“Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics”, edited by Jim DeRogatis & Carmél Carrillo

 

320 pages, Barricade Books, ISBN-13: 978-1569802762

Well, I’m sure that the concept of Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics seemed like a good idea when it was first floated, as it offered up the chance for a younger set of rock critics to give a counter argument to the well-made assertions of the essayists from the early Rolling Stone/Crawdaddy/Village Voice days, whose finely tuned critiques gave us what we consider now to be the Rock Canon. The problem, though, is that editors Jim DeRogatis & Carmél Carrillo didn’t have that in mind when they gathered up this assortment of Angry Young Critics and charged them with disassembling the likes of Pink Floyd, The Beatles and MC5, amongst many others. Really, what a CRAZY! idea, letting a bunch of critics talk about stuff they hate that other people really like. what we have, then, is DeRogatis, Carrillo and company railing against the evil empire of Rolling Stone by doing that which Rolling Stone does on a regular basis; thus, a lot of the criticism you see here reads like the equivalent of a teenager slamming his door repeatedly while yelling “Screw You, Dad!” at the top of his lungs.

Incidentally, DeRogatis supposedly got fired from Rolling Stone for not liking Hootie and The Blowfish; however, after reading this trash I bet he really got fired for being a pompous ass – a remarkable feat, that, considering the pompous asses that run Rolling Stone. It’s as if the jerks at the record stores you used to buy your music from and who made fun of the albums you bought wrote a book. These Angry Young Critics are just too fast out of the starting gate and in a collective haste to bring down the walls of the Rock Establishment, only to wind up being less the William F. Buckley, Jr. – or even the Gore Vidal (if that’s your thing) – of Music Criticism, by trying to pierce the pomposity and pretension of their superiors, and more like a pack of those small annoying yapping dogs, barking at anything passing by the back yard fence. There’s only so much sarcasm, declarations of boredom and flagging attempts at devil’s advocacy that one can wade through before the work itself becomes even more atrocious than the music supposedly being critiqued. This is a noisy, nit-picky book whose conceit at offering an advanced view of Rock ‘n’ Roll contains the sort of hubris these people claim sickens them.