The Sociology of Rock by Simon frith (Constable 1978 £3.50)
The Boy Looked at Johnny by Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons (Pluto Press 1978 £1.25)

The tendency to see rock music in sociological terms reached its high point with the early days of punk when music criticism (some would say music itself) was made secondary to discussions of the new movement's economic and sub-cultural roots: music papers and Sunday supplements alike were filled with talk of 'dole queue rock' and the 'blank generation' who were its producers and audience. Among the first and most influential exponents of this type of criticism were Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons of New Musical Express. Now they've written a book, subtitled rather pretentiously 'the obituary of rock and roll' in which they chart the rise and fall of punk rock and the forces that gave rise to it.

It is a startlingly bitter account, full of manipulation and counter-manipulation by everybody from ex-tailors-turned-punk-godfathers to giant vinyl corporations. The authors are most successful when giving a vivid impressionist account of the cultural situation of rock music in the mid 70s, after Paris 1968, after Altamont, after Ziggy Stardust and For Your Pleasure. But when they come to discussing music, their rock-critic-as-maniac-hatchet-man stance gets a bit wearing, as they arbitrarily divide the whole new wave into 'pearls' and 'scum', praising or burying according to their political affiliations. At times their usually clearsighted puritanism is so negative that it makes you wonder whether Julie Burchill's favourite record really is the soundtrack of Oklahoma!, as I seem to remember reading in the Sunday Times. Sadly, although rightly aware of the immoral attitudes and activities of others, they are unaware of their own faults: such as a naive inverted snobbery that leads to them approving of amphetamines as 'an essentially proletarian drug'; a tendency to dogmatism, 'if it's on Stiff or Radar, it ain't worth a fart'; and an unwitting cultural elitism that leads them to equate the little-known with the good and the popular with the bad.

Simon Frith's The Sociology of Rock could hardly present a greater contrast. In place of the Burchill/Parsons scatter-bomb imagery and machine-gun rhetoric, Frith employs reasoned argument supported by the full academic apparatus of footnotes and bibliography. The book is a worthwhile addition to the literature of both sociology and rock, and yet in no sense is it a compromise. From his academic training, Frith brings meticulous research and a wariness of the glib half-truth: from his knowledge of rock, he brings an enthusiasm and warmth that prevents this becoming a tract. He explores the complex economic relationships between artist, media, and audience with clarity and insight, punctuating his argument with quotations from people in all areas of the industry, some of them breathtaking in their cynicism. His argument is not easily summarised, but his main concern is to make the reader aware of the complexities behind the apparently simple activities of the media: for instance, he challenges Radio One's naive assumption that it is giving public what it wants by an analysis of the interdependent relationship of sales chart and playlist. There is a mine of valuable information here for anyone 'in the business', even those unable to accept Frith's frankly critical account.

Ultimately both books concern themselves with rock as exploitative capitalist machine, but whereas Frith assumes the economic facts of the industry's existence as his starting point, this aspect of the business seems to come as a shock to Burchill and Parsons. As the blurb says, they have set out to write 'a book that blows the lid off rock and roll for the first and last time', and they write as if their cynicism is the product of a recently disappointed idealism. But in the end their impassioned vitriol is so much less telling than Simon Frith's sober and wryly humorous procession of facts and figures. Both books are interesting reading, but only Frith's is essential.