Histories Of Pop Music

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Are any in print? Good? Bad? How far back do they go and when do they stop? I was looking in a bookshop with a fairly large 'Popular Music' section and there seemed to be zero one-volume histories available.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, you've identified a hole in the market, Tom, and I think you are the man to fill it! ;-)

― Psycho Kate (kate), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:07 (twenty-two years ago)

No way, I'm too shakey on the pre-50s stuff and not interested enough in the 60s. Though I can think of a couple of ILX names who could.

I just found it interesting - maybe pop's too diverse now, maybe the idea of a history of The Whole Damn Thing just doesn't have any appeal.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:16 (twenty-two years ago)

there is

History of Rock Music by Scaruffi
http://www.scaruffi.com/history/long.html
but this focuses more on the marginal/esoteric/innovative and not chart positions/big selling popular/pop music

A History of Rock Music : 1951-2000
by piero scaruffi

format: Paperback
Size : 6 x 9
Pages: 566
ISBN: 0-595-29565-7
Published: Oct-2003

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I still love the hell out of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, second revised edition from 1979. (avoid the c. 1991 redux, whose updates are hasty and boring.) I picked it up recently, having not looked at it since high school, and what amazed me is how non-rockist it is in a lot of ways; long essays on Al Green and Elton John and David Bowie at a time when none of them were considered (by RS at least) the kind of canon-fodder they'd later become, and the tone is *far* less reverent than you'd expect from an RS commission. Plus a lot of the essays are really well written, particularly Greil Marcus on the Beatles, Robert Christgau on Al Green, and Lester Bangs on the Doors and garage rock.

For the story to now, uh . . . I don't think there's any one comprehensive book, really.

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Scaruffi lists in
Preface
http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt0.html

Main Bibliography

Bertoncelli Riccardo & Rizzi Cesare: Enciclopedia Rock (1987)
Christgau, Robert: Christgau's Record Guide (1981)
Clarke, Donald: Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (1989)
Erlewine, Michael: All Music guide (1994)
Gillett, Charlie: The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (1970)
Hardy, Phil & Laing Dave: Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music (1990)
Pareles, Jon: The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (1983)
Prenderast, Mark: The Ambient Century (2000)
Robbins, Ira: Trouser Press Record Guide (1985)
Robbins, Ira: Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock (1997)
Scaruffi, Piero: Storia della Musica Rock (1991)
Southern, Eileen: The Music of Black Americans (1971)

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:35 (twenty-two years ago)

It certainly has its flaws, but I really like "The Rise And Fall of Popular Music" by Donald Clarke (available in full online here: http://www.musicweb.uk.net/RiseandFall/) which peters out in the 70s and probably works on a definition of popular music which most ILx0rs wouldn't recognise. It could be funnier.

I'm not convinced that a sensible timeline-based history of post-50s pop could ever be a good read because there are too many stories happening at any one time. You're always going to end up with too much "meanwhile, in Kingston..."

I was hoping the last Paul Morley book ("in the shape of a city", remember) would deal with this, but it didn't: instead it lost itself in (admittedly disrupted) timelines and lists. I was hoping he'd end up with a plan of a city with pop in the middle and pop genres as suburbs. And a map!

OK, perhaps not a map.

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I still love the hell out of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, second revised edition from 1979. (avoid the c. 1991 redux, whose updates are hasty and boring.)

but the update has a chuck eddy essay on metal!

the 1979 edition has my two favorite pieces of rockwriting ever: nik cohn on phil spector (which i've raved about on this board before) and greil marcus's original essay on punk (including that amazing description of "holidays in the sun" that he recycled in that other book of his).

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I think that Donald Clarke book would have most ILXor's reaching for a shotgun (except Geir perhaps).

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 10:57 (twenty-two years ago)

... which is a good thing, right Billy?

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 11:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Longer thoughts on this.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 11:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I want to read that Donald Clarke book by the way.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 11:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Piero Scaruffi - is this guy for real? I get the impression he thinks he's the new Da Vinci.

― 39 Steps + 40 Winks (39 Steps + 40 Winks), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:03 (twenty-two years ago)

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/music/collier.php

This is an excellent overview.

