The constant arrival of new and updated textbooks on popular music suggests that this former niche market has been fully integrated into academic publishing. Because most students of popular music approach it as undergraduates in departments such as history, sociology and literature, the authors and editors of course resources face a particular challenge: they not only need to consider the expectations of instructors in different disciplines, but also to produce coherent narratives of a versatile subject. Theo Cateforis rises to this challenge. His volume advances an argument as effectively as is possible in an historical source reader, elucidating that rock music has preserved its controversial nature over the course of 60 years. The Rock History Reader presents its subject as a complex cultural phenomenon that has never ceased to ignite emotional responses in fans and foes alike.
Cateforis has compiled 68 documents that offer students multiple perspectives on rock music. A short introductory blurb precedes each one of the brief texts to familiarise readers with characters and context. The primary and secondary sources elaborate on how social, political and economic factors shaped the music – and the ways in which the music influenced the life of people in different times and places. Although Cateforis tailors the book to the study of rock, he wisely refrains from a rigid definition of the genre to separate it from adjacent styles or pop music at large. Thus, while most of the chapters address performers, events and trends commonly associated with rock, several reach beyond the boundaries of guitar-driven music to address general issues or talk about teen pop, electronic dance music, hip hop and reggae. Pieces on geographically peripheral subgenres like Chicano rock and Jamaican dub imply that rock began as an American creation but became a worldwide tradition. Excerpts from landmark publications by Simon Frith, Dick Hebdige and Robert Walser introduce readers to distinguished commentators in academic discourse. Interviews with significant artists, articles from newspapers and magazines and recollections of contemporary witnesses constitute the mainstay of the source selection. As a resource primarily for undergraduate students, The Rock History Reader adroitly navigates between making its subject accessible and stimulating intellectual analysis.
The volume is divided into six sections, each of which covers one decade in rock history. Despite its great variety in sources, the book nonetheless offers conclusive reconstructions of those periods. The two main themes that define the section on the 1950s are expansion and opposition. Recollections of early rhythm-and-blues singer Ruth Brown and a report on Dick Clark's ‘American Bandstand’ hype machine illustrate how the entertainment industry rushed to commercialise the new music and develop the youth culture market. Other sources speak to the generational tensions and media backlash that accompanied the rise of rock 'n' roll. ‘Where did the degeneration of popular music start?’ (p. 14), mused New York Herald Tribune writer John Crosby in an editorial that identified the King of Rock and Roll as a perpetrator of cultural decline. Cateforis gives Elvis Presley the privilege of an immediate return to sender: ‘There's more people than critics’ (p. 16). Crosby's scathing attack and Presley's dry response mark one of several instances in the book when the editor's choices capture currents in the zeitgeist to maximum effect.
The selection of sources on the 1960s offers a kaleidoscopic glance at many simultaneous developments in the early period of diversification and fragmentation in popular music. For representatives of the establishment, rock remained a threat to cultural norms while Beatlemania elevated the excitement in youths to unprecedented heights. To great effect, Cateforis reproduces the report of a terrified medical state official, who conceived of a Fab Four concert as nothing less than ‘mass hypnosis’ and ‘an orgy for teen-agers’ (p. 54). Meanwhile, commentators who had matured as rock listeners launched a broad debate on identity and self-perception. Several contributions, including that of beatnik journo Chester Anderson, who attributed to music of the counterculture era the integrative power to create ‘the social rituals of the future’ (p. 97), document growing self-awareness among members of the first generation who had collectively created a distinct set of cultural practices. Conversely, a number of sources trace the gradual deepening of divisions within the pop music sphere when underground magazines challenged the influence of the music press, FM radio deejays scolded AM Top 40 radio, and a clientele of purists denied commercial genres like Motown any appreciation.
The next section illuminates how diversification and fragmentation intensified during the 1970s. The source selection suggests that interest groups' and minorities' concerns ranked among the most influential factors that expedited the evolution of rock music. The book section adequately addresses sexuality and gender, opening with a feminist manifesto against the hyper-masculinity of ‘cock rock’ (p. 119) and concluding with the ‘confessions of a gay rocker’ (p. 181). It is no coincidence that two of the volume's most entertaining reads, Van Halen singer David Lee Roth's memories of hedonistic excess and Lester Bangs' deconstructivist guide to becoming a music critic, represent the ‘Me decade’ in rock history.
The impact of technological progress and commercial revolutions characterise most sources on the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The reader reliably covers the important trends of the past decades, from the triumphal procession of synthesisers and MTV to file sharing and YouTube. Cateforis devotes ample attention to countertrends and temporary phases such as college rock, grunge, nü metal and girl power pop. The book also advances its main theme of controversy and contention throughout this last part. Examples include the statement of the Parents Music Resource Center before Congress, which ultimately resulted in the advent of ‘explicit content’ stickers, and the court ruling on the Miami-based hip hop outfit 2 Live Crew, whose provocative music the presiding judge declared ‘legally obscene’ (p. 261). Most significantly, the reader contains the testimonial given by Metallica bandleader Lars Ulrich, who called for the legal action against fans of the group who had downloaded their music without paying dues. Those sources and others draw the reader's attention to significant issues of the recent past, and reinforce the notion that rock's present is still very much in flux.
Editor Theo Cateforis considers his reader ‘incomplete’ (p. xiii) in places. His notion is sound. Yet while the volume is light on some important topics like the rise of the recording industry and the appropriation of Anglo-American styles by artists in other regions, it is as comprehensive as a 400-page complementary resource can be. Cateforis' selection of sources does the complexity of rock justice by presenting it as a cultural phenomenon with social, political and economic dimensions. The Rock History Reader is a genuine contribution to making the study of popular music a more rewarding endeavour for instructors and students alike.
