It’s very cool, very punk-rock, folk-rock, and all the other rockin’ signifiers of hip radicalism, to be going to a commune. Or to hang-out at one for a season. But to actually stay for good is not what rock-tuned set wants.How do we know that? Well, tell me about a rock song that celebrates . . . . Continue Reading »
A slight change of plans here—I had wanted to talk about this recent Conor Friedersdorf piece about the lack of conservative rap critics as part of a three-part essay called “Paradoxes of Conservative Pop-Culture Studies,” but I realized that to really to do that, I would have to . . . . Continue Reading »
This is an odds n’ ends post. I’m going to do ONE more post on rock films, soon enough, and then give that series a rest for a while. High-time for the songbook to get back to SONGS. This week I came across a two interesting tidbits. First, my good friend, philosophic advisor, and loyal . . . . Continue Reading »
Having written one , two , three , four ALMOST FAMOUS-driven posts and now this one, I obviously do think it is an excellent film. Its one weakness is a certain complacency, underlined by its ending. I don’t have a problem with happy endings per se, but the one it provides really is too easy. . . . . Continue Reading »
The last Songbook post considered rock Fame and its relations to Celebrity and Honorable Ambition with plenty of help from political philosophy, and a little from ALMOST FAMOUS, too; moving back to the film (which is proving rich enough for, look out, two more parts after this!), this part will be . . . . Continue Reading »
We left off the analysis of ALMOST FAMOUS at the key point, where we were about to get into what it says about Rock and Fame. That is a complicated subject, because you need to consider the phenomenon of Fame itself, before you get into what Rock does with it. Bowie’s deliberately sour song is . . . . Continue Reading »
The pop music of the last 50 years really has become progressively bereft of musical variety. So says this Spanish analysis of gobs of pop songs . So Martha Bayles is right. Geoffrey O’Brien’s nightmare last chapter of Sonata for Jukebox is right. And me too, I . . . . Continue Reading »
Both This Is Spinal Tap and Repo Man are cult films that make fun of a rock youth culture, metal and punk respectively. Repo Man is the better of the two (again, my original listing of the best pop music films is chronological , not in terms of quality). One reason is that while This is Spinal Tap . . . . Continue Reading »
Mr. S. was the alias of the Jack Black-played rocker/teacher character in The School of Rock . That film is one of my favorites from my list of best films about popular music . Very funny, but I also like the way presents an intelligent teaching about rock’s role in our society. Really, it . . . . Continue Reading »
Since I want films about any and every sort of pop music since the advent of jazz, and about the rock music of 1966 to the present, for this topic I’m sort of overlooking the rock v. rock n’ roll distinction I insist upon elsewhere . And since what I really want are films that convey what . . . . Continue Reading »
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