BLOG TO COMM

BOOK REVIEW! INTO THE MYSTIC --- THE VISIONARY AND ECSTATIC ROOTS OF 1960s ROCK AND ROLL BY CHRISTOPHER HILL (Park Street Press, 2017)

Guh is this a dull (and perhaps even evil once you get down to it) read.

I guess this Chris Hill guy is supposed to be some bigwig hotcha name in the world of rock criticism or whatever that is supposed to be these days. Heck he even got Lenny Kaye, one of my fave rockscribe unto performers to write a back cover blurb. But taking the concept of rock 'n roll as a sixties esoteric journey through a whole load of avenues and intellectual twists I slept through in Philosophy 101 really made for some bad toilet reading. I've seen more exciting textbooks throughout my days and this 'un only stinks to high heaven because the subject at hand is presented in such a dull, academic way.

I guess you phony intellectual types'll gobble it up but such put-ons as yourselves swallow any sorta new socio-whatever trend whole hog without the benefit of forethought or afterthought for that matter. Then again if you like whatever has passed as professional rock writing these past fortysome years man is this book up your alley!

The detailing of rock as a spiritual/occult even movement from sanctified gospel to Elvis and the British Invarions straight into the cataclysm music that closed out the decade (even the Dead, who do figure in somehow) is so bad that Hill even flubs the entire Velvet Underground reason for mystical being making me wish the guy had taken in some Wayne McGuire before tackling this effort. Then again, McGuire (or at least the McGuire of "An Aquarian Journal") would have been the best one to handle a subject matter such as this since his own scrutiny of the late-sixties cataclysm was quite etapoint given the downright loathing the man had for the "superficial aspects of the quest", an attitude which really foresaw the culmination of the entire sixties spiritual ride (talking Velvet Underground, Stooges, John Fahey, Pharoah Sanders...) a good decade or so later.

If I hadda say ONE GOOD THING about INTO THE MYSTIC it would be that Hill devotes ample space to the Left Banke who have long been written off as bubblegum shuck by the same sorta people who you think this book would have been marketed to. Some interesting insight even if the author hadda twist a whole load of esoteric garble into his explorations into their reason for being what with references of Dante and Beatrice and the usual snooty airs of "enlightenment" that many a dilettante has upped nose about for longer than anyone can remember.

Definitely not a BLOG TO COMM BOOK CLUB recommendation. Sure makes me angry that people like Hill are allowed to write books and get them out to the remaindered racks like snap while the true visionaries and people who actually make you THINK without the Rock Inc. seal of approval are destined to just crank out blogpost after blogpost. Just another reason as to why I hate most rock writing not to mention the people who have been associated with the clique of controlled criticism ever since the seventies, and of course most of what has passed for rock 'n roll ever since its "maturity" led to the mere idea of a book like this. Give me a lowly crudzine getting into the musical DNA of a driving sound or a book that really does dissect the whys and wherefores of rock like THE AESTHETICS OF ROCK over this anyday!