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Rock Music: Criticisms
"Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution": Rock Music and Its Criticisms
Greil Marcus and the Handsome Family, September 2007, Daniel Coston Collection (#20399), Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
While the nature of rock music values people and perspectives from all backgrounds, its practice, reception, and study have not always been as accepting. This page shows collections of general essays from leading rock critics. The following pages address social criticisms largely ignored by the institution of rock music and provide readings that attempt to fill in these gaps.
Books
Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert island by
In 1978, Greil Marcus asked twenty other writers on rock - including Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, Ellen Willis, Simon Frith, and Robert Christgau - a question: what one rock and roll album would you take to a desert island? The resulting essays were collected in Stranded, twenty passionate declarations that, appropriately, affirmed the solitary and obsessive activity that rock listening had become. Here are salutes, elegies, thank-you notes, and love letters to records such as The Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet, The Ramones' Rocket to Russia, Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Something Else by the Kinks, and out-of-print classics by the Ronettes, Little Willie John, and Huey "Piano" Smith; the whole is supplemented with Marcus's own invaluably annotated fifty-page discography, a "Treasure Island" of rock and roll. Stranded remains a classic of rock and roll literature, and perhaps the best possible answer to the question: what one rock and roll book would you take to a desert island?
Call Number: ML3534 .S8ISBN: 0394508289Publication Date: 1979-12-01
Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism , 1967-2017 by
Is It Still Good to Ya? sums up the career of longtime Village Voice stalwart Robert Christgau, who for half a century has been America's most widely respected rock critic, honoring a music he argues is only more enduring because it's sometimes simple or silly. While compiling historical overviews going back to Dionysus and the gramophone along with artist analyses that range from Louis Armstrong to M.I.A., this definitive collection also explores pop's African roots, response to 9/11, and evolution from the teen music of the '50s to an art form compelled to confront mortality as its heroes pass on. A final section combines searching obituaries of David Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen with awed farewells to Bob Marley and Ornette Coleman.
Call Number: ML3534 .C493 2018ISBN: 9781478000082Publication Date: 2018-11-09
Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music by
In 1968, the New Yorker hired Ellen Willis as its first popular music critic. Her column, Rock, Etc., ran for seven years and established Willis as a leader in cultural commentary and a pioneer in the nascent and otherwise male-dominated field of rock criticism. As a writer for a magazine with a circulation of nearly half a million, Willis was also the country's most widely read rock critic. With a voice at once sharp, thoughtful, and ecstatic, she covered a wide range of artists--Bob Dylan, The Who, Van Morrison, Elvis Presley, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joni Mitchell, the Velvet Underground, Sam and Dave, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Wonder--assessing their albums and performances not only on their originality, musicianship, and cultural impact but also in terms of how they made her feel. Because Willis stopped writing about music in the early 1980s--when, she felt, rock 'n' roll had lost its political edge--her significant contribution to the history and reception of rock music has been overshadowed by contemporary music critics like Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, and Dave Marsh. Out of the Vinyl Deeps collects for the first time Willis's Rock, Etc. columns and her other writings about popular music from this period (including liner notes for works by Lou Reed and Janis Joplin) and reasserts her rightful place in rock music criticism. More than simply setting the record straight, Out of the Vinyl Deeps reintroduces Willis's singular approach and style--her use of music to comment on broader social and political issues, critical acuity, vivid prose, against-the-grain opinions, and distinctly female (and feminist) perspective--to a new generation of readers. Featuring essays by the New Yorker's current popular music critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, and cultural critics Daphne Carr and Evie Nagy, this volume also provides a lively and still relevant account of rock music during, arguably, its most innovative period.
Call Number: ML3534 .W612 2011ISBN: 9780816672820Publication Date: 2011-05-01
On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word by
The first collection of classic essays in the serious study of popular music is full of the famous, hard-to-find, off-beat, and influential articles that have shaped rock cultural studies
Call Number: ML3470 .O5 1990ISBN: 0394564758Publication Date: 1990-01-03
Fortunate Son: Criticism and Journalism by America's Best-Known Rock Writer by
This is a collection of pieces written over a 15-year period by this well-known rock critic.
Call Number: ML3534 .M38 1985ISBN: 0394721195Publication Date: 1985-05-12
There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll by
Lisa Robinson has interviewed everyone from John Lennon to Bono to Patti Smith, Eminem to Lady Gaga to Jay-Z and Kanye West. She's talked nail polish with a 12-year-old Michael Jackson, hosted The Clash at Studio 54, and introduced Lou Reed to David Bowie over filet mignon in a Manhattan restaurant. She helped Elvis Costello and The Clash get their record deals and was there for the punk scene at CBGBs. She was on a private plane with the Rolling Stones during a storm and with Led Zepplin when their manager pulled out a gun. The story of rock and roll from the last 40 years.
