An articulate elucidation of rock 'n' roll as the heir apparent to
19th-century romantic pantheism. Pattison, who clearly loves rock
'n' roll and just as clearly fancies himself a Peck's Bad Boy of
academia by dealing in the subject, ironically rests his claim that
rock is a respectable area for study by rooting it in
disrespectability. Rock, he claims, springs from classic
"vulgarity" and pantheism. After a quick survey of the two from
Horace onwards, he combines them into the single operative concept
of "vulgar pantheism" - democracy's untranscendant, indiscriminate
ether, heralded by Wordsworth, Whitman, and Shelley - and proclaims
that "the music of its ritual is rock." Pattison thankfully follows
this rather obscure philosophical underpinning with an entertaining
and informed look at the many myths of rock, each of which he
traces back to 19th-century romantic/pantheistic roots: that black
music spawned rock; the emphasis in rock of emotion over thought;
rock's celebration of sexuality and the satyriasis of its
male-dominated pantheon; rock's rebellion against formal schooling;
its worship of the technological. Armed with a barrage of song
lyrics, Pattison makes from all this a convincing case for rock as
the central aesthetic manifestation of our culture. Pattison writes
amusingly, and his rock 'n' roll fever is infectious. But his
thesis seems a bit silly and peripheral; Ray Davies of the Kinks,
quoted by Pattison, puts it well: "I was standing at the bar the
other day and a guy came up to me and said, 'Ray, I like your
songs, I think you're a very underrated song writer, a poet
really.' So I hit him over the head with a bottle." If rock were
anthropomorphic, it'd probably hit Pattison over the head with a
bottle, too. But, judging from his book, and to his credit, he'd
understand why. (Kirkus Reviews)
The Triumph of Vulgarity in a thinker's guide to rock 'n' roll.
Rock music mirrors the tradition of nineteenth-century Romaniticsm,
Robert Patison says. Whitman's "barbaric yawp" can still be heard
in the punk rock of the Ramones, and the spirit that inspired Poe's
Eureka lives on in the lyrics of Talking Heads. Rock is vulgar,
Pattison notes, and vulgarity is something that high culture has
long despised but rarely bothered to define. This book is the first
effort since John Ruskin and Aldous Huxley to describe in depth
what vulgarity is, and how, with the help of ideas inherent in
Romaniticism, it has slipped the constraints imposed on it by
refined culture and established its own loud arts.
The book disassembles the various myths of rock: its roots in
black and folk music; the primacy it accords to feeling and self;
the sexual omnipotence of rock stars; the satanic predilictions of
rock fans; and rock's high-voltage image of the modern Prometheus
wielding an electric guitar. Pattison treats these myths as vulgar
counterparts of their originals in refined Romantic art and offers
a description and justification of rock's central place in the
social and aesthetic structure of modern culture. At a time when
rock lyrics have provoked parental outrage and senatorial hearings,
The Triumph of Vulgarity is required reading for anyone interested
in where rock comes from and how it works.
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