Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2564896 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 529 pages

Customer Reviews

The best book about rock qua rock
This is, amongst other things, one of the _only_ books ever written which attempts to justify rock music on its aesthetic qualities, independently of its social message or cultural significance or whatever other excuse the Greil Marcuses of the world find for writing about deeply uninteresting bands. Carducci's theses are pretty simple - that a rock band is "good" always and only if it sounds good, and that rock critics generally prefer to write about anything except the music. His credentials are impeccable - as a distributor and producer he was involved with the Californian punk scene that gave us Black Flag, the Minutemen and SST Records, and he appears to have listened to just about every hard rock band ever. (Though he omits the impressively brutal 70s all-girl combo Fanny; would've been nice to see what he thought of them.) His attacks on what passes for conventional wisdom in rock writing are hilarious and refreshing and he has nothing but contempt for what he doesn't like to listen to. (Nice to see U2 finally get a really good kicking in this respect.) And sure enough, under it all is a venture towards a fully-fledged aesthetic of rock. Put that in your bong and suck on it, R. Meltzer.

The word as law...
Carducci tells it how it is. Who rocks and who doesn't and why. Draws the line between rock and pop, then builds an impenetrable wall on it, never letting the two sides intermingle. A must for every music nerd out there.