Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic

I'm probably thinking of a different book entirely.

This is probably the best, most interesting book on rock i've ever read. It's got tons and tons of problems, don't get me wrong, but Carducci's a great, inflammatory writer and it's really fun to read. I wish he wouldn't spend like a third of the freakin thing dissing the rockcritocracy (not that i have any great love for it, i'd just rather he spend more time on music), but some of his theoretical stuff and nearly all of his historical stuff is first-rate. The second half, where he basically gives an almost complete analysis of the development of the heavy aesthetic in rock from its origins to the very early nineties, is fantastic.

His writing on actual music = classic
His writing on social stuff = less so, though it can be very funny

Very very "rockist," and though I've really come to question a lot of his thinking (particularly the emphasis on process vs. finished music), he does make good arguments worth thinking about.

Caveat: not read it for about 10 years.

i'll *totally* question this. i remember the meat puppets and black flag and the minutemen getting way better reviews and more press than, say, a flock of seagulls or dead and alive or yello or nena or falco at the time. for every SST or Touch & Go band who didn't get press, there were several good synth-pop or new wave bands who didn't either. (And there were many *shitty* SST bands, too, believe me.)

but yeah, there were many bad sst bands

Sure, there were bad bands on SST. So what?

xpost to Chuck

I do agree Nena (for one song) and Falco (for one or two songs) and A Flock of Seagulls (for a few) got more MTV time than most SST types, though. (I also think they deserved it.) (Though then again, how often was "TV Party" on MTV? Just during specialty shows, maybe? As were Husker Du and Sonic Youth and possibly others.)

And did Nena and Falco and Yello really sell more records, overall in the U.S., than the Meat Puppets or Black Flag or the Minutemen? Somehow I doubt it, despite having two hit singles total between them.

> it was my understanding that outside of the fanzine level and the occasional token review, they didn't get a ton of press,

I had a fanzine going at the time and was on the SST mailing list, along with lots of others. Hey, remember the loads of Mystic promos? Yikes!

Anyway, I was more aware that the underground music press was covering SST art, so much so that Black Flag appeared to a be a considerable draw in Philadelphia, easily rivalling second tier mainstream hard rock acts in the more upscale venues. So I buy Carducci's arguments about shunning by the people in the journo upper class who had no real excuses for doing it.

Didn't get invited to the Pazz 'n' Jop part until I started writing for a daily newspaper in the last of the 80's by which time the Black Flag and early SST records I would have ranked were well behind. Then dropped off the poll through most of the 90's and rejoined about 2000 +/- one year, I thin'.

Again, I'm primarily talking 81-84, when a band like Flag was at the peak of its powers, as opposed to some of the ass-covering that came later, when it didn't really matter so much.

Be interesting to do a breakout of the RS reviews section for the time period in question. Who wants to go to the big library and look through microfiche or whatever it's on, if it is.

Carducci also reserved quite a few whacks for the LA Weekly-types, BAM (I think) and the LA Times. I would have been surprised if the big daily covered SST in more than in the most miniscule fashion.
They don't do any real local hard rock now, evah, and haven't for years. If there's a novelty or joke to exploit, it will get in. Camp Freddy, the endless permutations of Metal Shop, the infrequent wretched emo or punk band who are deemed to be good boys, Weiland if he's getting out of jail, rehab or dressing like a girl in a good photo op.

The paper devotes some space -- usually a graf or less per band -- on Thursdays to strugglers who are doing sensitive things from Bohemia.

Occasionally, someone will be sent out to a show to furnish an
after hours hot washup.

