Feature of The Week 1/9/12: Rock and The Pop Narcotic

[RevMatt]

To my 3DD Friends,
Below is my Feature of the Week offering, an article about Joe Carducci's book Rock and the Pop Narcotic: Testament for the Electric Church. It is a long article. The reason for its length is that I wanted to include plenty of quotes from the book so that someone who has never read it could still participate in any discussion or debate that might develop. IMO, it is one of the best books of rock criticism ever published, right up there with Lester Bangs and Nick Tosches. Enjoy

Rock and the Pop Narcotic: Testament for the Electric Church by Joe Carducci.

“The thing of it is, of course, the key. To the kingdom. What made rock and roll itself was not the notes. Notes, like guns, are policy-neutral, though also like guns, not inert. They can be made to go off.”

Thus begins Joe Carducci’s 500 plus page manifesto, Rock and The Pop Narcotic: Testament for the Electric Church. It is arguably the most ambitious piece of rock criticism ever published; an attempt at an overarching aesthetic for rock music. The book is also one of the most controversial pieces of rock criticism. When it was published in 1991 the rock critic establishment first tried to ignore or dismiss it. But like a great underground band, word of mouth put the book in the hands of musicians, record geeks and other iconoclasts who spread the word. Begrudgingly, the rock press acknowledged the book’s ambition and scope as it furiously prepared rebuttals to his arguments like frightened prosecutors who have just realized their case is going to hell in a hurry. Twenty years and three editions later, the book is required reading for every writer who wants to tackle rock criticism. It belongs on the small pile of books next to the keyboard, alongside Lester Bangs and Nick Tosches.

An aesthetic is a theory of what elements make a work of art (book, film, painting, song, album) worth considering. It seeks to explain how a genre works and separate the important work from the trash. On a practical level, an aesthetic of rock music would help you understand why some of the albums you purchase or download end up in heavy rotation for years while others fall to the back of the pile after less than a dozen spins. Most fans or geeks have no need to explain this. We do not have to justify to anyone why Zen Arcade and Let it Be became the cornerstones of our vinyl collection while T.S.O.L.’s Change Today? was sold to the used record shop for three bucks before 1984 even came to a close. But anyone who writes about or reviews rock music ought to be able to explain to an editor, fan, fellow writer or musician whose latest effort has just been given a scathing review what criteria he uses when he declares Drive By Truckers the best band in America while writing off Kings of Leon as bogus poseurs. Better yet, that criteria or aesthetic ought to be apparent to anyone reading his work.

The stakes were much higher for Joe Carducci. He wasn’t the producer of a Xeroxed fanzine or even the editor of a highly circulated magazine like Spin. Carducci was the person Greg Ginn brought in to sign bands when he decided that SST was going to attempt to be a major independent instead of a small, local label that put out records by Black Flag and a handful of other southern California hardcore bands. Carducci was the one who signed The Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Saint Vitus, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, Bad Brains, Screaming Trees, Dinosaur Jr. and a bunch of other bands who formed the bedrock of the 80’s underground rock scene. So successful was he at finding the appropriate bands for his label that by 1986 many indie rock fans would gladly part with eight dollars for an album by a band they had not yet heard just because they were on SST. SST was the first label any aspiring punk/underground band sent their demos to. And if you are wondering why Carducci never expressed any interest in your band, read this book.

The Bottom

“To evaluate rock as music the peripherals need to be set aside. The look of a band -- where they’re coming from -- is musically irrelevant…They say Tony Bennett could sing the telephone book and be great. I’m saying the Stooges could’ve played the Tony Bennett songbook and been great. The essence of quality in rock’s musical terms is to be found in the musical interaction of the players of a guitar, a bass and a drum kit.”

“Rock music is rock and roll made conscious of itself as a small band music, as opposed to being just a temporary grouping of session players for a tour or a gig or recording date…Typically in these two forms (C&W and R&B) touring bands do not record with the artist (i.e. the vocalist) whereas in rock music the band is the artist. Musicians who first learn how to play within a band learn an individual style formed by that particular band-voice. That musician may have a hard time jamming with outside musicians because of his idiosyncratic style. But this is how the band-as-artist opened up a new inexhaustible musical range.”

