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Avant Rock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Bjork
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Avant Rock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Bjork Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
An admirable effort, but...
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Sonic Youth. Jim O'Rourke. Yes. Bjork. Get used to these names right now, because Bill Martin is going to repeatedly ram them down your throat until he is certain you've gone out and purchased their entire discographies. Although perhaps I'm being too harsh - I can think of worse artists for Martin to focus on. However I am inclined to agree with what's already been stated - Martin tackles this book with a disturbingly narrow scope. There are two main reasons why Martin's book does not rise above an average rating.
1. Bill Martin himself. While the man clearly knows a great deal about music, I don't think he is necessarily the right man to write a book about such an all-encompassing term as "avant rock" (more on that later). As I said before, Martin's personal bias intrudes on almost every single page on this book. In fact, as soon as I read on the back of the book he had written books both about Yes and about progressive rock, I knew there would be trouble. I have no qualms with the inclusion of progressive rock in this book, as it has obviously made extensive contributions to the avant rock genre. But when the name Yes appears on twenty nine pages and, say, the Boredoms (who are THE band that jump to mind when I think of avant rock) appear on zero, I think there's a bit of a problem. Just leafing through the index will tell you who Martin's favorites are simply based on sheer numbers of pages they occupy; not whether or not they were crucial to the avant rock scene.
As he approaches the end of the 90's, it becomes increasingly clear that save for a few of his favorites, Martin has lost touch with whatever avant rock scene might exist. For example, in his list of essential avant rock albums for 1999, Rage Against the Machine's Battle of Los Angeles is included. Perhaps fitting if this were a book about the history of nu-metal or rap-rock, but horrendously out of place in a book such as this.
Or how about including bassist Kev Hopper's Spoombung in his 1998 list (which is just one of a meager five albums he feels noteworthy enough to list)? Would it surprise you if I told you that Martin himself is also a bassist?
2. The title. In choosing "Avant Rock" as the title to the book, Martin is basically free to drop the names of whatever musician he feels like without even having to justify their inclusion. Artists like Merzbow, John Cage, Cecil Taylor, Arnold Schoenberg, John Coltrane are discussed at length, and while all are outstanding musicians with obvious contributions to the avant-garde, I don't see how their connections with rock music are so deep as to warrant such extensive discussion at the expense of other musicians (perhaps no one transcends the avant-garde and rock/pop music like Mike Patton, yet he is relegated to a blurb in Martin's rambling making-up-for-lost-ground essay at the end of the book).
This book could have been (and still can be) done with someone who is a lot more involved in the avant garde scene. Martin's heart is indeed in the right place (as Robert Fripp's foreword states), but he just doesn't have the knowledge of the genre that this type of book demands.
I gave this book three stars because it is a sort of "winner by default" book. There are not too many other comprehensive guides to this kind of music, so Avant Rock would probably be a great place to start if you are just getting into the genre and want to do a little exploring. Experienced fans, however, will find it harder to look past Martin's glaring omissions, blatant idol worship, and awkward topic- and chronology-jumping. |
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