Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
rock and roll ethos, 10 Mar 1999
By A Customer
What makes Sarah Vowell special is a belief in music. Not just alternative, or punk, or whatever label you want to slap on her, but an all out mad fantasy that you can hear something and it will make you different. A song that can "cut you in half," as she says. When I hear the title of radio on, I hear "Roadrunner," and jonathan richman shouting triumphantly "c'mon modern lovers..." and then they *all* get into the chant. It's all night stop'n'shops and hedonism and searching, and above all it's chaos and confusion. She knows that she'll never find the perfect station, but it's the thirst for meaning in static filled broadband melee that drives the book, and captures the reader. Her detractors should remember that in Rock And Roll, it's not whether you're right or wrong, but how you feel.
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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
"Radio On" Puts Reader Off!, 16 Oct 1998
By A Customer
Vowell has some insight into her subject, probably about as much as the average radio listener. To (over) compensate, she makes grasping, unsubstantiated comparisons to other media. The tone is self-absorbed, which is fine when the author has more personality than this one.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
uneven but entertaining, 9 Dec 1997
By A Customer
This author can really turn a phrase, but Sarah Vowell will probably be embarassed to read this book twenty years from now because of the lack of balance in her political and cultural commentary. She is such a knee jerk youthful liberal that she hypocritically decries Nina Totenberg's restraint of a liberal caller to a show when the caller "riffs on like a jazz musician who hasn't noticed that the rest of the group has returned to the original melody line," as I paraphrase her description just a few pages earlier of Rush Limbaugh's conservative tirades. I am no dittohead and can appreciate a youthful liberal outlook, but her disgust for the kind Oklahoma women who bring "mere" casseroles to Oklahoma City bombing victims is unnecessarily cruel. The book is a page turner though, and Vowell shines when she writes longer passages. Her critical reviews printed here show glimpses of Dorothy Parker-like wit. Another caveat: be prepared for lengthy paeans to Kurt Cobain, et al..Her quotes of grunge rocker lyrics unfortunately make the lyrics look crude and stupid in the face of her more clever writing. All in all, the book is good but her biases can be oppressive at times. Despite her someday embarassment predicted above, the reader will appreciate that, like Neil Young and unlike NPR's Bob Edwards, by embarassing herself she has created a work of art rather than a Grisham-like product.
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