The foundation of Carducci’s aesthetic can be reduced to a handful of bullet points.

-- Rock made the transition from rock and roll when the artists began to consciously conceive of their work as a band collaboration instead of simply backing up a singer. (You can debate whether this first happened with The James Brown Orchestra, Dick Dale and the Dell Tones, Paul Revere and The Raiders or The Beatles.)

-- The essence of rock is found in the interplay between the rhythm guitar, drums and bass. Vocals and soloing -- while important -- are secondary. Rock is essentially riffs, rhythm and beat.

-- Melody in the riffs, vocal lines and instrumental soloing on top of the riffs, rhythm and beat are what makes a rock band’s music interesting and memorable. “Riffs mean nothing if they are just unresolved pummeling of the air; they must serve a greater melodic structure.”

-- The challenge for anyone developing a rock aesthetic is to differentiate rock from pop. Pop is largely an industry produced phenomenon; production, marketing, etc… “Rock need only refer to Tin Pan Alley’s melodic tradition.” Everything else is irrelevant to rock.

“A music that rocks can only be an active by-product of the playing of a band. Rock is not alchemy (adding black to white and getting gold), it is transubstantiation. It’s not the notes, it’s the jam between them. It is aggressive to the point of derailing from its rhythm and is unsafe at any speed. It is not identifiable by chart position, nor even by sound (say, fuzzed out guitars), volume or speed. Its special musical value is that it is a folk form which exhibits a small band instrumental language as in jazz, rather than mere accompaniment to a vocalist as in pop. Rock is the place where rhythm and melody battle it out most intensively and in doing so they create something more. Traditional pop and folk uses of melody generally attempt to evoke a fairly refined emotional/reflective mood or trance. In rock, melody is present and its whiff of mood still distinctive, however, here it is pushed along by an explicitly physical, even carnal rhythm arrangement. The whole of the music then can be said to be a more complete metaphor for the actual human condition; we are higher aspirations pushed along by carnal drives.”

The Ride

“Poor Bruce and his rabbi Jon Landau were left stammering about how the song was not patriotic and jingoistic and all those bad things, even while the mainstream American uberboss Ronald Reagan was able to refer to the song and the artist without intoning their real attitude. Ron had grabbed the flag back from the limp-symp thieves. If the “rock” press would respond to the release of a good record by a new band half as vigorously and quickly as they rushed into print with defenses of the little boss’s intent against the big boss’s scurrilous appropriation, the public record on music would be good enough that I could be doing what I quit the record business for instead of writing and re-writing this goddamn book.”

Carducci could have simply stated his aesthetic and gone directly to his critical history of rock music and had a perfectly good book. A competent editor could have toned a few things down and focused it a bit more. Dave Marsh might have even been convinced to contribute a blurb for a few hundred bucks. The book would likely have garnered decent reviews from the rock critic establishment before fading away into obscurity as most of those projects do. But no. Carducci, after a decade and a half in the record biz had more than a few axes to grind. He was as pissed off as any broke ass musician who spent the last decade busting his ass touring out of a van, sleeping on floors and recording some of the greatest rock music ever only to have it ignored. Carducci did more than list his grievances and express his anger. If the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, Carducci took names and chopped off about 100 heads. By the time the carnage was finished at around page 245 the true rock geeks were cranking their Black Sabbath and Black Flag albums to 11 while they danced on the graves of the Jann Wenners, Dave Marsh’s, Clive Davis’ and Clear Channel Communications of the world. (“We’re gonna have a t.v. party tonight!”) And keep in mind, when this book came out Nevermind was still a year and a half away.

The book is the rock criticism equivalent of Sherman’s march or the firebombing of Dresden. Few were spared. Some, like T.S.O.L. escaped with mere flesh wounds (“And the critics, when they paid any attention, were more likely to praise rock-like facades like T.S.O.L. than the real stuff. Scammers earned extra points from the press precisely because they were trying to sell out.”) Others like Dave Marsh, Jon Landau and Jann Wenner were stripped naked, water boarded, and put on trial for treason. Their crimes?

