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Rock ‘n’ Rhetoric: Coursework Contents
Chapter One: Reading About, Interpreting, and Writing About Rock Music
Our first chapter introduces the reading/writing/ researching process as it applies to rock music as a subject. We will introduce annotated examples of passages and essays for analysis, and will also provide an overview of the complexity of rhetorical study as it applies to rock music. We will give an overview of both the visual and oral/sonic rhetoric relevant in rock cultural studies, and will include passages from professional essays by Andrea Lunsford which trace the evolution of rhetoric from the early days of the Greek orators up to the present-day rhetorical situation, which has seen a return to some of rhetorical roots in spoken delivery as well as theatrical and visual delivery that is far more informal, more conversational, emotional, and intimate than traditional argumentative rhetoric. Irving Rein’s classic essay “The Rhetoric of the Popular Arts” provides some insight in the ways that rhetorical principles can be applied to analysis of rock and roll, television, and other emerging popular art forms.
Rock and Roll’s relation to its multiple audiences is very complex. The chapter includes a selection by Theodore Matsula in which he discusses ideas for developing a unique rhetorical approach to the rock song, taking into account the complex issues of context necessary for understanding the rhetoric involved in rock’s delivery of meaning to its shifting audiences. Matsula sees the rock song not as a “stable” text, such as an argumentative essay, but as unstable, shifting terrain that varies according to performance and site, performer, and audience/critic background. This essay prepares us for the controversy about rock values examined in Chapter Two (values in rock) and the relative quality of songs and performances discussed in Chapter 3, Reviews and Analysis.
This chapter will also include a brief overview of research and documentation in the rock area, which involves a great variety of primary sources such as CDs, song lyrics (many available on the Internet, some on CD liner notes), music videos on DVD, professional popular culture journals, fanzines and fan/ collector websites, rock magazines for professionals and audiences, and performance and CD reviews in the popular press.
Texts Cited/quoted:
Andrea Lunsford, “On the Origins of Rhetoric”; “’Oral’ and “’Literate’ Cultures” “The Rhetorical Situation”; “The Canons of Rhetoric Today”
Definitions of Rhetorical Modes and Modality
Irving J. Rein, “The Rhetoric of the Popular Arts” Rudy's Red Wagon: Communication
Strategies in Contemporary Society. New York: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1972,
pp. 72-79. - HTML version: Top 100 American Speeches,Online Speech Bank American
Rhetoric.HTML transcription by Michael E. Eidenmuller. © Copyright 2001-2004.
Theodore Matula “Contextualizing Musical Rhetoric: A Critical Reading of The Pixies' ‘Rock
Music’". Communication Studies, Fall 2000 V51 I3 P218.
Ch 2:Rock and Changing Values
“ Changing Values,” presents a number of statements and arguments about the values of rock from critics situated very differently from one another. We invite students to consider how each critic’s personal values, historical moment, and intended audience help to shape the arguments he or she makes about rock music and its positive or negative values and influences. Our first essay takes the perspective of a traditional liberal arts educator, Allan Bloom, who despises rock music and believes it a hazard to the mental health and maturity of its young listeners. Our second, essay, by critic and professor Simon Frith, who has devoted much of his career to reviewing and analyzing the interplay between rock music and modern culture, takes a supportive position in his efforts to construct a meaningful aesthetic for rock music. Frith rejects the argument that popular music simply reflects patterns of social and class structure , preferring instead to give rock music a more active role in the creation of social value—a view with which Bloom might well agree. However, Frith believes the values rock “lives” and recreates in its audiences are generally positive and community-shaping; thus listeners to broaden their sense of identity through participating with their emotions and bodies in the intensity of the music and the cultural world it embodies through its “imaginative forms.” Furthermore, since much of rock music originated from the margins of society, it allows audiences to experience the identity of the marginalized and to develop a deeper understanding of people and cultures, allowing people to “cross borders” that exist between places, as well as “classes, races, and nations.”
The rest of the chapter presents more particular examples of values that rock engages. In “Fifty Years of Pop,” we get not just a list of hit records, but a sense of the influence that particular records, artists, technological innovations, and other rock events have had on world values in the past half a century. After this list of significant happenings in rock, divinity professor Tom Beaudoin focuses on the religious values projected, consciously or unconsciously, in blues and rock music’s “other worldly musicianship”and in the quasi-religious ecstatic response in the audiences of the music.