"Out My Way" in only half an album -- a six-song EP lasting about twenty-four minutes -- but packed into its grooves are plenty of reasons why this young Phoenix trio may become the Creedence Clearwater Revival of the Eighties. Actually, "Other Kinds Of Love," with its droning vocals and folkish, spider-web guitars, sounds more like R.E.M. than CCR, and there isn't exactly a "Bad Moon Rising" or a "Proud Mary" on this record (although the wistful, bluesy title track from last year's Up On The Sun came close). But there is a zesty quality to the earthy sticks 'n' strings sound of singer-guitarist Curt Kirkwood; his brother, singer-bassist Cris Kirkwood; and drummer Derrick Bostrom that recalls John Fogerty's original coun try-beat concept. On Out My Way, the Meat Puppets demonstrate a wise-beyond-their-years grasp of American roots music that's fortified with bright, inventive arrangements.
Four years ago the Meat Puppets played nearly everything at breakneck punk velocity; their idea of a salute to tradition was a jokey disemboweling of "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds." The power in Out My Way's title track comes from a combination of its fiercely hypnotic groove, the catchy mantra chorus and Curt Kirkwood's clever layering of country-bop guitars, topped with snazzy rockabilly fills that would give most Nashville session aces a good scare. Even at its rather frisky pace, "Not Swimming Ground" captures the embryonic eloquence of the Puppets' songwriting (most of it by Curt Kirkwood). Fluid guitars echo a thoughtful soliloquy about past innocence and future fears, and the simple melody is capped with a brief but hopeful tag line. Slow the whole thing down by about a third, and you're a stone's thrown away from "Who'll Stop The Rain."
Although it ends with a playful thrashing of "Good Golly Miss molly," a reminder of the band's more raucous beginnings, Out My Way is a decisive step in the Meat Puppets' march away from one-dimentional punk to hearty, heartfelt pan-American rock & roll. With sounds and lyrics like these, greatness may only be one more album away.

-David Fricke (Rolling Stone, 1986)

The density is deceiving. Although "Warehouse" lands in your lap with all the gentility of a cinder block, Husker Du has cleverly dosed the knuckle-sandwich concentrate of Mould's fission-fuzz guitar and the jackhammer Norton-Hart pulse with offbeat sound effects, atypical instrumentation and rhythmic changeups that subtley fuel the blustery surge of the album. Rattlesnake-shake percussion and the church-bell chime of a glockenspiel heighten the metallic clamor of Hart's "Charity, Chastity, Prudence and Hope"; backward distortion and the sonar ping-ping-ping of a synthetically traded acoustic guitar accent the turbulet indecision in Mould's "No Reservations" [one of my faves on the whole thing--BMM]. "She Floated Away" ping-pongs between a dreamy waltzlike chorus and whiplash jazz, while "Actual Condition" is a not-quite-two-minute collision of Eddie Cochran bop and T. Rex glam crunch....

I'm refuting myself here to a certain degree.

The local thing for the SST bands was a different, though I suppose somewhat related, struggle, according to JC. Seem to recall that some of the first wave Hollywood Punk folks (your Craig Lees and Kristine McKennas) got entrenched at some of the more significant LA pubs and they just did not have time for the great unwashed South Bay types, again, until after the fact.

I do think that it isn't fair to suggest that it was solely limey-wave stuff that kept the real deal out of the mix. Lots of that stuff in R&TPN is gratuitous, of course. Chuck is certainly correct in mentioning BROOOOCE, etc. Thing is, IIRC (haven't read R&TPN in years), Springsteen gets more shots taken at him than anyone, so I think Carducci gets that base covered as well. I think his bottom line point is that a good portion of the most vital music being made at that time wasn't being dealt with by the Industry (so let's go beyond print press), despite numbers that would have suggested it should have been, so even the aesthetics don't matter. I personally don't find that to be an arguable point, but I suppose others may differ.

For a funny, if borderline insane take on this subject, I seem to recall Glenn Branca going off in a late period Forced Exposure interview about how Flag was set to become the new AC/DC (an opinion Ric Ocasek once shared), but The Man wouldn't let it happen.

I'm agreeing. By "Warehouse" I wasn't onboard.

If Black Flag could've been a "new AC/DC" it would have taken an Alberts and a much more even catalog. An Alberts-power management might have been able to help in that regard. Established bank-rolling powerhouse management was not an option for them. And that's part of The Man.

I know nothing of the inside dealings but I don't recall Carducci writing about anyone being made offers that were extended to much much lesser acts thought to be firmly in the mainstream or part of a "wing" that could crossover -- like rigidly orthodox heavy metal acts.

Why couldn't "TV Party" have been a dumb single heard everywhere? No particular reason. Bad luck and opportunities never extended are as good reasons as any.

He actually has nothing good to say about them (Living Colour success = liberal conspiracy, blahblahblah).

He does praise Muddy Waters and James Blood Ulmer (and zydeco comes up repeatedly!)

Apart from any arguments about media exposure I think there's a bigger point being missed: all of that "faggy" synthpop stuff simply sounded so cool and futuristic to kids in the '80s. I'm not sure seeing Black Flag on MTV would have changed my life much.

