Table of Contents

That wild, thin mercury sound - ontology; I'll be your mirror - recording and representing; record consciousness; pump up the volume; jungle rhythms and the big beat; Adorno, jazz and the reception of popular music; romanticizing rock music; sing o' the times - ideology and aesthetics.

Reviews

It's been almost 30 years since Paul Williams's mimeographed Crawdaddy! proffered the first serious criticism written for and by the fans of the most significant sensation of our century‘rock and roll. In the following decades, such critics as Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Nick Tosches and Dave Marsh affirmed the values of this music without ever defining an aesthetic. Perhaps because of the lack of a focused opposition, intellectuals continued to ignore the issue of whether any genuine aesthetic existed, fueling the argument that this racket might be popular but that doesn't make it art. Gracyk seems to have taken care of that. Rhythm and Noise does no less than construct a definitive aesthetic from the ground up. Gracyk's generous use of example and intelligible definition demystifies the music's allure and therefore justifies artistic value as no other work has really done. But Gracyk doesn't stop there. He also makes quick work of wrong-headed supporters who jeopardize the music's character. Camille Paglia earns a kind reminder that rock and roll is a little more than a lyric sheet and some primitive bad-boy posing. Rather than obscure important points in pseudo-intellectual patois, Gracyk takes on heavies like Allan Bloom and Theodor W. Adorno in plainspoken arguments destined to change the future of rock and roll, if not the deaf appraisals that continue to surround it. What's taken so long is anyone's guess. (May)

Gracyk (philosophy, Moorhead State Univ.) analyzes rock as an art form in the liberal tradition, loosely basing his argument upon the later writings of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He asserts that rock music can be distinguished as a recorded medium rather than a performance art or a unique musical style. He also characterizes rock as rhythmically simple, commercial, and American, disputing the claims of Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind, LJ 5/1/87), who cast rock as seductive, African-based music. Challenging the theories of philosopher Theodor Adorno, Gracyk contends that rock as a popular musical form can and should be considered as art within the context of American bourgeois liberal society. Gracyk provides a pedantic, turgid examination of rock primarily devoted to rebutting academics who have dismissed rock music as crass commercialism for the masses. Recommended only to those interested in the philosophy of rock.‘David P. Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle