truly shines as not just a critic of music, but of the culture at large. . . . The voice in his head spills out onto the printed page with both style and substance. Witnessing his words in action as they unfold is at once baffling and alluring . . . Any random page throughout the book is an easy entry point. . . . Grasping the linear motion of his writing is not essential to the Kogan experience, but tuning into the drawn-out processes his thoughts follow is the key to unlocking a real punk's true colors.