B*I*N*G*O*, Zack. If you saw that band (let's stick with Flag in this case, though I think it could apply to any of the others he worked with as well) live, you KNOW that there was so much more in the tank than what got put down on tape. I'm with George when he says that "production" isn't necessarily a one-standard-fits-all sort of thing. Records can work wonderfully well with a given band and a given approach in production that wouldn't necessarily hit "industry standard," you know? It's also absolutely true when he says that a name on the production credit line can mean so much in and of itself to a band's career, apart from any tangible, substantive improvement said name guy's work is providing to the overall whole.

That said, in this specific case, I think it's very much the case that Flag was underserved by the way they went about their recordings. I *still* think those records (well, let's say everything through "Slip It In," at least) are great, but the saddest thing is realizing how much greater they could have been with the right person at the controls. If you saw that band during that period, you know exactly what I'm talking about. We're not talking about needing studio wizardry here, either. A solid, workmanlike, "documentarian" approach would have served that band just fine.

my gf owns this book

kinda sucks imo but there are nuggets of truth to be found within

"The unifying theme of Flip Your Wig, which the Hüskers produced themselves, is that maintaining your sanity requires a major effort. Guitarist-singer Bob Mould repeats this idea in several songs, all spaced evenly over the LP: the album-opening title track, "Games," the antibourgeois "Private Plane" and the single, "Makes No Sense at All." "Flip Your Wig" says it's about "normal people going for a spin." Mould's appropriately flat, ordinary voice isn't softened by the usual echo and reverb, which adds the proper perspective to "Divide and Conquer." In this song, Mould attributes world malaise to the spread of muzak and nine-digit ZIP codes. The frustrations expressed by the Hüskers are universal, but two songs also mention their additional responsibility of being minor stars and a major cult. This uncharacteristic self-consciousness is a dangerous signal, in light of the band's everyman persona."

Ugh.

Tell me more about this book. Is it about "authenticity" crap like this?

The "authenticity" it's about is live human hands making rock music together. And it is a good book, because it presents a relatively coherent argument in that stuff's favor.

"...euro-rock and new wave got really heavy press coverage in comparison to the SST bands throughout the early 80s, no question."

I can't imagine arguing against this point. I was a kid in the very early eighties, and "euro-rock and new wave" bands were EVERYWHERE in the media culture I was exposed to. In pop magazines, in mail-order record-club catalogs, on the radio, on MTV. The Cars, Blondie, B-52s, Devo, Depeche Mode, the Buggles, Gary Numan, Human League, Soft Cell, Adam & the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, Eurythmics, etc. That was the pop moment, as far as us people outside the hipster/critic corridor were concerned. Along with REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, Styx, Prince, MJ, Crue, etc., I mean. Maybe you'd hear Ramones, Iggy Pop, Sex Pistols, The Clash from time to time, but nothing more fringey than that.

Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, those bands were around, but you had to hear them from friends or people in the know. They didn't exist ANYWHERE on TV, on the radio, in the national music/culture press.

Dunno that I buy the idea that American teens would have bit if the stuff had been out there to see/hear. But looking back, there's no way to know. A lost opportunity...

I can never find this book.

You can get it online pretty easily from Carducci's Wyoming stronghold. Reminds me, I still need to pick up a copy of Enter Naomi.

Enter Naomi is a fantastic book, and is very moving.

"...euro-rock and new wave got really heavy press coverage in comparison to the SST bands throughout the early 80s, no question."

Okay, I guess I can see this after all if you don't limit it to British techno-pop bands, and include Cars, Blondie, Devo, B-52s, etc. (all American bands with guitar players btw), and if you're talking more puff features in glossy magazines than positive reviews. But Huskers/Meat Puppets/Minutemen still got consistently better reviews in the States than the synthy Anglo-fop bands did, at least by '84 or so. So the "boo hoo life was so unfair to real American musicians" whining still strikes me as pretty unwarranted.

Are there ANY plans to reissue Husker Du?

Dunno that I buy the idea that American teens would have bit if the stuff had been out there to see/hear. But looking back, there's no way to know. A lost opportunity...

Had they taken the bite I wonder how these bands would've changed in terms of songwriting and record production? Say Black Flag didn't have their legal troubles and had a fairly good experience with major label distribution, would they have still gone down the sludge metal>harmolodics jazz metal route? Or was some of that Ginn's need to alienate a world that pissed him off? Obviously, he wanted some commercial attention. But when that didn't happen he blamed both corporate America and the insular hardcore scene.

