Avant Rock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Bjork

by Bill Martin, Robert Fripp (Foreword)

Critiquing avant-garde rock bands from the 1960s to the present, Bill Martin examines how social upheaval gave rise to this new form of musical expression. He covers early experimentation by artists such as James Brown; initiation into the mainstream and the resulting adaptations by the Beatles and the Who; and continues into the present looking at how groups like Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Jim O’Rourke, and others continue to innovate. An annotated discography is included.

Genres: Music, History

208 pages, Paperback

First published October 26, 2000

About the author

Bill Martin (born 1956) is a professor of Philosophy at DePaul University whose academic work concerns Derrida, Sartre, Marxist theory, Aesthetics, and critiques of Richard Rorty. Martin has also written on progressive rock bands including Yes

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw the author give a lecture at Utah State University in the late 90s and this book suffers from the same pretension that marred his speaking. On the other hand, the guy knows avant garde rock music, and makes some nice conceptual connections between diverse genres and communities of musicians. Avant Rock reminds me of Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic: lots of short, fairly useless bits of name-dropping with little handfuls of really meaty theory scattered throughout. Would probably be of use to someone seeking new music to listen to, but don't expect too much deep knowledge from this one.

[Brandon Wu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Martin's writing style is awful — the organization of this book is pretty much impossible to follow (if indeed there’s any rhyme or reason to it at all), and he has an annoying habit of name-dropping esoteric Western philosophers at literally every turn. While I am enough of an academic at heart to be interested in how avant-rock relates to Derrida, this is a little much. I almost get the feeling that Martin just included every single connection between music and philosophy that came to his mind while writing (let's not even start on his weird chess analogies). This guy needs an editor, bad.

Summary: the world still needs a good book on avant-rock.

[Dan Kugler · Rating 5 out of 5]

yeah. a really cool book. with lots of great album lists. gets very deep into modern philosophy and art theory---this is mind bending stuff--from stravinsky onward! a history of everything that even touches the title subject...