BLAME IT ON CAIN

BLAME IT ON CAIN

CREEMEDIA

THE AESTHETICS OF ROCK by Richard Meltzer (De Capo Books)

Gregg K. Turner

WOW!!! It’s back. Heavy with a capital H the first time around, and even heavier NOW! (rhymes with WOW). The “first time” was in 1970, and Aesthetics, out of print for a long time after that, is now back in the book stores by way of this Da Capo Press reprinting. Everything’s more-or-less intact (unabridged) from the original, save some typos (now resurrected to non-typo status) and there’s some bonafide bonus coupons: a new introduction by Prof. Greil Marcus (apparently he likes it a lot now, but didn’t circa the “first time around,” say those who remember these things), plus Meltzer’s own analysis, apologies and explanations of what was going on between the margins.

Not at all the Metal Machine Music of rock literature, as some to this day maintain in the most derogatory contexts ("a hoax,” says one goof ball from the southern latitudes of this very country)—Aesthetics Of Rock rocks all aesthetics (even the aesthetic of spelling it “esthetic”—the use of the espelling long being a hateful and heinous act in and of itself); Meltzer’s sensually cerebral and no-holds-barred, tripped-out wild hog ride into the inner tick-tock of rock bleeds the quintessential existential: an “I”opening freak-out down all the paths that suck us in, and then psych us out.

“/ seek to view philosophical inquiry (and everything else too)," notes Meltzer in the book’s beginning, following a word-for-word wordography of the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird.” And 338 pages of text delivers the goods. For example, “heaven rock” is dissected into 14 sub-types: these include “Prehistoric (but not preconceptual)” heaven rock, and “Vast generalizations, lots of empirical meat” heaven rock. To wit:

"... Paradigmatic explicitness is the case in heaven rock. There are no candidates for heaven rock, it is merely obviousness incarnate, straight proto-Marxian theology of theology made superficial enough to be significant...”

Meltzer’s writing bristles with a passion for the music and the music’s passion for itself. It’s a symbiosis of synergy!! Topics breed sub-topics favorable to the writer and the subject matter. With the sum of the parts more powerful than each alone, Meltzer builds and builds to several climaxes—almost too many orgasms, in fact, to steer clear of. Janis Joplin, the Beatles, the Youngbloods (“last of the alcoholic groups”), Phil Ochs (“has always been tailor-made for rock and nothing but [political] content and intent”)—it’s all there. Not that it's a who’s who compendium by any means—more a who’s what or a what’s where. Osmotic tongues are distinguished from the generic unknown tongues (not to exclude Roni Hoffman’s Beef Tongue and Sandy Pearlman’s Turkey Tongue). Meltzer dutifully notes that "the brevity and quickness of the average rock recording makes taxonomic abstraction too rapid an experiential accompaniment to alter the unaccompanied immediacy of mere tongue exposure.” And then, that he has discovered that ‘‘in trying to reveal a particular unknown tongue to casual listeners that a ‘That’s it’ is not enough. .. this brevity hence even makes the ex-experimental

data of a tongue epistemological analysis immediately repeatable. ”

II

Asthetics Of Rock, circa the days of its first print incarnation, was published two to five years out of date; the manuscript being submitted too soon for the original bookpeople to clear lyric reprint rights and the like. The details of this and lots of top-notch horror stories concerning the genesis of the writings (and its evolution, so-called, into the book-form you now see) make the new Da Capo edition really worth the price of admission. Also of interest is the author’s chagrin over what he now feels to be misplaced idealism (and written-word energy??) or any otherwise quasi-intellectual veneration for the sounds which in no time evolved to state-of-the-art “capitalist dog food.” Nofucking-kidding and true-fbr-sure, but nevertheless ironic: the passion and feedingfrenzy of syllable and chord, the veritable roll and rock-pile abyss to which Meltzer seemed inextricably glued in this magnum opus, become his remaining cross to bear.

Perhaps the most profound yuks of all reside in Greil Marcus’s new introduction. A charter member of what Meltzer refers to as the “Three Marxists (w/Robert Christgau & Dave Marsh) of rock ’n’ roll (rich Marxists),” (areil goes absolutely NUTS hunting down too-subtle puns, quadruple entendres and obscure philosophical stuff (the book’s comparison of Tommy James’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” to the Sgt. Pepper LP prompts heated discourse here!!) to explain why this is a real swell piece of lit now\\\

In any case, beyond the philosophical hocus-pocus and swell tongue epistemological analyses, A. Of Rock, if nothing else, was “the first serious rock book ever written’,’ (according to Meltzer) and at the same time managed to play around with the thensacrosanct topical stuff. And stylistically, the wacked-out prose is a groove-and-a-half on its own, bellwethering no small legion of hipster-writers and performers to follow suit years later.

‘‘Aesthetics Of Rock," claims the author, “is the nearly verbatim transcript of my first three years, 1965-68, of beating my head against various walls, personal and systematic, in an unguided, utterly ingenuous, unrestrainedly passionate attempt to make even provisional mega-sense out of something...”

It’s all there!

Ignore having to look at ugly Mick Jagger and his female alter-ego Tina Turner on the front cover. Richard had nothing to do with this. Instead, latch your orbs to a real swell read. Dig the Aesthetics, and watch Meltzer go!