Is Rock Dead?

by Kevin J.H. Dettmar

Rock and roll's death has been forecast nearly since its birth; the country song "The Death of Rock and Roll" appeared in September 1956, showing that the music had already outraged a more conservative listening audience. Is Rock Dead? sets out to explore the varied and sometimes conflicting ways in which the death of rock has been discussed both within the discourse of popular music and American culture. If rock is dead, when did it die? Who killed it? Why do rock journalists lament its passing? Has its academic acceptance stabbed it in the back or resuscitated an otherwise lifeless corpse? Why is rock music the music that conservatives love to hate? On the other side of the coin, how have rock's biggest fans helped nail shut the coffin? Does rock feed on its own death-and-rebirth? Finally, what signs of life are there showing that rock, in fact, is surviving?
Is Rock Dead? will appeal to all those who take seriously the notion that rock is a serious musical form. It will appeal to students of popular music and culture, and all those who have ever spun a 45, cranked up the radio, or strummed an air guitar.

Genres: Music

202 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah dangit! I'm the only review! So I guess I gotta clean up my act...

Ahem...

FUCK THIS BOOKKKKK

HAHAHAHA just kidding. This is interesting stuff. But you gotta be a real rockhead. Or a real intertextual rockhead English major type... Because this isn't really about "the music," per se. It's about the culture of the music, the world the music created, the origins of the music. It's mostly a survey of opinions and writing ABOUT the music. I thought the earlier chapters were best. I thought Dettmar's rather extensive takedown of Nick Hornby was a bit unfair-- Hornby is a crank, but isn't what he saying kind of what Dettmar is saying at his book's end: that vital pop music IS still being made, you just gotta find what works for you, opinions of others be damned?

I think what bothered me about the book-- Dettmar himself might be delighted by this-- is how slippery the concept of "rock & roll" ends up being. It seems to me different things in different chapters-- sometimes, it refers to whatever is called "rock & roll"; other times, it's a simple guitar-based rhythm music distinct from, say, Sinatra; toward the end, it encompasses practically EVERY form of popular music, including hip-hop (despite what Snoop Dogg has to say). Dettmar concedes in the last couple of pages that if your definition of rock excludes hip-hop, then rock music IS probably dying (and this book was published more than ten years ago, when their were still a handful of radio hits featuring guitar and piano). But I'd argue that when people (scholars, popular writers, the hoi polloi, etc) claim that "rock is dead," they are almost NEVER referring to hip-hop, or most pop, or electronic music. They're referring to a very specific strain of, well, simple guitar-based rhythm music, the sort of music discussed in this year's "Twilight of the Gods." So the "conclusion" the book comes to, that rock is alive because people are constantly saying it's dead, wasn't terribly convincing to me.

Here's what I think: rock & roll (and I'm referring here to simple guitar-based rhythm music) IS dead, in terms of the radio playing rock music that is, uh, interesting and innovative at all. But rock is obviously not done as a commercial force (see "Oldchella" and whatever show your parents recently shelled out 250 dollars for). And creative, relevant, rockin' rock & roll is still a thing... but the vanguard has shifted from white masculinist douchebags to women, people of color, gays and lesbians and trans folks... and to hear it, you have to seek it out. But hey, that's what the internet is fer!

Dettmar is a good writer though. I kinda wanna read his 33 and a third on "Entertainment!" because he appears to approach that album from the exact way Gang of Four would have: as a political artifact made by actors socially conditioned by time and place. "I wish he'd stop talking about Foucault and talk about the music." Dude, have you even LISTENED to Gang of Four?

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so entertaining it's hard to call it cultural criticism, but it does incisively speak of not just rock, but American culture of the past 60 years (it was published in 2006), the burgeoning phenomenon of the suburban American teenager and their critics, and a sometimes-blistering rebuttal of much of the Conservative establishment in which the author grew up. The main point is rock must establish the ongoing reports of its own demise in order to delineate an identity--which only serves to help keep it alive and, more than that, to keep challenging its audience and growing in vital and unexpected ways. Dettmar does so with grace and a beautiful wit. I am not sure this is the definitive biography of rock in this country, but it is beyond doubt a deeply felt and keenly intelligent look, taken from a completely different perspective than any other, and an invaluable book in its own right.

[Jade Elwess]

Author is one of my teachers from my English grad program at SIU. He is equally versed in both James Joyce and Radiohead, so this book should be interesting.