― slb, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:09 (twenty-two years ago)

There are a few options for interesting histories of pop, I think:

i) 'Geistesgeschichte' (stories of a spirit? I got the word from Richard Rorty, who got it from Hegel I imagine) - the idiosyncratic writer defines an elusive Spirit of Pop which he pursues across a range of historical terrain. Agreeing with it isn't the point, rather the point is what spellbinding and novel connections it manages to suggest. I guess 'Lipstick Traces' is a good example.

ii) Microhistories of specific campaigns - eg Dave Cavanagh's 'My Magpie Eyes', focussed on a particular group of people in a particular place in a particular time.

iii) Deconstructive histories - eg Morley's W&M, which aim to expand and explode our understanding of what constitutes the subject matter.

I'm not sure a would-be authoritative disinterested survey of such a disputed and complex field is ever going to be satisfactory.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Do you know of any other examples of your (iii), JtN?

Do you think W&M succeedded in expanding or exploding 'our' understanding of etc etc.?

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Is 'Energy Flash' another example of (ii)? I don't know the book well enough. Actually it is more like (i) I think.

I think the jury is still out, having a fag, on W&M. The cumulative intention of all the lists was surely to place eg Kylie in thousands of new, exciting and provocative contexts. But it seems to have just given lots of people a headache.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

this is an interesting overview of: progressive music
http://www.gepr.net/genre2.html
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
ORGANIZATION
ROCK
Symphonic Rock/Progressive Rock/"Prog"
Forms Tangential and Peripheral to Symphonic Rock/Progressive Rock
Avant Progressive/Avant Rock
On the Way to Jazz ...
JAZZ / JAZZ ROCK / FUSION
Jazz Pioneers
Fusion
Kozmigroov
Funk
Experimental, Free and Avant-Jazz
Indo-Fusion
On the Way to Folk ...
FOLK / FOLK ROCK
Styles of Folk and Folk Rock
The Influence of Traditional and Ethnic Music
On the Way to Electronic and Beyond ...
ELECTRONIC
Pioneers
Schools of Electronic Music
UNCLASSIFIED
APPENDIX (Heavy Metal)

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I think there are lots of (ii)s and a few - but not enough - (i)s. I'm struggling to think of any other (iii)s.

Maybe a couple of Mr. Eddy's books, which I don't know well, achieve (iii)ness by masquerading as (i)s and (ii)s?

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the idea of a disinterested critical history of pop is a non-starter, yes. But that's not neccessarily the same as a disinterested history of pop.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Isn't criticism, or at least judgement, implied in the process of selecting what you cover. And in the genre of the sentences (see Hayden White, 'Tropics of Discourse') you write about them, though?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:38 (twenty-two years ago)

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl1902680550d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=7chfj8%24kqm%241%40taliesin.netcom.net.uk&rnum=1

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:41 (twenty-two years ago)

a trip down Memory lane:
Tom in 1999
"A STRANGE FEAR GRIPPED ME": THE RISE AND FALL OF BRITISH ALTERNATIVE
MUSIC

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, of course, but the vulgarities of overt judgements can still be avoided!

I think your i/ii/iii suggestions are excellent for stories of pop that in some sideways sense capture its spirit, but it would be odd to think that pop is somehow immune to or can learn nothing from more traditional or academic modes of writing history.

xpost - that was NOT an attempt to write 'pop history', by the way!

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:43 (twenty-two years ago)

which is a good thing, right Billy?

Depends who you use it on ;-)

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:52 (twenty-two years ago)

taking of Geir,

A HISTORY OF POP
By Geir Hongro
http://home.online.no/~knhongro/Geir/pop/History.htm

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 12:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Idly skimming through it, I found sentences in Donald Clarke's book that were absolutely hair-raising...seems like he could've used an editor. You may want also to avoid or voyeuristically peek through Martha Bayles' *Hole in the Soul,* as her view is that pop music fell into nihilism (a brief summary of where her head is at) at some point in the seventies if not much earlier.

I can't think of one I've unabashedly liked. Of the ones I do, Palmer's *Rock & Roll: An Unruly History* (which is kinda close to Geistesgeschichte) and the Rolling Stone Illustrated History books are superb (Palmer's boho sympathies are especially welcome) but lack the kind of grand sweep and comprehensiveness that I really really want to see in a rock book one day. (On the other hand, I've idly joked a few times I'd love to write a 120-page history of rock & roll that avoided all specific reference to people or movements.) The Rolling Stone *Rock of Ages,* even considering its fairly canonical take on the subject is...well, it's enjoyable, for what it is. I can't get more blandly non-committal than that.

