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Notes 57.2 (2000) 420-422



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Book Review

Reading Rock and Roll:
Authenticity, Appropriation, Aesthetics


Reading Rock and Roll: Authenticity, Appropriation, Aesthetics. Edited by Kevin J. H. Dettmar and William Richey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. [x, 347 p. ISBN 0-231-11398-6 (cloth); 0-231-11399-4 (pbk.). $49.50 (cloth); $18.50 (pbk.).]

The cultural status and artistic value of rock music have been the subject of much controversy throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Cultural conservatives have considered rock music to be good entertainment at best, and therefore the exact opposite of "serious" or "art" music. Rock-music practitioners and other believers in the artistic qualities of this cultural form have attempted, on their part, to gain recognition and appreciation for it as a legitimate contemporary art form. Persistent attempts at assessing the value of rock music have therefore been an integral part of its history.

The assessment of rock music's cultural status--the "production of its artistic value," as I have called it elsewhere ("Producing Artistic Value: The Case of Rock Music," Sociological Quarterly 35 [1994]: 85-102)--has been practiced along two paths: sociological analysis and critical journalism. The former has demonstrated the work and function of rock music as a major cultural tool in the construction of collective identities, thereby providing the evidence for rock music's "authenticity" (Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock 'n' Roll [New York: Pantheon, 1981]; Lawrence Grossberg, We [End Page 420] Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture [New York: Routledge, 1992]; Peter Wicke, Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics, and Sociology [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990]). Critical journalism has produced interpretations and evaluations that have established the "classics" and "masterpieces" of rock-as-art: albums and songs by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, and others (Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music [New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976]; Robert Christgau, Any Old Way You Choose It: Rock and Other Pop Music, 1967-1973 [Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973]).

One thing has been missing, however, in this scheme of things: an academic assessment of rock music's value by scholars in the fields of music and literary studies. This gap is being filled by a growing number of books published in recent years that analyze specific works and styles of rock (Robert Walser, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music [Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1993]; Theodore Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Noise [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996]; Edward Macan, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997]).

Reading Rock and Roll is a welcome addition to this body of work. Most of the writers in this volume are academics in English departments, and they offer readings of a wide range of musicians and phenomena associated with rock culture. The analyses address not only the lyrics of songs or the music, but also the whole "star text" of the musicians and phenomena discussed. This includes visual aspects of performance, liner notes and graphic designs of record sleeves, interviews, audience behavior, and so on. In other words, the cultural units--the "art works" of rock and roll that are read in the chapters of this book--are not just the songs, but also the complex cultural constructs surrounding them.

The book contains ten chapters that discuss the following musicians or phenomena: Madonna and Courtney Love, girl-group culture, skinheads, George Clinton, Jonathan Richman, rave culture, riot grrrls, U2 (two chapters), Elvis Costello, and seventies music. They are preceded by three chapters of a theoretical nature, in which the concept of authenticity in popular music and rock is unraveled from various angles.

The complexity of the arguments in each chapter does not allow for detailed descriptions. I will therefore focus briefly on chapter 6, "Dr. Funkenstein's Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication: George Clinton Signifies" by Mark Willhardt and Joel Stein, as an exemplary case for the type of analysis...

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