“It is not so easy to foist a complete, fraudulent simulation of truth on a people; other sources of information must be jammed, heretics must be liquidated, and what is offered as truth must be exceedingly carefully composed. The scribes at Pravda and Ivestia were some of the most skilled writers on earth because they were trying to lie systematically and comprehensively for the ages…Lucky for me rock critics aren’t their match or it would have taken years out of my life to write this chapter.”

The rock press as we know it began in the late 1960’s. It was the progeny of an unlikely coupling; the fawning fan magazines marketed to teenagers and the student and underground press with its left wing/countercultural leanings. As rock music “matured” in the post-summer of love environment the “rock critic” began to project his own political and cultural aesthetic onto the music. This aesthetic had very little to do with the music itself. However, in the years between 1967 and 1970 most of the bands getting airplay on the budding free form FM stations shared the same hippie utopian dreams as those conducting interviews, writing feature articles and record reviews so there was very little conflict.

Things began to change in the early 1970‘s. In Carducci’s view, this was when rock artists began to consider rock as a true musical language as opposed to a hybrid of pop, folk and early rock and roll forms set to a harder beat. When the younger brothers and sisters of the student radicals of the late sixties came of age bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blue Oyster Cult and Rush provided the soundtrack to their adolescent bacchanal. They had no need to flee the heartland for cultural meccas like The East and West Village, Haight Ashbury, Ann Arbor an the Sunset Strip. The modern rock tour brought the party to arenas and theaters across America. Just gas up the GTO, score a case of Genesee Cream Ale, a half ounce of weed and drive out to the nearest hockey arena to catch a triple bill with UFO, Bad Company and Grand Funk Railroad. The rock critic establishment was horrified.

“The music by 1970 had come to take forms that revealed bands’ awareness of rock as a true musical language -- not merely what resulted when teenagers imitated their favorite pop stars. Many of the bands that made use of the language did little exciting with it. But the critics didn’t differentiate here; they exhibited conceptual short circuit when it came to this new rock music. In their estimation Black Sabbath, Robin Trower, and Stray Dog were worse than Brownsville Station, Bachman-Turner-Overdrive, and The Raspberries. Those critics weaned on the sixties cauldron of rocked-out folk and pop idioms opted for the music of self-conscious would-be redeemers of pop music once consciousness had dawned on rock music. The less demographically appealing rock trail (be it boogie, acid-rock, hard rock, heavy metal, prog rock) was abandoned by them except insofar as they attacked it. In fact they chose a new classicism over the newer unrecipeed development of conscious (though more than a little naïve) experimentation with rock music -- ie., the music’s future… The commercial success of many of the rock bands of the 1970’s achieved as it was with little or no radio airplay and little but the obligatory negative press, fueled heavy resentments on the part of the critics and the politicos throughout the fringes of the youth culture. They could not forgive the fact that rock had left the pop trail by which alone it seemed possible to politically engage mainstream American culture.”

On the surface it might seem that little was at stake in this rift between rockers and those who wrote about the music. After all, unlike theater critics whose reviews could make or break a Broadway musical, a 1971 Rolling Stone review panning the latest Black Sabbath album had absolutely no effect on record sales or concert attendance. However, these artists knew instinctively that when their music was ignored or ridiculed they were essentially being written out of rock history. Forty years after creating some of the most influential music of the 1970’s artists like Robin Trower, Blue Oyster Cult and Mountain are mere footnotes and a band like Rush, who have been playing sold out arenas for decades, are passed over year after year by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In the meantime, rock critics focused less on the music, concerning itself with subject matter that was peripheral at best. Their aesthetic, based on sociological and political biases, alienated them from much of the rock music offered by rock bands. What music they did champion in this period (roughly 1970 to 1975) was usually the mid career offerings of artists who first arrived on the scene in the 1960’s, singer-songwriters such as James Taylor, Janis Ian and the like or British rock artists like David Bowie. Entire genres such as prog rock, hard rock, heavy metal and southern rock were given the short shrift.

“As radio -- both AM and FM -- tightened up into formats, the rock press was preoccupied with formulating its collective political line on a number of post-sixties developments. They thereby neglected to pick up the informational slack left by radio’s decline. Rock critics were worried about the apparent failure of the revolution, the resegregation of the pop audience into funk and rock, the end of the Beatles, hair loss, and the intransigence of the mainstream culture (Nixon landslide, the Vietnam war, J. Edgar Hoover, CIA, Cointelpro, etc…) in the face of claims by “rock” culture spokesmen of absolute victory in the domestic war for the hearts and minds of the young -- the future.”

