“The things we love, it seems, are always dying”

“Is Rock Dead?” by Kevin J.H. Dettmar, published by Routledge, 2006

I’ve finally found it: a contemporary book about rock & roll that lays to rest, once and for all, the stupidest quetion ever asked in academic scholarship about popular music. This book does not attempt to investigate whether or not rock really is dead per se, but critically follows the proclamations of such from both academic and journalistic writing on the subject to the rock-music narratives that, themselves, wrestle with the end of rock & roll. “Is Rock Dead?” explores some suggestive examples of attempts to contain the rock & roll corpse, as well as rock’s sometimes ingenious responses as it seeks to remain a vital imaginative resource for our culture. Dettmar adopts a particularly brilliant style of writing that is accessible, personal, and passionate while at the same time maintaining a hard-hitting approach to his analysis. This is one of only very few scholarly texts I have actually read from cover to cover…with sustained interest. Psssst…the piecederesistance conclusion reads that, “insistence on its own morbidity is rock & roll’s ‘strange necessity’”...smooch.

“The death of rock is experienced by the fan as the collapse of the various forms of rock (metal, rap, alternative, punk) into the vast, undifferentiated no-man’s-land of ‘pop’: pop is the place old rock goes to die, a kind of sanitarium for rock & roll that’s lost its edge, drive, and power.”