Call Number: PN4874.R63 R63 2014ISBN: 9781594487149Publication Date: 2014-04-22
Terminated for Reasons of Taste: Other Ways to Hear Essential and Inessential Music by
In Terminated for Reasons of Taste, veteran rock critic Chuck Eddy writes that "rock'n'roll history is written by the winners. Which stinks, because the losers have always played a big role in keeping rock interesting." Rock's losers share top billing with its winners in this new collection of Eddy's writing. In pieces culled from outlets as varied as the Village Voice, Creem magazine, the streaming site Rhapsody, music message boards, and his high school newspaper, Eddy covers everything from the Beastie Boys to 1920s country music, Taylor Swift to German new wave, Bruce Springsteen to occult metal. With an encyclopedic knowledge, unabashed irreverence, and a captivating style, Eddy rips up popular music histories and stitches them back together using his appreciation of the lost, ignored, and maligned. In so doing, he shows how pop music is bigger, and more multidimensional and compelling than most people can imagine.
Call Number: ML3534 .E293 2016ISBN: 9780822361893Publication Date: 2016-09-02
Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal about the Meaning of Life by
Steven Hyden explores nineteen music rivalries and what they say about life in this "highly entertaining" book (Rolling Stone) perfect for every passionate music fan. Beatles vs. Stones. Biggie vs. Tupac. Kanye vs. Taylor. Who do you choose? And what does that say about you? Actually -- what do these endlessly argued-about pop music rivalries say about us? Music opinions bring out passionate debate in people, and Steven Hyden knows that firsthand. Each chapter in Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me focuses on a pop music rivalry, from the classic to the very recent, and draws connections to the larger forces surrounding the pairing. Through Jimi Hendrix vs. Eric Clapton, Hyden explores burning out and fading away, while his take on Miley vs. Sinead gives readers a glimpse into the perennial battle between old and young. Funny and accessible, Hyden's writing combines cultural criticism, personal anecdotes, and music history -- and just may prompt you to give your least favorite band another chance.
Call Number: ML3470 .H93 2016ISBN: 9780316259156Publication Date: 2016-05-17
Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader by
Before his untimely death in 1982, Lester Bangs was inarguably the most influential critic of rock and roll. Writing in hyper-intelligent Benzedrine prose that calls to mind Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, he eschewed all conventional thinking as he discussed everything from Black Sabbath being the first truly Catholic band to Anne Murray’s smoldering sexuality. In Mainlines, Blood Feasts, Bad Taste fellow rock critic John Morthland has compiled a companion volume to Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, the first, now classic collection of Bangs’s work. Here are excerpts from an autobiographical piece Bangs wrote as a teenager, travel essays, and, of course, the music pieces, essays, and criticism covering everything from titans like Miles Davis, Lou Reed, and the Rolling Stones to esoteric musicians like Brian Eno and Captain Beefheart. Singularly entertaining, this book is an absolute must for anyone interested in the history of rock.
Call Number: ML3534 .B314 2003ISBN: 0375713670Publication Date: 2003-08-12
Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson by
The definitive collection of the king of gonzo journalism's finest work for ROLLING STONE "Buy the ticket, take the ride," was a favorite slogan of Hunter S. Thompson, and it pretty much defined both his work and his life. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone showcases the roller-coaster of a career at the magazine that was his literary home. Jann S. Wenner, the outlaw journalist's friend and editor for nearly thirty-five years, has assembled articles that begin with Thompson's infamous run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Party ticket in 1970 and end with his final piece on the Bush-Kerry showdown of 2004. In between is Thompson's remarkable coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign--a miracle of journalism under pressure--and plenty of attention paid to Richard Nixon, his bête noire; encounters with Muhammad Ali, Bill Clinton, and the Super Bowl; and a lengthy excerpt from his acknowledged masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Woven throughout is selected correspondence between Wenner and Thompson, most of it never before published. It traces the evolution of a personal and professional relationship that helped redefine modern American journalism, and also presents Thompson through a new prism as he pursued his lifelong obsession: The life and death of the American Dream.
Call Number: PN4874.T444 F43 2011ISBN: 9781439165959Publication Date: 2011-10-25
Articles
Serials and Magazines:
Online Resources:
- Rock's BackpagesAn archive of music journalism and popular music writing of the last 60 years. Includes 38,000 articles on all subcategories of popular music.
- Rolling Stone ArchiveThe backfile of Rolling Stone covers the magazine from its launch in 1967 to the present. It soon became a leading vehicle for rock and popular music journalism, shaping and chronicling new trends and movements. From the 1980s, coverage expanded to encompass more entertainment topics, such as film and television, making it a leading resource for contemporary reporting and reviews pertaining to wider popular culture.
Suggested Subject Headings
"Rock music -- History and criticism"
"Rock music -- Political aspects"
"Rock music -- Social aspects"
"Rock music fans -- Attitudes"