“You’d like information on the music. You get star profiles, pop sociology, conspiracy theories, liberal posturing, middle class bashing, Western civilization trashing, feminist doggerel, third world romanticism, trend mongering, cause mining, image hawking, myth fabrication, idol worship… In a word: bullshit…”

By the late 1970’s the stakes were raised even higher. An underground rock scene, beginning on the west coast and spreading to cities across America, began to take root. This underground was ignored by commercial radio, shunned by the major labels and reviled by the critics. Bands had no choice but to form their own record labels and network with bands from other cities. This music was made known solely through word of mouth, low wattage college radio stations on the left side of the FM dial and self produced “fanzines” produced by the champions of this music. It was one of the most fertile eras in rock music. The majority of rock fans heard very little of it.

This is the point where Carducci becomes part of the story. In most cases, the absence of objectivity would be fatal. But this is what makes Rock and The Pop Narcotic so compelling. People’s careers, livelihoods and legacies were effected by the critical and commercial indifference and hostility of the music establishment. Indeed, an entire decade’s worth of rock music does not exist in the minds of most rock fans. It is Carducci’s and, by extension, every musician and fan’s opportunity to lash back at the idiotic critics and careerists whose bogus aesthetic denied careers to dozens of worthy bands. And for Carducci and Black Flag it was personal.

Most of us who came of age during the 1980’s have only vague recollections about the legal dispute between Black Flag and MCA. In my junior year of high school, after reading a series of alarmist articles in the mainstream rock press about the “violent” and “neo-fascist” west coast hardcore scene, I decided to check it out for myself and purchased Black Flag’s Damaged and Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. I may have occasionally wondered why, for the next three years, Black Flag issued no follow up to their seminal album but the sheer excitement of discovering a thriving underground music scene distracted me from the mundane details of the band‘s legal disputes. Carducci brings us all up to speed, presenting a story of borderline libel and collusion where a handful of record executives, rock critics and promoters conspired to deny one of America’s most important bands the ability to release records during their peak years. That he makes his case in strictly aesthetic terms is nothing short of amazing and one of the reasons why, twenty years later, people are still talking about this book.

In a nutshell, Black Flag’s Damaged album was to be distributed by MCA subsidiary Unicorn Records. However, after reading the same sort of alarmist articles that piqued my interest in the hardcore scene MCA executive Al Bergamo decided to investigate further, contacting Rolling Stone magazine who, according to Greg Ginn, “bad mouthed us real bad.” Bergamo then declared Damaged an anti-parent record and refused to distribute it. The resultant litigation prevented Black Flag from releasing any records for the next three years.

Black Flag and SST received little to no support from the rock press during this period. However, Carducci takes umbrage to the fact that a decade later, when NWA experienced similar difficulties Dave Marsh and the rest of the critical establishment rushed to their defense.

What made Marsh bite at the conspiracy possibilities of NWA’s difficulties, and pass on those proffered by the case of Black Flag, who after all had been the target of real police harassment? Let’s examine this carefully… Or rather, let’s not. Let’s just list the signs as we on the left must objectively read them, remembering that the yahoos of the American pop audience are racist and suckers for the right-wing come on:

-- NWA are black. Black Flag were white.
-- NWA are descended from oppressed sharecroppers and slaves. Black Flag were white.
-- NWA play with “dangerous” ideas which their color renders progressive. Black Flag played with “dangerous” ideas which their color rendered fascist.
-- NWA’s audience is largely black and blacks have historically required assistance from enlightened white/Jewish liberals. Black Flag’s audience was mostly white and if it hadn’t been so privileged and non-working class it wouldn’t have been laughing at us and following such an uncommercial (non-pop) muse in the first place.

