Both This Is Spinal Tap and Repo Man are cult films that make fun of a rock youth culture, metal and punk respectively. Repo Man is the better of the two (again, my original listing of the best pop music films is chronological , not in terms of quality). One reason is that while This is Spinal Tap . . . . Continue Reading »
Mr. S. was the alias of the Jack Black-played rocker/teacher character in The School of Rock . That film is one of my favorites from my list of best films about popular music . Very funny, but I also like the way presents an intelligent teaching about rock’s role in our society. Really, it . . . . Continue Reading »
Since I want films about any and every sort of pop music since the advent of jazz, and about the rock music of 1966 to the present, for this topic I’m sort of overlooking the rock v. rock n’ roll distinction I insist upon elsewhere . And since what I really want are films that convey what . . . . Continue Reading »
This is the conclusion of the long series of Songbook posts kicked off by my simple observation that many bands championed as representative of new music , such as Crystal Castles, really aren’t . While many themes have been touched upon, overall, Songbook posts #36-51 have been about 1) . . . . Continue Reading »
As a book on pop-music, Simon Reynolds’ Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past earns a high B, but does not rate among my very favorites, being too beholden to Rock attitudes, and too long-winded for its own good. Some of its detail is welcome—I found Reynold’s . . . . Continue Reading »
SMiLE was to be the follow-up to Pet Sounds , but its recording was apparently so arduous for The Beach Boys, the session musicians, and the increasingly unstable Brian Wilson, that he called it off in the Spring of ‘67. Driblets of the studio material were released over the years, Wilson . . . . Continue Reading »
Do you like “Do You Like Worms?” ? Let’s try an experiment: I’d like readers who have not really heard the Beach Boys’ SMiLE , their ambitious 60s album only recently “released” in a Brian Wilson-approved form, to listen to two of the most popular songs from it, . . . . Continue Reading »
When I hear the harpsichord in Vivaldi or Bach, if I picture anything, it would be rococo drawing rooms—George Washington asking Jane Austen for the pleasure of a dance. When I hear it in pop, perhaps thanks to Peanuts and the great Vince Guaraldi , I picture green lawns and white . . . . Continue Reading »
It was a year ago that I unleashed my first Carl’s Rock Songbook entry upon the world. It’s time to look back and see what’s unfolded so far. Maybe another day I’ll link all of these, but for now I’d call your attention to the SEARCH FIRST THINGS box over on the upper . . . . Continue Reading »
It goes without saying that Fred Siegel should be reading my Rock Songbook, which underlines the middle-class mediocrity of most rock, even as it defends, with respect to music, the low, the high, and even the middle-brow version of the high. He could go to my last post , about the tensions between . . . . Continue Reading »
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