A Da Capo original: Thirty years' worth of music writing by one of the first and greatest rock scribes and a fiercely imaginative cultural critic.. He is one of the inventors of rock criticism. His first book, The Aesthetics of Rock (acclaimed by Greil Marcus as "a disemboweling of rock's soft white underbelly"), became an instant cult classic when published in 1970. And for the next thirty years he fearlessly expanded the boundaries of music writing. Now he has collected the best of his prodigious output into a gonzo sampler of the reviews, profiles, interviews, and essays that form the heart of his rockwriter legacy. Traveling from psychedelia to the "dinosaur-rot early '70s" to the redeeming majesty of punk and the constant solace of jazz, this will stand as a remarkable document of an era by a singular voice in music writing.
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About the Author
Richard Meltzer is the author of over a dozen books, including "A Whore Just Like the Rest"-winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award-and innumerable articles. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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4.1 out of 5 stars
11 reviews
16 of 21 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A mixed bag
30 July 2000
By Douglas J. Bassett
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Joe Carducci and Byron Coley are better interpreters of rock music. Lester Bangs was certainly a better writer. If you're looking for good rock writing/good rock interpretation you're not going to find it here, Blue Oyster Cult lyrics or no BOC lyrics.
Meltzer's consistently ambivalent position about what he was doing, married to some rather bogus notions about what rock music actually is (I suspect he's the prime founder of the "rock music is attitude" school) make the first half of the book incredibly annoying, as well as a real chore to get through. Meltzer seemed to interpret rock writing as basically license to get away with as much as possible -- as such you can't rely on his work for anything except a glimpse into his skull. I find it amusing that he consistently cracks on Robert Christgau -- I'm no fan of Christgau's myself, but strip away the stylistic quirks and the two men have much in common (both men are former "angry young rebels" who've become crusty old fuddy-duddys; both men are more interested in the surfaces being presented than the music beneath them; both men have ultimately very conventional outlooks lurking underneath the bohemianism).
I'm giving this three stars, though. For one thing, Meltzer's pieces have become legendary, and it's damn nice to have such a representative selection available. For another, Meltzer did improve as a writer, and the second half of the book is far superior to the first. Meltzer is quite interesting on jazz music -- I would have liked to have seen more of that sort of thing. (I remember he published some jazz reviews in Forced Exposure.)
Final verdict? If you're "hip" enough to know who Richard Meltzer is, you'll probably want this volume. There are good things to be found here, just less than I'd hoped.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Death by Ego
10 Mar 2004
By wordnat
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Well, here's something new: a music critic who doesn't like music -- kind of makes me want to go to this year's National Embroidery Festival and write 50,000 words on it just for kicks. In truth, Meltzer's a lightweight bore. I'm sure in 1966 (or whenever he started writing about rock music, I forget exactly when it was and the thought of flipping back through this lame, vindictive volume again to check my facts fills me with dread) his stuff was "interesting" -- maybe even "shocking" -- but now it all sounds dated, disingenuous, and dumb. (Hey! That last line, with all the alliteration, was pretty good -- maybe I'll send it into CREEM magazine.....naw, Christgau will hate it.)
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meltzer Sounds Like a Really Good Sandwich
1 Oct 2000
By Edd S. Hurt
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Very funny book, I laughed almost all the way through. Richard Meltzer is good on Connie Francis' "Grandes Exitos del Cine de los Años 60" his review of which I can't imagine any editor turning down. Meltzer is the perfect antidote to all rock and roll pieties and his writing helped me to re-appreciate Love, Moby Grape, the Beach Boys. Great piece as well on Lawrence Welk Hotel and Resort. Who else would say of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" that it isn't "a tenth as rhythmically interesting--let alone exciting--as the first three bars of 'West End Blues' by Louis Armstrong"? Or: "That's what 'rock history' is: collective bad memory"? As many readers have commented, his writing got better over the years but I still like his early stuff--actually read "The Aesthetics of Rock" and like it even though not one of my friends I lent it to ever managed to read it. Oh well, there is that great picture of the Dave Clark Five contemplating the immensity of New York with Meltzer's comment: "Vastly susceptible, the Dave Clark Five is just generally baffled as well as baffling, as exemplified by this captioned photograph:" Generally baffled, baffling, this is some of the best music writing ever, right up there with Tosches' "Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll."
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4.1 out of 5 stars
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