Therefore, Marsh would reason, NWA despite the presence of certain outre paints on their palette are objectively one of the progressive forces in the society, if only because ours is such a racist, exploitative one. Also he’d reason Black Flag were, due to their petit bourgeois irresponsibility, objectively despite certain aesthetic achievement and the sharing of some class enemies, part of the reactionary social forces at work during The Reagan Age. Music and any question of aesthetics are only indirectly elements in Marsh’s reasoning insofar as they may determine the size of the artist’s audience. And so the non-pop aesthetic with its smaller audience is likely meaningless to the rock critic - as - social scientist and such bands passed over… Rock criticism’s imperatives are not musical. This is, in turn, my excuse for this section having so little to do with music. Rock critics rarely discuss music.”

The Solo

In the final section of Carducci’s applies his aesthetic to the history of rock music, from the 1950’s into the 1990’s. The retrospective of each decade begins with a series of two to three paragraph articles on the ten to twelve bands he considers most important followed by a dozen or more pages where he discusses the rest. He does not take into consideration a band or artist’s popularity or critical reception when evaluating their artistic contributions to rock. There are obscure bands like The United States of America and Magma who receive the major artist treatment as well as bands like ZZ Top who were traditionally ignored by rock critics and historians. At the same time, many artists championed by critics, historians and the masses are all but ignored. Carducci sticks to his applied aesthetic.

Below are the artists he considers most important to their respective decade.

1950’s:
Louis Jordan (The Tympany Five)
Hank Williams and the Drifting Cowboys
Muddy Waters
Bill Haley and His Comets
Bo Diddley
Elvis Presley
Chuck Berry
Little Richard
Jerry Lee Lewis
The Rock ’n Roll Trio
Eddie Cochran
Link Wray and the Wraymen

1960’s
Dick Dale and The Del-tones
James Brown
Paul Revere and the Raiders
The Beatles
The Yardbirds
Steppenwolf
The Who
The Cream
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Doors
United States of America
Jethro Tull

1970’s
Black Sabbath
Led Zeppelin
The Stooges
Mountain, West, Bruce and Laing
The Allman Brothers Band
King Crimson
Robin Trower
Free
Bad Company
Hawkwind
Magma
Mahavishnu Orchestra
ZZ Top
Rush
AC/DC
The Ramones
Pere Ubu
Motorhead
The Sex Pistols
The Fall
Avengers, Sleepers, Negative Trend, Toiling Midgets
The Screamers
The Spherical Objects
Black Flag
The Descendents

1980’s
James Blood Ulmer
Flipper
The Minutemen
Saccharine Trust
Minor Threat
Saint Vitus
The Butthole Surfers
The Tar Babies
No Means No
Gone
Universal Congress of

1990’s
Nirvana
Helmet
Kyuss

In addition to the longer write ups Carducci gives an exhaustive listing of bands from each decade. This section of the book is impressive and provides the reader with many opportunities to discover new bands. The best sections are the decades where Carducci was not an active participant in the music business. If the lack of objectivity made his section critiquing the critics stronger, its absence seems to narrow his perspective on eighties bands especially, showing a strong bias towards west coast hardcore bands, especially those who recorded for SST. One also wonders if the conflicts Husker Du and Sonic Youth had with SST are the reason why those two bands did not receive the "major artist" treatment while others like Flipper, Minor Threat and Saccharine Trust did. And leaving out important metal bands like Iron Maiden, Metallica and Slayer while including Saint Vitus (an SST band) is absurd.

Carducci did not update the third edition so there nothing written about musical developments since the mid-nineties. This is unfortunate because I find myself clamoring for his opinion on dozens of developments, everything from Napster to alt. country. However, Carducci did leave the music business to pursue other things so it is understandable that he has written comparatively little about music since the second edition of Rock and The Pop Narcotic. However, his voice is an important one. With one book he has a legacy that is right up there with the best work of Lester Bangs.

[beantownbubba]

I haven't read Carducci's book so my comments are based solely on Rev Matt's apparently thorough summary.

No doubt the early days of self-conscious (meaning an attempt at intellectualizing and conceptualizing beyond "this is good, that isn't") rock criticism was informed or maybe even motivated by a political viewpoint and a basic assumption that rock music was not just inherently political but was political in a very specific way/view. But I think those days ended quite a while ago.

Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones are not major artists of the 60's? Paul Revere and Steppenwolf are more important than both? If I understand his POV correctly, I get the Dylan omission - he's rejecting the lyrical, folk tradition-based side of rock. That, to me, is questionable but ok at least it's consistent (but see below). But The Rolling Stones???!!! The yang to the Beatles yin? The body roll to the beatles head rock? The band that gave us Charlie Watts & Keith Richards? Makes zero sense to me.

Dylan's not important (presumably because lyrics don't matter) but Hank Williams is?

Interestingly, despite all his bashing of mainstream rock critics, his decade lists don't seem all that different than the lists i imagine robert christgau would come up with, which would seem to undercut Carducci's main thrust considerably. Of course it's speculation on my part, but I'd bet money that Carducci's top 3 in the 80's would also be on Christgau's 80's list; Nirvana would certainly be on his 90's list and of the 70's groups I've heard of, only the 2 Mountain-associated groups, Bad Company, Hawkwind, Robin Trower and maybe Rush are almost definitely not going to be on Christgau's list. Of course, i suspect both dylan and the stones would be on his 60's list. The point is not that their lists would be identical but that for all the anger he directs at the critical establishment, to the extent that Christgau represents that establishment their judgments aren't all that far apart.

[cortez the killer]

I've never heard of this book. It sounds like a very interesting read. In particular, I love this line:
"The whole of the music then can be said to be a more complete metaphor for the actual human condition; we are higher aspirations pushed along by carnal drives.”

I also got a kick out of this line:
Indeed, an entire decade’s worth of rock music does not exist in the minds of most rock fans.
Yup. That would be me.

Quite a write-up Rev. Excellent job.

[RevMatt]

I haven't read Carducci's book so my comments are based solely on Rev Matt's apparently thorough summary.

No doubt the early days of self-conscious (meaning an attempt at intellectualizing and conceptualizing beyond "this is good, that isn't") rock criticism was informed or maybe even motivated by a political viewpoint and a basic assumption that rock music was not just inherently political but was political in a very specific way/view. But I think those days ended quite a while ago.

Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones are not major artists of the 60's? Paul Revere and Steppenwolf are more important than both? If I understand his POV correctly, I get the Dylan omission - he's rejecting the lyrical, folk tradition-based side of rock. That, to me, is questionable but ok at least it's consistent (but see below). But The Rolling Stones???!!! The yang to the Beatles yin? The body roll to the beatles head rock? The band that gave us Charlie Watts & Keith Richards? Makes zero sense to me.

Dylan's not important (presumably because lyrics don't matter) but Hank Williams is?

Interestingly, despite all his bashing of mainstream rock critics, his decade lists don't seem all that different than the lists i imagine robert christgau would come up with, which would seem to undercut Carducci's main thrust considerably. Of course it's speculation on my part, but I'd bet money that Carducci's top 3 in the 80's would also be on Christgau's 80's list; Nirvana would certainly be on his 90's list and of the 70's groups I've heard of, only the 2 Mountain-associated groups, Bad Company, Hawkwind, Robin Trower and maybe Rush are almost definitely not going to be on Christgau's list. Of course, i suspect both dylan and the stones would be on his 60's list. The point is not that their lists would be identical but that for all the anger he directs at the critical establishment, to the extent that Christgau represents that establishment their judgments aren't all that far apart.

On Dylan and The Stones: When I got to part two of the book -- after reading 245 pages of Carducci's aesthetic -- I fully expected that he would be a Stones guy and that The Beatles would be omitted on the grounds that 1) they were mostly a pop band and 2) their best albums were studio creations recorded after they ceased to be a performing band. I had to flip through the book several times believing I had skipped over The Stones' five paragraphs. Here is what Carducci has to say about The Stones. In a nutshell, he probably thinks they are overrated:

The Rolling Stones used to arrange their music, and its flat dynamic needs such work. They rely much too heavily on drummer Charlie Watts who though a fine player fulfills a stictly supportive role; they lost their early pop charm when Brian Jones became a drug casualty and then finally kicked the bucket. They gained total artistic freedom and Keth Richards did take advantage of his new leadership role and shot about a three album wide load of gold he must've saved up nursing grievances. The Stones were the most relevant English band for American garage bands and their success began to feed back into American music, wheareas the Beatles lasting influence here would be later and less direct, though stronger in its own way.

