On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word

by Simon Frith

Overview

Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, both writers and teachers of popular music, have compiled the first comprehensive survey of critical approaches to pop music. Usefully divided by general theoretical category, On Record serves as a guide to the growing sophistication and shifting emphases in the field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900415053067
Publication date:	07/12/1990
Pages:	508
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin

Table of Contents

Preface; Part One: Groundworks; Listening to Popular Music, David Riesman; The Dialogue of Courtship in Popular Song, Donald Horton; The Young Audience, Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel; Part Two: From Subcultural to Cultural Studies; The Golden Age, Paul Willis; Style as Homology and Signifying Practice, Dick Hebdige; Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique, Angela McRobbie; Defending Ski-Jumers: A Critique of Theories of Youth Subcultures, Gary Clarke; Characterizing Rock Music Culture: The Case of Heavy Metal, Will Straw; Is There Rock After Punk? Lawrence Grossberg; Part Three: The Organization of the Music Business; Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Anlaysis of Cultural Industry Systems, Paul M. Hirsch; Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music, Richard A. Peterson and David G. Berger; Patterns of Change, Roger Wallis and Krister Malm; Part Four: The Creative Process; The Production of Success: An Antimusicology of the Pop Song, Antoine Hennion; From Craft to Art: The Case of Sound Mixers and Popular Music, Edward R. Kealy; The Realities of Practice, H. Stith Bennett; How Women Become Musicians, Mavis Bayton; Sample and Hold: Pop Music in the Digital Age of Reproduction, Andrew Goodwin; Part Five: Musicology and Semiotics; Start Making Sense! Musicology Wrestles with Rock, Susan McClary and Robert Walser; The Grain of the Voice, Roland Barthes; On Popular Music, Theodor W. Adorno; Second Thoughts on a Rock Aesthetic: The Band, Andrew Chester;Jingle: Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot, Mark W. Booth; Listen to MeDave Laing; Do-Talk and Don't-Talk: The Division of the Subject in Girl-Group Music, Barbara Bradby; Part Six: Music and Sexuality; Rock and Sexuality, Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie; Sexing Elvis, Sue Wise; Teenage Dreams, Sheryll Garratt; In Defense of Disco, Richard Dyer; Afterthoughts, Simon Frith; Part Seven: Reading the Stars; Rock Music, the Star System, and the Rise of Consumerism, David Buxton; Rocket to Russia, Tom Carson; In Praise of Kate Bush, Holly Kruse; New Pop and Its Aftermath, Simon Reynolds; Corrupting the Absolute, Greil Marcus; Part Eight : Last Words: The Fans Speak; Starlust, Fred Vermorel and Judy Vermorel; Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

This comprehensive anthology of serious writings on popular music should prove to be a breakthrough in the field. Frith and Goodwin have assembled an excellent compendium of articles that examine popular music from sociological, feminist, and deconstructionist vantages (to name a few). Because they are ``concerned with arguments about music and its meaning,'' they ignore articles on rock and pop music history as well as ``judgments of personal taste,'' such as reviews. Instead, they examine multiple aspects of music and the music industry in eight sections, each prefaced with a fine bibliographic essay. The articles themselves, spanning four decades, are uniformly fine; remarkably, few seem ``dated.'' Highly recommended with a caveat: this is not a ``typical'' piece of rock music fluff but a serious work more at home in academic libraries.-- James Stephenson, Society of the Cincinnati Lib., Washington, D.C.

Library Journal

‘... the collection as a whole recognises the pleasures of pop and helps us to understand them.' - Q Magazine

From the Publisher