Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics - Softcover

DeRogatis, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569802769 ISBN 13: 9781569802762

Publisher: Barricade Books, 2004

Synopsis

The evil step child of Stranded (Knopf's original book of rock criticism), Kill Your Idols is a collection of 35 essays about allegedly great rock albums that this new generation of critics loathe.

About this title

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Roly-poly Chicago Sun Times' rock reviewer DeRogatis coedits this collective rebuttal to the canon of great rock albums established by the graying likes of Greil Marcus ("self-appointed Dean of the Rock-Crit Academy West Coast"), Robert Christgau ("self-appointed Dean of the Rock-Crit Academy East Coast"), and Rolling Stone best-album features over the years. The book's merry band of younger reviewers finds much fault with its predecessors' picks. There's too much drugs and sex in the MC5's "revolutionary" Kick Out the Jams, says Nine Inch Nails and Pet Shop Boys connoisseur Andy Wang as he questions the group's political bona fides; that free love and free drugs were part and parcel of revolution in the MC5's heyday seems to elude him. Keith Richards' druggy aura taints Exile on Main Street for Keith Moerer, who otherwise favors psychedelic music. Sir Paul and the late Linda overemphasized sex on the gentle Ram, it is maintained. (Do you wonder at all what DeRogatis and "dyed-in-the-wool punk-rock chick" Lorraine Ali say about The Best of the Doors?) The Sex Pistols are slammed as a cheap commercial stunt (wasn't that the point?), though Dave Chamberlain scores some points about Bob Marley's diminished intensity on Time's album of the century, Exodus. In rock crit, bombast can be as important as defensibility, and snot-nosed stridency can be a good hook. This book probably won't change aging rockers' regard for the albums they love (after all, these guys even make fun of Sgt. Pepper), but it will broaden most libraries' range in rock criticism. Mike Tribby
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About this edition

• Publisher: Barricade Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1569802769
• ISBN 13: 9781569802762
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320