Joe S. Harrington's *Sonic Cool* is a cancre sore on the lip of rock criticism.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 13:18 (twenty-two years ago)

When I was living in Brussels, I found a book which might fit what Tom is asking for. Not remotely an academic tome, it's more in the vein of those "Readers Digest Guide To The Second World War" books you can buy in Marks & Spencer (perfect bound, large pages with black and white or colour pictures on every page, a discrete subject discussed every 2-3 pages) only the subject is 20th century popular music.

IIRC the first 20 or so pages consider some of the antecedents of pop - opera, folk, music hall & cabaret, drawing room songs, etc., takes in the invention of the gramophone and then goes forward from there. And it stops in the present (well, 1999).

It's all in French of course.

― Jeff W (zebedee), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 13:21 (twenty-two years ago)

If you're interested in pre-rock pop, Christgau recommends some books in this Salon article:

http://dir.salon.com/books/bag/2000/10/27/christgau/index.html?sid=990205

― Not That Chuck, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 14:51 (twenty-two years ago)

>[Martha Bayles] discusses her choices and why, ten years after writing [Hole in Our Soul], she thinks things might be looking up.

Pyook. Of course: a decent -- nay, saintly -- soul is finally in the White House and his immaculate minions are riding heard over the entire country. *How* on earth could the culture still be going to hell?

― Dock Miles (Dock Miles), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

It is amazing to think that JtN might have spelled that Hegelian word correctly. Personally, I cannot tell.

I like JtN's schemata though... maybe it is itself an... *example* of one of its modes.

Cor!

This thread is good. Tim H is on it!!!!!

And he has given the same link to the same stuff, I think, that he gave me, back in... September 2002, when I asked the same question!!

― the blissfox, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Isn't there a Faber Book of Popular Music or something?

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, yes, Clarke is a fuddy duddy and likely to make most ILM posters throw the book across the room at least once. Still, I have found no better single overview of pop's evolution up through the early 20th century, at which numerous other sources can take over.

― Lee G (Lee G), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:07 (twenty-two years ago)

>Isn't there a Faber Book of Popular Music or something?

Well, there is this:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0571168485/qid=1080141076/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-5161860-0691003?v=glance&s=books

Which I found to be almost 900 pages of slog-it-out. Not nearly as entertaining as *The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD*. And of course, that's not even a history.

― Dock Miles (Dock Miles), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Simon Napier-Bell's "Black Vinyl White Powder" fits into the i) category -- a subjective history of British pop music. It's slanted toward the stuff he was working on, but it never pretends to be objective, so I wasn't bothered by that. It was a good read.

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I agree with comment upthread that "Sonic Cool" is one of the worst examples of pop-music writing ever, a joke.
The old Rolling Stone Illustrated History isn't bad, altho the original oversized edition left out lots of stuff, as it was done in 1976.
Something called "Origins of the Popular Style" is a great overview of the sources of current pop music and thankfully free of the usual rock-and-roll idiocies of most pop-music writers. As far as the classic rock and roll era goes, Cohn's "Rock from the Beginning" remains the best single work, I don't care about the inaccuracies. Been re-reading Christgau's "Any Old Way" and he's just such a fucking dork about everyhing, really insufferable. I hear good things about something called "Rock and the Pop Narcotic" but haven't read it.
The trouble as I see it is that the guys who are good on pre-rock pop, like that Will Friedwald guy, are just so blind about rock and roll, and of course it works the other way as well. I myself have no time for people who can't get with a unified history of pop music and who insist on concentrating on "rock music." No sense of history. It's too big a subject for one book, although some synthesizer of genius could do it, I guess. James Miller and DeCurtis and DeRogatis all make me barf; Marcus smokes his pipe; and Meltzer and Tosches are so narrow, although they're the best to read and at least aren't so stuck-up about everything. Reading Bangs is like reading Pauline Kael--interesting human being back there, but not very good role models for people wanting to get the big picture. Chuck Eddy is fun to read too but I just don't understand someone who takes such pains to put down so many cool things all in the name of some "populist" impulse; ditto Dave Marsh. Right, you're from Detroit or whatever.

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Aw come on, Great Pop Things! Sorted!

