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FLOWERS IN THE DUSTBIN

THE RISE OF ROCK AND ROLL, 1947-1977

In his monumental account of popular music, Miller, a music-journalist-turned-educator (Political Science/New School; Democracy Is in the Streets, 1987, etc.), ties together several intellectual and cultural strands—Norman Mailer’s myth of the White Negro, Tom Wolfe’s radical chic, H.G. Koenigsberger’s theories on music and religion, Wagner’s significance to Bismarckian Germany—all without bleaching out the raw essence of the music. Beginning with what he calls the first rock ‘n” roll record, “Good Rockin” Tonight,” by Wynonie Harris, Miller traces the development of the techniques, technologies, and ethos that would synthesize a mishmash of “race music” (as songs recorded by African-American artists were called in the late “40s), teenage angst, and old-fashioned medicine-show hucksterism into a sophisticated medium that, more than a half-century later, serves as “the closest thing we have to a musical lingua franca.” While ordered chronologically, the narrative jumps from place to place. Rather than appearing discordant, the structure takes on the insistent beat of its subject. As a work of history, this effort appears to contain little original scholarship—most artists” quotes come from secondhand sources, albeit strictly authoritative ones. As social commentary, however, few books, if any, come close to this one. Miller re-creates the listeners” exhilaration upon hearing the first bars of truly revolutionary music. And, possibly most important, he seems to have little trouble reconciling that a largely manufactured (or, at least, highly manipulated) form of expression had such a profound effect on individuals, even those who knew they were perhaps more a target market than a genuine social movement. Or, as the author observes about the unruly antics of performers from Little Richard to the Rolling Stones to the Sex Pistols: “What was “unruly,” in short, was not rock ‘n” roll as a cultural form, but rather the central fantasy it was exploiting.” A work both stunningly cogent and thoroughly enjoyable.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-684-80873-0

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999

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I AM OZZY

An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.

The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.

Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.

An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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