What if the Nazis had won WWII? Dunno about the Ginn psychoanalysis (not arguing, just admitting ignorance), but 10 years later we all got to watch what happened when a bunch of similar bands, some of them coming up out of SST's stables, finally did get a shot at the brass ring.

Guess I gotta drop $28888 for this ancient paperback if I wanna read it.

Don't know how the f $28 was turned to that when I linked.

hm yeah i had just been digging around for carducci's books, but they seem to all be pricey.
watched the minutemen doc a few weeks ago and wanted a more incisive look at the SST scene.

six years is ancient? that's the revised edition

Holy shit. The original is going for $300 on Amazon! I loaned that out and never got it back! Asking price on the 2.13.61 edition is $60?!

Oh I remember this. I bought one a long time ago. Didn't it say Black Sabbath were (going to be) the most significant group? This being pre-grunge and all that. Wasn't the author name assumed/different?

Yeah, I found mine yesterday, fairly sure it's an original pressing. It says "Carducci is an assumed name" on the back.

Just listened to the Saint Vitus episode of You Don't Know Mojack (two guys discussing every SST release in order) and there's a cool rambling Carducci interview. Mostly about SV but also covering some of the general SST experience.

btw all his books are back in print, i think he pressed some up himself, they are around 28

Enter Naomi is even better than R&TPN - it's a more or less first person history of the SST scene, built around the life and death of photographer Naomi Petersen.

I really need to get that

i gotta read that one too — carducci is a weird crank a lot of the time, but i kind of love him

also that SST podcast sounds like an insane thing — is it good?

Enter Naomi is definitely kinder, more touching than R&TPN

Enter Naomi is one my favorite books, music related or otherwise.

And holy shit how did I not know about this podcast? Probably becuz I hate every and all music podcast but still! Relevant to my interests indeed.

Also, I suppose it is now safe to reveal this story:

I met Carducci at reading in Chicago and I gave him a copy one of my band's cd, which is not something I would normally ever do in a million yrs but I figured I had to give it to the man himself. He and I had exchanged a few emails cuz I had some lunatic early 80s SST/u-ground questions I was curious about and I got his email from I believe Watt's website. I got on his mailing list and I would sometimes email him and he mailed me some old promo stuff he had laying around that no one wanted.

But so our in person exchange was awkward, he was polite but it was kind of weird and I sort of felt like a jackass.

A couple yrs go by and I was FB friends with him and he put two & two together and told me that he actually listened to the cd and really liked it. And he proceed to give the best compliment ever, he said the record was so good in fact that he felt bad for us because being a really good band meant that no one would ever hear us. Which, was basically true and if I had my druthers that quote would have been a sticker on everyone of our following albums.

haha that was a great quote

the mojack podcast is loveably dorky....like they seem canadian maybe? def upper midwest at least and go of on tagents about steve fjelsted and defending "praise" 7 seconds "u2 phase" as being 'proto-dischord emo'

lol, i listened to the first ep, and yeah, two polite canadians earnestly discussing hermosa beach scuzz. (i liked it!)
chris, that's an awesome carducci story. even though, yeah, he's a crank, i do think he is a super passionate close listener.

Oh yeah I was over the moon, it was like getting communion from the Pope

"two polite canadians earnestly discussing hermosa beach scuzz" ok yeah I'm in fer sure now

That's a great story chr1s. Which CD was it?

JRN, I am almost positive it was "Fake Fake",

well try this one on for size

saying "this wasn't on my bingo card" doesn't quite cover it.

https://i.postimg.cc/7hQFDbQn/Screen-Shot-2024-09-16-at-3-23-36-PM.png

Re public exposure of SST bands: away from Collegetown, you could read about 'em in Spin and Creem at 7/11-type magazine racks--well, Creem wasn't always in the same store on a reliable basis/twice, but Spin was, having some of Bob Sr's money, from from the Penthouse family of publications. Yet Creem was the one I specifically remember as having SST mail-order, post-paid, all formats (CDs added as soon as they existed, seemed like), everything very nicely priced, with cassettes especially good that way---maybe not always the best audio, but I've still got several with generous bonus material. Also t-shirts etc.
Only one memory of an SST video on MTV: a few seconds of "Drinking and Driving" on a screen-in-screen, with indignant late-night vee jay saying, "See, we know about 'em, but we're not gonna play that stuff."
However, I also have one memory of an SST commercial per se (think labels bought time for their vids as well), with a paw holding up each record cover. voice announcing artist and title, "SWA": that's the one I recall hearing.
Most of the promotion seemed to consist of keeping bands on the road, at least in US. One told imterviewer that they were given big books, photocopied tips om travel, towns, venues.