― Sarah (starry), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Faber Book of Pop is a good compendium of contemporary writings from 50's - early 90's

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Damn, Sarah is OTM and then some!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:45 (twenty-two years ago)

"Chuck Eddy is fun to read too but I just don't understand someone who takes such pains to put down so many cool things all in the name of some "populist" impulse; ditto Dave Marsh. Right, you're from Detroit or whatever."

Maybe because we'd rather listen to music that's GOOD than music that's merely "COOL"? (Actually, I don't know if anybody ever compared me to Dave Marsh before; there's lots of stuff that he thinks is good that I don't, so I don't think of our writing as having much in common. But either way, "Right, you're from Detroit or whatever" totally cracked me up. And I'm glad I'm fun to read.)

― chuck, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 18:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Energy Flash is far more (iii) than (i) or (ii). It's not really (ii) because it goes over a pretty disparate collection of styles of electronic music over about 20 years all around the world. And it's not really (i) because... actually, no, it is (i) now I think about it. This isn't really worth posting.

― Jamie Fake (the pirate king), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 18:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll second any Robert Palmer mention

― sexyDancer, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 19:55 (twenty-two years ago)

(Personally, I think histories of popular music in general concentrate WAY too much on "Addicted to Love"/Power Station period Robert Palmer to the detriment of "Bad Case of Loving You"/"Sneaking Sally Through the Alley" period Robert Palmer. But hey, maybe that's just me.)

― chuck, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 19:58 (twenty-two years ago)

hoho m*rk prenderg*st

"origins of the popular style" is by peter van der merwe: it's not as good as it thinks it is – the guy's really no thinker – but it has a LOT of interesting stuff in it... it helps if you can read music (actually it would have helped PvdM if three days in seven - at random let's say, so he couldn't dodge it - he WASN'T able to read music)

lipstick traces is a terrific topological model for thinking about how the history you're after might actually FLOW - haha except it only links like abt seven items in six centuries, so a donald-clarke-sized opus wd be truly LONG (which is not very intrinsically pop) (invisible republic is actually too SHORT for the subject it picked i think)

mr eddy's "accidental evolution" has a similarly smart – and actually come to think of it not morphologically dissimilar - solution, chapter-on-chapter, but again it's not exhaustive overview-wise (hullo mr eddy): it too wd have to be VERY LONG to be "complete" (i'm not sure that "complete" is a good thing, except as a dumb nervous hangover from disciplines that pop-as-a-thing turns upsidedown by just being thought about)

carducci's book has such a massively stupid overall unifying thesis that i've never got very far into it

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)

john dix 'stranded in paradise' does a nice job covering 30 years of new zealand rock/pop.

― keith m (keithmcl), Thursday, 25 March 2004 02:05 (twenty-two years ago)

My mate's done this which whilst not about pop, is a history...

First ILM post ever. Krikey. Back to ILE I go...

― Dave B (daveb), Thursday, 25 March 2004 13:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Picked up The NME Rock And Pop History Illustrated Yearbook 1978 edition in a secondhand shop recently. It was written by Nick Logan and Roy Carr and for it's time it's a briliant book, wittily and insightfully written with real meticulous research and very comprehensive biographys of every act and movement up to punk. Some of the punk acts are included but the cut off point must be around June 77 as Never Mind The Bollocks isn't mentioned in the Sex Pistols entry. Fascinating to get the retrospective slants at that point in time on many of the 60's acts. Great photos too.

― David Gunnip (David Gunnip), Thursday, 25 March 2004 15:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm obligated to point out the following;

The traditional -- APPENDIX (Heavy Metal) -- in books like that has recently been bounced by SOUND of the BEAST: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal

Table of contents, dazzling imagery, and flickering flames available at the site.

― Ian Christe (Ian Christe), Thursday, 25 March 2004 21:11 (twenty-two years ago)

three weeks pass...

Has anyone read 'Sonata for Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life' by Geoffrey O’Brien? The reviews I have read make it sound like exactly my cup of mint tea.

(BTW: Another example of category iii in my typology upthread - though not about pop - is Godard's 'Histoire(s) du cinema'.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 15 April 2004 15:06 (twenty-one years ago)

(Nice review of the O'Brien here, by the way.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 15 April 2004 15:12 (twenty-one years ago)

'The O'Brien'

― the mylesfox, Thursday, 15 April 2004 15:51 (twenty-one years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.