![]() ![]() Essentially, rock is four angry kids on a stage, peering through their stringy hair and singing songs about rebellion. It’s the ‘60s spirit of the Stones and the Beatles-the drugs, the hair, the politics-that constitute the style. But rock as a performance form is a kind of physical assault of which old people are incapable.įor Strausbaugh, the defining event in the history of rock ‘n’ roll is the British invasion. Rock is different from blues and jazz, and if dignified old black people, or even dignified old white people, want to sit on stools and jam the traditional musics of America, what the heck. But rock is about making noise, not money. Pop is about selling records, and as long as Cher wants to keep dressing in ridiculous costumes and regenerating her voice and body through the wonders of technology, more power to her. The account runs like this: Rock is different than pop. And even though the book feels a little patched together (parts of it first appeared as articles in the NYPress, the weekly paper that Strausbaugh edits and for which-despite the deep disagreements about his book I am about to air-I write a column on country music), they also hold together as a coherent account of the nature and history of rock music. That, along with a lot of good, detailed, myth-puncturing reporting, is what makes “Rock Til You Drop” extremely readable and informative. Agree or disagree with such assessments (and I think the man has a point), you’ll admit that this is sweet, nasty writing, a kind of beat poetry of malediction. Patti Smith was Jim Carroll with breasts, Lydia Lunch with anorexia, the Madonna of punk rock: everything bad and pretentious about the union of punk and poetry in one self-conscious package.” Try this on for size: “Rolling Stone put Crosby on its cover again that year, not for any musical achievement but for his Frankenstein love-child arrangement with Melissa Etheridge, an affirmative-action rock mediocrity better known for her lesbianism and her fawning friendships with the more powerful rock industry figures than for any musical talent.” Or this: “Patti Smith was one of the least talented posers in rock. He has evidently been honing his skewer for quite some time, and it is a wicked joy to watch him puncture his victims. Strausbaugh strolls up to many of the biggest and most bloated of these institutions-the Stones, Rolling Stone magazine and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame among them-and lobs in the Molotov.Īnd his attack is not limited to institutions he brutalizes individuals as well. Whereas in the ‘60s and even in the early days of punk, rock music was raucous, cool, actually dangerous, rock ‘n’ roll has now been denatured by being celebrated and thus institutionalized. ![]() Lest we allow the bloated members of Fleetwood Mac to sell us one more reunion, Strausbaugh dedicates himself to ridiculing “colostomy rock.” ![]() Thus, what rock ‘n’ roll music has become-as represented by the latest corporate-sponsored Rolling Stones stadium tour in which self-simulations of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards try half-heartedly to start it up one more time-is sad, stupid, redundant, unseemly and reprehensible. It is a music of rebellion, of either unfocused adolescent rejection of parental values or actual political revolution. The thesis of “Rock Til You Drop” is this: Rock ‘n’ roll is youth music. John Strausbaugh casts his lot with marijuana and Molotovs. For one cohort, it is the music of sock hops and malteds for another, of marijuana and Molotov cocktails for another, of safety pins and despair and for yet another, of a parent’s insufferable nostalgia. For what is essentially quite a simple musical form, rock ‘n’ roll sustains a wild profusion of histories. ![]()
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