I don't agree with Carducci's assessment of The Stones. I think they started out as an English band who, unlike other London blues revivalists, found their own rock voice covering old Chess recordings. They lost their way somewhat around 1966 - 1967, focusing on psychedelic trends and trying to be a pop band, but came back strong with the single "Jumping Jack Flash" and began a decade long run as The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World. Reading between the lines, I would say that Carducci probably considers Exile on Main Street to be overrated and not all that good but will give The Stones a three album trifecta -- Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers -- a four album period of underachievemnt -- Exile, Goats Head, It's Only Rock and Roll, Black and Blue -- a later career comeback with Some Girls followed by thirty years of phoning it in. One of the things I realized after reading Carducci's book is that he has very little sympathy for musicians who throw away their careers and lives for drugs and would probably be one of the last people who would give Keef any props for surviving decades of flagrant substance abuse. He wouldn't hold that against an artist whose body of work is remarkable -- Hendrix, Morrison, Cobain -- but he would probably be the last person to imply that Keef Richard's embodies rock and roll because of his heroin use in the seventies and the fact that he slugs whiskey onstage while smoking a cigarette. Carducci would stick to the riffs themselves.

Carducci writes very little about Bob Dylan. My guess is that he does not consider Dylan to be "rock". Dylan, in Carducci's view, is a folk songwriter who, after 1965, was backed in the studio and onstage by electric guitarists, bassists, drummers and keyboardists. For most of his career he used studio musicians and had a separate touring band who, on occassion, might back him in the studio. The foundation of Carducci's aesthetic is the definition that rock is "rock and roll made conscious of itself as a small band music, as opposed to being just a temporary grouping of session players for a tour or a gig or a recording date." One thing I had to realize reading Carducci's work is that just because he does not consider a given artist to be a "rock" artist does not necessarily mean that he does not like their body of work. He does not consider The Velvet Underground to be a rock band but indicates that he likes and respects their music.

My critique of this is that Carducci would have no room in his aesthetic for a band like The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Yes, they were session players but they have a readily identifiable sound, recorded some of the best rock music of the 60's and 70's and have a respected legacy. They were a permanent grouping of musicians who backed other artists. They did conceive their work as a band collaboration.

As far as the mainstream rock press goes, Carducci went easy on Christgau. He does not agree with Christgau's aesthetic but unlike Marsh, Wenner and the rest of the establishment, Christgau spent his career reviewing albums and live shows and focused on the music itself. Christgau, in return, acknowledged Rock and the Pop Narcotic's ambition and scope but believed that it was poorly written.

In my own aesthetic, lyrics, composition and arrangements are far more important than in Carducci's. (This view is likely shared by any frequent contributor on this, a Drive By Truckers, board.) While I respect Hank Rollins as a lead singer and frontman, I much prefer Westerberg, Mould and Hart. In their cases, composition comes first and all three of them would be far more willing than Rollins to radically alter their respective bands' sound for the sake of a song.

[beantownbubba]

That all sounds right to me, Rev. I.e. based on your initial description of Carducci's book all of that fits together very well and fleshes out some of the pluses & minuses of Carducci's views.

Not to disagree w/ you, just to point out further inconsistency in Carducci, Dylan & The Hawks were sure as hell a touring band and were very probably the Greatest Rock n Roll Band in the World for a year or 2. Many of dylan's touring bands over the years have been together for extended periods of time and were significant musical aggregations beyond simply being bob dylan's backup band. By contrast, Chuck Berry, one of Carducci's 50's greats, was famous for showing up just before a gig and rushing onstage to play w/ whatever 3 or 4 musicians the promoter provided, not knowing them and never having played w/ them before.

[RevMatt]

That all sounds right to me, Rev. I.e. based on your initial description of Carducci's book all of that fits together very well and fleshes out some of the pluses & minuses of Carducci's views.

Not to disagree w/ you, just to point out further inconsistency in Carducci, Dylan & The Hawks were sure as hell a touring band and were very probably the Greatest Rock n Roll Band in the World for a year or 2. Many of dylan's touring bands over the years have been together for extended periods of time and were significant musical aggregations beyond simply being bob dylan's backup band. By contrast, Chuck Berry, one of Carducci's 50's greats, was famous for showing up just before a gig and rushing onstage to play w/ whatever 3 or 4 musicians the promoter provided, not knowing them and never having played w/ them before.

