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THE GOLD OF ROCK AND ROLL 1955-1967 edited by H. Kandy Rohde. Arbor House, 352 pp., $4.95 Paperback

What the world does not need is yet another rock Book. Charlie Gillett, Jerry Hopkins, and Carl Belz have done uneven but credible histories; and Jon Eisen and Greil Marcus have tapped a preponderance of good non-academic articles dealing with the subject. Unfortunately, a large number of people, particularly in the publishing industry, have missed this pojnt and have produced even more explanations of rock using Dylan and the Beatles as the barometers of the music. As with the blind men and the elephant, most come up with the conclusion that rock is poetic, intellectual, and too good for the people that listen to it.

Rohde, as an analyst, fits ideally into the romanticization school of rock. As is noted in the book, �Rock and' roll simply passed away in 1967 . . . rigor mortis set in, when lesser technicians were left to execute a music that was more technique than content.� In a word, when Dylan and the Beatles switched styles, the eulogies began at least for those who see rock as some great political intellectual force. A thesis which in reality does not stand up to fact. Curiously, the strength of this work totally refutes what the editor contends, that is* rock was at some time — Garden of Eden? — an intellectually valid subject. His Billboard yearly and weekly polls fairly well reinforce what every record company accepts as gospel. That is, the songs that make the Top Ten have very little social significance as the Archies, Monkees, and the �Plastic� Family illustrate. Because of these lists of Top Ten hits,f including record company and music publisher, this book is a dandy reference guide for scholars as well as laymen whdi found Rock and Roll Trivia interesting. The editor�s introductions to the twelve years contained in the book are another matter best ignored since they are not central to the book.

Gold is a useful reference guide like the Almanac, but when it gets into interpretative area, that the Almanac wisely avoids, it is disastrous.

R. Serge Denisoff

DON L. LEE; DON�T CRY, SCREAM, & WE WALK THE WAY OF THE NEW WORLD, Broadside Press, Detroit. ¶

, Don L. Lee is a Black man. Don L. Lee is a poet. Don L. Lee sees these two controlling factors of his life in this order; first as Black man, second as poet. This attitude dominates his work and gives life to it, and it is this attitude that has made Lee one of this country�s important poets.

These two books are his latest and both show the versatility, strength and direction of his poetry. In the dedication of the first book, Don�t Cry, Scream he explains the title like this: � ... if u is goin ta open

yr/mouth Don�t Cry, Scream.

which also means: Don�t Beg; Take�.

His work may strike the ears of any white readers as being harsh or uncomfortable, but he really doesn�t give a shit. His writing is for Black folks, and the power in his poetry originates in the spiritual power of Black people. At this point I will dispense with the polemics that usually go with a review of this type, simply because that type of thing really doesn�t lend itself to an understanding of his work. Suffice it to say that any whites who harbor wierd visions about one of those �angry Black Nationalist Militant Poets�, will probably find som£ characteristics of that vision here, but Don Lee is much more than that.

There is an esstential difference in the two works. The first book is typified by a reliance on rhythm. Most of the poems are in the speech rhythms of Black people (the dominant character in Lee�s poetry), with the sounds suggested by the rhythms and other characteristics in the language to a certain extreme. One of the best examples of this is a passage from the poem, �a poem to compliment other poems�:

. . . know the real enemy, the worlds enemy.

know them know them the

realenemy change your enemy change your change

change change your enemy change change

change change your change change change,

your

mind nigger.

The second book is characterized by an absence of this heavy, rhythmic charging of words, and a more concentrated effort on lyric. The language is still in what some people might call �dialect�, but there is a noticable absence of the heavy rhythms that seemed to sprout up all over Don�t Cry, Scream.

We Walk the way of the New World approaches the reader�s eyes with a distinct mark of maturity. When reading any of the earlier works (Don Lee has two other books besides these, Think Black and Black Pride), the feeling is that they are the poems of a man who seems uncertain stylistically. But the poems in the latest book are surer. Listen:

u feel that way sometimes wondering:

as a blackwoman & her 6 children are burned out of their apartment with no place

to go & a nappy-headed nigger comes running thru

our neighborhood with a match in his hand cryin

revolution.

(�Mixed Sketches�), or:

harlem�s night upon the world

women there

are drops of algerian sand

with joyeyes overworked to welcome.

(�Marlayna�).

