Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock'n'roll

Compiled and written by music writer and historian Joe S. Harrington, Sonic Cool: The Life & Death Of Rock 'n' Roll is an impressive and detailed 595-page history of the rock 'n' roll music phenomenon. Smoothly penned and excitingly told, Sonic Cool presents the matter-of-fact rise and fall of the music style's popularity in a manner that reads like more like an enjoyable novel than a pedantic music school textbook. Sonic Cool is a sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, and always fascinating saga which is very highly recommended for all rock music buffs and students of 20th Century American Popular Culture.

You can tell that Harrington's been at this awhile. Like Joe Carducci's 'Rock and the Pop Narcotic', this book starts by explaining first how the structure of the music came to be from it's predecessors; Hillbilly, Blues, R & B, ect. and by tracing it's periodic fits and starts, arrived at the music's pivotal apotheosis: Punk. From then on out Harrington describes the music's eventual decline, from the non music of Disco, to prepackaged LCD 'safe bets', through the rise and fall of Grunge. (What he glibbly calls the music industries Viet Nam; ie., "never again") The main stuctural difference between Harrington's book and Carducci's is that while Carducci focused on what made Rock tick as a musical language, and by comparison what is not Rock due to the lack of a viable syntax of that language, Harrington focuses on the inter-cultural contextualization of how Rock emerged as a byproduct of contempraneous forces in the culture, while simultaneously constructing that same culture. That this thesis should be advanced at all is not in of itself surprising, but I invite you to try and pull it off in such a colossal manner in the way in which Harrington does. It's all about time, effort, and as Warhol would have put it: WORK. In such a volume one would expect to find many glaring errors, or oversights. Amazingly the ones that I could find are trivial. Firstly how he uses the word 'implode' on several occasions seems suspect in regards to meaning. (he seems to want to mean 'explode') Secondly he gives very short thrift to the whole area of experimental electronic music's influence on the genre, Industrial music in particular. He even lists the seminal work of Cabaret Voltaire lumped together with the 'new wave pop' bands of the mid 80's. I detect an editorial bias here. Also for short measure, he lists the University of Washington as residing in Olympia. Gazing out my bedroom window I can attest that it is in fact in Seattle. All in all not a whole hell of a lot to crow about considering the scope. You will love the irreverent tone, and the refusal to offer praise to sacred cows. You will never listen to the music the same after reading this book. This is an absolutely necessary read for those of you who still care. For those of you who don't, go get a book on croquet.

Joe Harrington creates a plausible context in which to place developments in 20th century popular music, with the emphasis on post WWII music. I don't care for other rock music writing out there - disconected prose that squeezes dubious meaning from music and lyrics in some overblown, comparative lit PhD wanabe (or drop out) fashion. Mr. Harrington, while clearly passionate about his subject, keeps his feet firmly planted on the ground, always aware of the reader's need for a connection to reasonable thesis. Lou Reed once made some off-hand quip about Robert Chistgau ("dean" of rock crits at the Village Voice) and how pointless his studying of rock n' roll is. However, my hunch is Lou wouldn't be saying that about Joe Harrington. Buy the book.

Harrington's irreverent writing style makes what is essentially a history book a more than pleasurable reading experience. Not only will you feel smarter upon finishing it, you'll probably be inspired to write. This book could do for writers what the Velvet Underground did for a thousand kids with guitars.

This is it. The first written record of the action that rock n roll and rock manifested which has changed the course of human evolution. Even if you were'nt there, and don't know or care to know, this book will help you to understand why you are the person you are today and why there may be hope for us yet. (I think that's what he saying....). Anyway if you have an open mind, aren't too politically correct, are interested in music, and are honest you will benefit from reading this book. Here's to ya..