Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock 1st edition by Gracyk, Theodore (1996) Paperback

by Theodore Gracyk

You know it when you hear it, but can you say what it is? How you know? Why you either love or loathe it? What makes it original or derivative? To a music that tends to render its aficionados and detractors equally inarticulate, Theodore Gracyk brings a rare critical clarity. His book tells us once and for all what makes rock music rock. A happy marriage of aesthetic theory and the aesthetic practice that moved a generation, Rhythm and Noise is the only thorough-going account of rock as a distinct artistic medium rather than a species of popular culture.What’s in a name? “Rock” or “Rock ’n’ Roll?” Grayck argues that rock and roll is actually a performance style, one in a number of musical styles comprising rock. What distinguishes rock, Gracyk tells us, is how it is mediated by The art is in the recording. The lesson is a heady one, entailing a tour through the history of rock music from Elvis Presley’s first recordings in 1954 to Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994. Gracyk takes us through key recordings, lets us hear what rock musicians and their critics have to say, shows us how other kinds of music compare, and gives us the philosophical background to make more than passing sense of the medium. His work takes up the common myths and stereotypes about rock, popular and academic, and focuses on the features of the music that electrify fans and consistently generate controversy. When Elvis came to town, did southern sheriffs say that rock was barbaric and addictive? Well so did Theodor Adorno, in his way, and Allan Bloom, in his, and Gracyk takes aim at this charge as it echoes through the era of recorded music. He looks at what rock has to do with romanticism and, even more, with commercialism. And he questions the orthodoxy of making grand distinctions between “serious” and “popular” art.Keenly attuned to the nuances of music and of all the ways that we can think about it, this exhilarating book tunes us in, as no other has, to the complex role of rock in American culture.

Genres: Music, Philosophy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[jeremiah]

The first three chapters of this book are probably some of my favorite pieces of philosophy, and certainly the ones (along with Cavell's writings on aesthetics) that got me to recognize my unexamined commitments concerning the ontology of art and to question whether there is such a thing as medium-specificity in the arts. More importantly, they are, like the best philosophical works, profoundly and interestingly wrong.

Gracyk gets plenty right in arguing that rock is a distinct kind of music—not a style of performing music—that is defined in terms of its own recording. Moreover, his arguments against "recording realism," the view that a recording is simply the recasting of a performance, are provocative, if not controversial. For Gracyk, all rock music is based on and indebted to the conventions of studio recording. This means that, in aesthetics jargon, rock recordings are autographic artworks, which cannot be reduplicated without being considered forgery. For example, if there were a version of "In the Air Tonight" without reverb on the vocals, Gracyk would argue that that version just isn't an authentic recording of the Phil Collins hit. Doubling vocals, adding multiple guitar tracks, reverb on vocals, etc., are all choices that make rock recordings unique "virtual representations" of songs, distinct from representations of physical performances.

However, I think that DIY music and culture challenge much of his account, particularly his argument against recording realism. Aren't there rock bands who, without proper access to studios in which to manipulate and create their music, record their songs on Audacity just to capture their own existence? (For example, 15 yr old me.) Nevertheless, there are ideas here that could be used to articulate an aesthetics of DIY rock. To return to Gracyk's use of Nelson Goodman's term, DIY rock recordings are certainly autographic. If a popular rock band somehow got a hold of some bedroom rocker's recordings and covered a song, it just wouldn't be the same music without the bedroom rock recording’s lo-fi quality. But to understand DIY rock recordings, we have to set them against the wider context of DIY culture. In other words, when thinking about DIY rock recordings, it matters where bands come from, how they record their music, what their intentions and band ethos are. The primary flaw of this book is that Grayck, although sensitive to this Wittgensteinian view, restricts his investigation to mainstream rock and rock culture.

[Trace Reddell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am thoroughly agreeable to Gracyk's premise that recording technology fundamentally led to the art of rock music. Unfortunately, Gracyk gets into too few specific types, formats, or the range of various recording technologies to make this as robust as it could and should have been. Gracyk strikes me as overly generous in his category of what constitutes rock, including R&B and hip-hop, for instance, and while I know that the discussion of sampling is relevant to his argument, the category of "rock" doesn't seem the best overarching term. By Chapter 4, the book spends too much time rejecting and critiquing other thinkers and texts (Adorno, Paglia, and many others), devoting energy to a debate that I can't imagine anyone reading the book actually asking for. It makes Gracyk come across as way too defensive, misdirecting the text from its best ideas; combined with the overly vague definition of "rock" in the first place, the whole text comes across as watered down and not near as compelling as it promised.

[William Collen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense and sometimes theoretical discussion of the philosophy behind rock music performance, composition, and reception. Useful for specialists, but the common reader might find this book tedious. Throughout the book, Gracyk references his points by citing various rock songs, so it might be good to have Spotify open while you read.

[Svelteassassin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a difficult read, very academic in nature. The author attempts to analyze rock music to make a claim that it's as valid an art form as classical or jazz.