The last two essays in this chapter return to the dilemma of the values of rock in relation to two of the traditional ways of transmitting cultural values: school and the family. Jamilah Evelyn argues in “To the Academy with Love” that the modern university, and particularly the black university, has been exclusionary and dismissive in its treatment of rock and hip-hop music (much as Allan Bloom was in an earlier period. Yet Evelyn sees progress, as some African-American scholars do admit the “redemptive aspects” of the music. Finally, in “Moral Abdication,” a conflicted Canadian parent confesses his guilty pleasure in the music of Eminem, and the unusual bonding he and his 12 year old son take in listening to the rapper’s “offensive” lyrics in the car.
Texts
Allan Bloom, “Barbaric Rock” from The Closing of the American Mind New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Simon Frith. "Toward a Popular Aesthetic " Ch 13 of Performing Rites: On the Value of
Popular Music. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1996. 268-278.
Sean O'Hagan “Fifty years of Pop: 50 Moments That Changed Music History.” The London Observer, 2 May 2004.
Tom Beaudoin “Ambiguous Liturgy”.Books & Culture, Sep 2000 V6 I5 P29.
Jamilah Evelyn “The Miseducation Of Hip-Hop.” Black Issues In Higher Education, Dec 7, 2000
V17 I21 P24.
Mark Cochrane, “Moral Abdication or Just Father-Son Bonding With a Creepy Edge”
The Vancouver Sun , Feb 22, 2003.
Chapter 3—Analysis and Reviewing in Rock
Rock music reviewing and analysis derive from other types of writing about cultural artifacts: the reviewer seeks to create an evaluation of a work, using criteria that that are relevant to the values of a particular audience. Some writers introduce more rhetorical analysis into their reviews, or write reflective pieces about songs and albums going into greater detail and often making references to a wide range of other texts, using techniques like classification and comparison. Refer back to the information on writing about rock music in Chapter One before reading the reviews and song analysis in this chapter. As you read the essays, notice especially how some critics focus on the music itself, while some are more concerned about lyrics and meaning; still others devote space to “contextualizing” the work in relation to other albums and social events of the time it was first released. We go roughly chronologically through a number of song and album commentaries by critics from a wide range of backgrounds and tastes in music. Most of the pieces we have included are supportive of the work under discussion, although there is both a “pro and con” perspective on The White Stripes 2003 release, Elephant.
Our first selection, Dave Marsh’s analysis of a classic song from the early days of rock, Chuck Berry’s “Johnnie B. Goode,” places the song’s central character in the work in the context of the blues tradition of the fun-seeking, guitar-picking rambler and shows how Berry added to and modified the image of the African-American hero of the tradition to appeal to a large, more hopeful and affluent audience that included white teenagers, who influenced future generations and musicians around the world.
Ian McDonald’s analysis of “I Am the Walrus” takes a different approach, concentrating on the immediate biographical and historical context of the famous Beatle’s song in relation to the death of manager Brian Epstein, John Lennon’s involvement with meditation, LSD, the peace movement, Lennon’s hatred for British cultural institutions, as well as his love of linguistic play. In a similar but even more immediate historically detailed manner, Sauele Pardini’s analysis of Springsteen’s “American Skin” examines the context of the larger protest and series of newspaper articles about the shooting by police of a black immigrant whose reach for his ID card was interpreted by the police as a grab for a gun. Pardini also reveals how the song was misinterpreted by the police and the mainstream media as being “anti-cop.”
