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The Rock History Reader.

Article Excerpt
The Rock History Reader. Edited by Theo Cateforis. New York: Routledge, 2007. [xvii, 360 p. ISBN-10: 041597500X; ISBN-13: 9780415975001. $95.] Bibliographic references, music examples, index.

As Theo Cateforis acknowledges in his preface to The Rock History Reader, teachers of courses on popular music have a wealth of materials at their disposal in the form of anthologies. Whether it be the history of jazz, of hip hop, or even of rock criticism itself, chances are that an anthology exists that can serviceably guide students through the relevant issues and introduce them to some of the significant personalities involved. Cateforis's new collection is geared specifically towards the history of rock, and while it therefore intersects with several existing alternatives--the most relevant being David Brackett's The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader: Histories and Debates (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)--it holds its own among the competition as a thorough, conscientious, and engaging guide to rock's history since the 1950s.

The Rock History Reader includes fifty-nine readings in total, arranged by decade in six sections (the 1950s to the 2000s). These readings take a variety of forms: first-hand accounts from within the music industry, academic analyses of musical repertories and cultural formations, newspaper and magazine editorials, serious criticism from the popular press, reminiscences by fans, primary-source legal documents, and so on. The range of topics is equally broad--from issues of censorship and piracy, to rock's aesthetics and formal content, to the politics of identity, to rock's relationship to capitalism, to questions of race and cultural imperialism. Such breadth was of...

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