But Huskers/Meat Puppets/Minutemen still got consistently better reviews in the States than the synthy Anglo-fop bands did, at least by '84 or so. So the "boo hoo life was so unfair to real American musicians" whining still strikes me as pretty unwarranted.

― xhuxk, Monday, December 8, 2008

T

True for certain bands, anyway.

Those three, especially Husker Du, got a lot of good reviews, in US local-regional-national publications. also features and some interviews.

Pretty sure I found out about the Minutemen through Creem (a review of Double Nickels iirc) and possibly those other two bands as well. Spin was a godsend when it appeared but that was about six months later when I was already familiar with all three bands.

Pretty sure I found out about the Minutemen through Creem (a review of Double Nickels iirc) and possibly those other two bands as well. Spin was a godsend when it appeared but that was about six months later when I was already familiar with all three bands.

Sorry, sticky phone

Ok, but KOOL KEITH

lol yeah i was gonna say am I crazy no one even reacted

Amazing yeah! Great to have him re-materialize like that, or at all.
Was gonna say thaat SST bands had a lot of Cali competition for attention, like
Flipper Germs Flesheaters X Eyes Zeros Screamers Weidos Plugz Dils Dickies Nuns Crime Black Randy & The Metro Squad---some of those may have been on SST briefly, like Soundgarden were.

nope, none of those bands were on SST, but The Dicks were for one album

Flesheaters did a couple of later albums on SST after Divine Horsemen finished, ffs how do I know all this shit without even looking it up?

I used to own two (2) October Faction albums btw

oh right! lol sorry

I think Prehistoric Hits was on SST?

Rat on----also a godsend to those of us far afield, in plastic boondocks suburbia, personally:

New Wave Theatre is a television program that was broadcast locally in the Los Angeles area on UHF channel 18 and eventually on the USA Network as part of the late night variety show Night Flight during the early 1980s.[1][2] The show was created and produced by David Jove, who also wrote the program with Billboard magazine editor Ed Ochs. It was noted for showcasing rising punk and new wave acts, including Bad Religion, Fear, the Dead Kennedys, 45 Grave, The Angry Samoans and The Circle Jerks.
Format
Peter Ivers, a Harvard-educated musician, was the host for the entire run of the show. The format was extremely loose, in part because of the desire to maintain the raw energy of the live performances, as well as the limited production budget. The program was presented in a format dubbed live taped. The action was shot live and the video was then spliced with video clips, photos and graphics of everything from an exploding atomic bomb to a woman wringing a chicken's neck.
...New Wave Theatre came to an end in March 1983 when Ivers was found bludgeoned to death in his LA apartment."[3]

Rhino Video released two volumes of the best of New Wave Theatre in 1991 (Rhino Video numbers RNVD 2903 and RNVD 2904). Both are out of print but used copies are not hard to find.

Ivers' friend, movie producer/director/writer Harold Ramis, offered Jove help and the result was a pilot show for local TV (KTLA) called The Top directed by Jove, produced by the then prolific music video producer Paul Flattery (he and Jove first collaborated on "Stop In The Name Of Love", a video for The Hollies, which incorporated many of Jove's signature public domain footage montages) and executive produced by Ramis. Ramis basically lent his name (as well as industry clout, contacts and credibility) to the show which was conceived partially to continue the spirit of New Wave Theatre but also to take advantage of the then-emerging music video scene. (Flattery's music video resume was a who's who of the 80s)
Chevy Chase was the initial host but during the taping of his monologue at the head of the show, he went off-script and invited a drunk audience member on stage with him. After hurling the guy off-stage, a fight broke out between Chase and the audience and Chase walked off the show. Filming continued and then a week later, inserts were shot with Andy Kaufman as the host (in his last public appearance). The Top got good ratings but despite enlisting Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Cyndi Lauper and The Romantics to perform during the pilot, the relationship between all of the parties - Jove, Flattery, Ramis and the KTLA executives - was so damaged by Jove's often bizarre and erratic behavior that no more episodes were produced.