Rock and the Pop Narcotic

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Rock and the Pop Narcotic is a 1991 book of popular music criticism by Joe Carducci. (Revised edition 1995.)

Rock and the Pop Narcotic is perhaps the only book of popular music criticism that attempts to achieve a genuine aesthetic of rock music. Other works, such as Richard Meltzer's The Aesthetics of Rock or Simon Frith's Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, either focus on lyrical content or on the sociology of the music's listeners. Rock and the Pop Narcotic is both a critique of the sociological approach and a polemic in favour of the music's artistic qualities.

1 The book's argument
2 Responses
3 See also
- 3.1 Sources
- 3.2 External links

[edit] The book's argument

Carducci seeks to distinguish rock music from pop music.

He regards the rock as an "artistic form" and the pop music as, if anything, a marketing concept. Rock, in Carducci's view, is "rock and roll music made conscious of itself as a small band music".

Unlike most writers on pop music, he has no truck with the idea that popularity is an index of quality; this attitude leads him to dismiss many major performers, such as U2 and Bruce Springsteen, as artistically null. On the other hand, his obsessive search for music that displays the qualities he regards as intrinsic to rock music leads him to champion such relatively obscure bands as Saint Vitus, Bloodrock, Sproton Layer and The Sylvia Juncosa Band.

Notably, however, Carducci's argument does not remove from consideration (either on terms of influence, or of quality) bands whose popularity soared during the '80s; ZZ Top's inclusion, and Carducci's positive response to their music, complicate his quantity-sold/quality-inherent position.

[edit] Responses

The book was originally published in a relatively small edition in 1991. In 1994, Carducci revised it and it was republished by Henry Rollins' 2.13.61 press.

The initial reaction from much of the mainstream rock press was largely a mixture of indifference and hostility. Carducci's tendency was directly counter to the politically progressive and relatively mainstream attitude of such writers as Dave Marsh or Greil Marcus, neither of whom answered the charges Carducci made against them (of ignoring quality music for political reasons).

Only Robert Christgau in the Village Voice praised it in public, although his praise was tempered somewhat by his description of it as "important but not terribly good". Other reviewers took issue with what they perceived as Carducci's homophobia and right-wing politics.

During the rest of the 1990s the book gradually acquired cult status, with record producer Simon Napier-Bell citing it as one of his ten favourite music books in the UK's Guardian newspaper in 2005. Clinton Heylin included two chapters in The Penguin Anthology of Rock Writing, with the remark, "Rock and the Pop Narcotic...may well be the most important critique on rock music written in the last 10 years."