The lyricism that only barely shone through in Don�t Cry, Scream is in full evidence here; many of the poems weigh easier, although the content doesn�t suffer.

This poetry has a wider scope than njiuch of the other poetry currently being written in this country. The rea'sons are probably the poets Lee names as favorites or mentors: Claude McKay, Immamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Aime Cesaire, Leopold Sendar Senghor, David Diop. All of these poets are well known throughout the Black world for their art, and they are from all over the world. The first three are from the U.S., the fourth from Martinique, and the last two are Africans. If the scope of Don Lee�s poetry isn�t wide enough for some, and if he frightens some people into crying such epithets as �he�s not universal�, and if some of those people cringe into the corners with their derivative poets, well tha.t�s all right too, because I�m certain Don L. Lee really doesn�t care.

Geoffrey Jacques

ASSEMBLING A COLLECTION OF OTHERWISE UNPUBLISHABLE MANUSCRIPTS compiled by Richard K o stelanetz and Henry Korn. Gnilbmessa, Inc., Box 1967, Brooklyn, N.Y.-11202. $2.50

Richard Kostelanetz is one of the most competent and knowlegeable of the under-30 generation of critics & cultural commentators. I know less about Henry Korn, unfortunately, but, between the two of them, they�ve launched a concept which deserves attention and support from their peers.

I�d be hard-pressed to describe Assembling�s rationale more succinctly and lucidly than Kostelanetz himself does in his intro. Suffice it to say that the publishing world is as conservative and economy-bound as any number of other �institutions� of this or any other day, and is too locked within its own limitations to consistently pick up on the polyrhythmic beat of contemporary creativity with any degree of consistency.

Where Assembling�s subtitle comes in is simply that it consists of work and samples of work which no one in �publishing� would care to touch, either because the work is experimental, not done by someone famous, or impossible to categorize and therefore �package� efficiently, or all of the above.

How Assembling happens is that each contributor is requested to have 1000 copies of his manuscript printed up at his own expense and send these to Kostelanetz & Korn, who literally assemble the collection, add intro, bio-notes or whatever, and distribute it.

If that sounds like a cousin to vanity-press publication, its not. The cost of publishing one to eight pages of stuff is much cheaper than running your own press or magazine, the means of reproduction is up to the writers own discretion, there�s no padding or hidden cost (no other cost of any kind at all) and the finished item is intended for general public sales, not closed-circuit consumption.

The claim is that ho manuscript here is rejected and perhaps you wonder what kind of losers you�ll be stuck with for your $2.50. Strangely enough, the quality of work here is quite high, as good as what you�d find in a majority of �reviews�. But, then, perhaps that isn�t so strange at all. Perhaps you�ll begin to get the point of Assembling a little more forcibly when you realize that its not charity at all, merely a job needing to be done.

Quality isn�t even really the point to Assembling, even. This periodical (it aims to be an annual affair, each fall) is taking care of the necessary, if unglamorous business of dealing with literature down on those levels where creative talent is either encouraged or discouraged and it�s a barometer of what�s happening on the most volatile portion of the scene. Usually, only insiders in the publishing world get to take the pulse of what the young and aspiring are up to, like this. Assembling is today like few other things you�ll read.

The diversity of material in Assembling only bears out Kostelanetz� point that perhaps it�s time for publishers to discard their conceptual blinders, since no one seems too interested in sticking to rigid �forms� when they can realize themselves within the freedom of multiple medium interchanges. Although some of the more than forty contributors really defy categorization, you�ll find poems (conventional or concrete), happening and intending theatrical scenarios, diary excerpts, personal monologues, fiction, philosophical raps, art, photos & photo-collages, to name some.

Quality, as I�ve said, is high & some of the contributors, Vito Acconci, Lee BaXendall, John Jacob Herman, Liam O�Gallagher, Arno Karlen, David Ignatow, Ed Ruscha, Alan Sondheim, Kostelanetz and Korn themselves, and the ever-dangerous Richard Meltzer (Roni Hoffman, too), have already made their marks pretty soundly. The others will be yours to get acquainted with.

Once you�re hip to this mag, you might start thinking about how a proliferation of Assemblings might go some ways towards insuring that the people will start getting more of some kinds of the reading material they deserve and if that isn�t sort of what any �liberation� trend is striving, well then I just don�t know.

Rich Mangelsdorff