Our next two pieces examine albums by legendary folk-rocker Bob Dylan. These essays reveal how different the focus of traditional critics with a literary background can be from that of a rock critic whose background is primarily in music. Professor Neil Corcoron looks at Dylan’s path-breaking early recording, “Highway 61 Revisited. “ Corcoron examines the record like a book, discussing its “Once upon a time” opening, its powerful literary-reference laden closing song, “Desolation Row,” while taking time to examine and quote core narratives critical of modern history such as “Tombstone Blues” and the Old Testament riff, “Highway 61 Revisited.” In contrast to Corcoran’s professorial approach, Rob Sheffield’s review of Dylan’s recent album “Love and Theft “ contextualizes the album in terms of Dylan’s evolving approach to music, explaining how the compositions grew out of Dylan’s performing career, how his voice has changed, and the type of instrumentation and arrangement he now uses. There are quotations from lyrics in Sheffield’s essay, but the quotations seem oriented to showing how the pieces are performed and the musical tradition they arise from rather in going deeply into their meaning as Corcoran does.
Opposite approaches to evaluative album reviewing can be seen in Chuck Eddy’s essay “Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be” from The Village Voice and David Frick’s short review from Rolling Stone, both about the White Stripe’s recent CD, “Elephant.” Eddy, in a long, rambling piece, states that he thinks the album is a failure, mocking its unoriginal, conservative, and “paranoid” lyrics, comparing it negatively to earlier White Stripes’ efforts, and suggesting that Jack White should really do a solo act. In contrast, Frick’s review is positive, short, and concrete, concentrating on the recording and production efforts on “Elephant” rather than the larger context, providing specific examples or Jack and Meg White’s guitar, keyboard, and drum mastery. A closer look at these two publications will reveal how these different styles of reviewing fit in with the general approach to journalism and the different nature of the audiences for each.
Our last two essays deal with issues important in rock music evaluation—creativity and originality. Both Ann Powers in “Unoriginality in Pop” and Charles Aaron in “Don’t Fight the Power” would agree that there is room in rock for songs that fit into very traditional, seemingly outdated genres. Both feel that the projection of strong, crowd pleasing emotion in a song is often more important than trying to be creatively “different.” Both essays make us think about what creativity and “quality” really mean within a pop medium like rock music, with its constraints of song-length and instant availability to a mass audience.
Texts
Dave Marsh, “Johnny B. Goode.” The Heart of Rock & Soul by Dave Marsh. Duke & Dushess Ventures, 1989.
Ian McDonald, “I Am the Walrus.” Revolution in the Head by Ian McDonald. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.
Samuele F.S. Pardini, “Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin’” ‘From Artvoice. Reprinted in Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader Ed. June Skinner Sawyers, Martin Scorsese. New York: Penguin, 2004
David Fricke, “Review of Elephant by The White Stripes” Rolling Stone S 920, April 17, 2003)
Chuck Eddy, “Mr. And Mrs. Used To Be: Review Of Elephant by The White Stripes.” The Village Voice. April 11th, 2003
Neil Corcoran, “Death’s Honesty: Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited” Do you, Mr.Jones? :Bob Dylan With the Poets and Professors London: Chatto&Windus, 2002.
Rob Sheffield, Review Of Bob Dylan’s Love And Theft Rolling Stone S 878 - September 27 ,
2001.
Ann Powers. “Bread and Butter Songs: Unoriginality In Pop” Ch 17 This Is Pop
In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project, ed. Eric Weisbard. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2004.
Charles Aaron, “Don’t Fight the Power” Capo Best Music Writing 2002 ed. Jonathan Lethem and Paul Bresnick. Cambridge, Mass: Decapo/ Perseus Books, 2002. 127-137.
Ch 4 --Community and Creation in Rock
“Community and Creation” examines the issue of creativity in rock in greater depth, focusing on the communal nature of such activity and the interplay between emerging performers and their home communities. The first essay, by rock critic Deena Weinstein, examines the conflicts that arise in rock bands despite the family-like feeling that keeps a band together and enhances creativity, while at the same time giving rise to interpersonal tensions which can lead to the “divorce” of the band. Weinstein also points out that the “romantic ideal” of originality and the band’s need to produce ever new records that show great growth and change work against the stability of the group, as some members always will be perceived by themselves and others as more creative than others, as having more “leadership” and musical/writing ability. A recent example of a band’s effort to overcome “creative differences” that almost led to a permanent split is presented in Metallica’s rockumentary film Monster, about the group’s successful “therapy” with coach/counselor Phil Towle which enabled them to work productively and produce a new CD. Chuck Kosterman takes us behind the scenes shown in the film in his article “Band on the Couch.”