I agree. I would also add that most of Dylan's collaborations with The Band were conceived as "the band as artist", especially The Basement Tapes. I think one of the strengths and weaknesses of Carducci's application of his aesthetic is that he has a decidedly anti-leftist, anti-hippie, anti-Woodstock bias. This works for him when he assesses rock music in the 1970's. He pulls dozens of bands from the ash heap of rock history (Bad Company, Robin Trower, UFO, Blue Oyster Cult, Rush, ZZ Top, Black Sabbath, Grand Funk) who were ignored, ridiculed and shat on because critics who came of age during the Summer of Love made no attempt to understand what they were doing musically and considered the whole scene -- arena rock in the heartland of America -- beneath them. But this same bias also causes him to dismiss some important rock bands like The Band simply because -- one suspects -- left wing hippie types liked them. I mean, Hot Tuna put out some incredibly great ROCK albums in the 1970's but because they were a spin off from Jefferson Airplane Carducci doesn't give them more than a single sentence.

The weakest portion of the book is Carducci's assessment of the 1980's. As a participant, he was certainly going to be kind to bands who were either on his label or gave SST bands access to their local scenes. And it is certainly understandable that there would be lingering resentment towards rival scenes like L.A's Paisley Underground and other indie scenes whose clubs either refused to book "hardcore" bands or relegated them to "hardcore matinees" on Sunday afternoons. After all, the first edition of the book was written during the two year period after Carduccin left SST. But Flipper is considered a major band while The Replacements aren't? I own (or did at one time) every Flipper album. They were good but I don't think a single one of their albums got more than 20 spins on my stereo. And everyone here knows that I am a total Gun Club partisan. Carducci sort of tips his hat to The Gun Club, but Henry Rollins -- who probably found it easier in the passage of time to let old rivalries pass -- considers The Gun Club and Jeffrey Lee to be one of the major artists of 1980's indie rock.

[RevMatt]

FWIW, here is what Carducci writes about The Band. They do not get much attention, though when he refers to them by name he uses Bold print, indicating that he considers them to be "rock" as opposed to pop or folk.

Class imagery poses problems for rock critics on which theyy have yet to get a grip. These writers have developed their craft in the hyper-romantic shadows of the music's mythic beginnings: Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, etc. Unfortunately, this romantic fog has led to a general lack of respect and a predisposition to ridicule when an artist's story is no more compelling than that he and his bros started copying Black Sabbath riffs in his parents' garage. As far as critics are concerned lying about your background is fine if in the lying you genuflect at the aforementioned myth models, and have cultivated a sound or spiel in their tradition (Dylan, the Band, Fogerty, Mellencamp, Prince, U2, etc.) But it must be remembered that these myth-like musical father figures were also smelly assholes as inherently finite as any child of Park avenue or Peoria, and they were quite outnumbered by their just as ignorant and poor hack colleagues over in the next hollow or box car. (Not every old blues 78 is worth hours of junk-store picking.)

And in related areas, the Band (which had been Ronnie Hawkins back up band the Hawks up in Canada where the Arkansas-to-Memphis rockabilly had headed once the ASCAP/Tin Pan Alley/Grim Reaper flying wedge had taken back the charts) left late period rackabilly for a kind of sly dreary drug weary roots rock behind Dylan and under their own unname.

Not from the south of anything but the North Pole, and having replaced the Band as Ronnie Hawkins' Hawks, Crowbar, though not quite as indelicate as their name nonetheless whipped out a hot sidewindin' south country sound.

What rock and roll there was that bled into the sixties included Link Wray and the Wraymen, Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks, Lonnie Mack, the Bill Black Combo, and developed through the decade via Ace Cannon, the Bobby Fuller four, John Fred and His Playboy Band, Tony Joe White, Rockin Sydney and his Dukes and others of the culturally organic south and southwest -- trends were dtrends but in certain geo-social areas music is music. The first rock music development truly of this new decade was the surf intrumental.