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Grown Up All Wrong:
75 Great Rock and Pop Artists from Vaudeville to Techno
Paperback, 2000, Harvard University Press, 528 pages.
Hardcover, 1998, Harvard University Press, 528 pages.
From publisher's catalog page:
A critical compendium of points of interest in American
popular music and its far-flung diaspora, this book ranges
from the 1950s singer-songwriter tradition through hip-hop,
alternative, and beyond. With unfailing style and grace,
Christgau negotiates the straits of great music and thorny
politics, as in the cases of Public Enemy, blackface artist
Emmett Miller, KRS-One, the Beastie Boys, and Lynyrd
Skynyrd. He illuminates legends from pop music and the
beginnings of rock and roll--George Gershwin, Nat King
Cole, B. B. King, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley--and looks
at the subtle transition to just plain "rock" in the music of Janis
Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin,
James Brown, and others. He praises the endless vitality of Al
Green, George Clinton, and Neil Young. And from the Rolling
Stones to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, from Bette Midler to
Michael Jackson to DJ Shadow, he shows how money calls
the tune in careers that aren't necessarily compromised by
their intercourse with commerce.
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgments
Where "Rock and Roll" Began
Where "Rock" Began
Snatched from the Maw of Commerce
Smashing the State of the Art
Kings of Rhythm
Between Punk and a Pop Place
They Are the World
Careers in Iconicity
Careers in Semipopularity
Nature's Noblemen
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Links
Harvard University Press:
Reviews on Line:
- Bill Altreuter: EPinions
- Mark Athitakis: Salon
- Chris Herrington: Memphis Flyer
- Christopher Hess: The Austin Chronicle
- Joshua Klein: The Onion A.V Club
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