Frank Kogan's forthcoming "Real Punks Don't Wear Black"

Huk-L: Well, if you think of Ashlee as equivalent to the New York Dolls and Kelly Clarkson as equivalent to Iggy, the teenpop thread might work, though I still don't see who would be equivalent to the Kingston Trio. Aly & AJ, maybe?

"If Frank Kogan had assembled his writing a decade ago, by samizdat or whatever, it would be a cornerstone by now, read by every current and former teenage malcontent."
--Luc Sante, author of Lowlife: Lures and Snares of Old New York

On the back cover:

"Frank Kogan dares you not to listen to music in the context of your life. He knows that dare is impossible, which in itself puts him head and shoulders above pretty much every other rock critic of the past couple decades."
--Chuck Eddy, music editor, The Village Voice

"Frank is at his intellectual best when annoying academics like me. I would recommend it to students and expect any self-defined 'popular music scholar' to have read it."
--Simon Frith, author of Performing Rites

With relentless analysis and reckless screaming, Frank Kogan has made a career of asking infuriating questions about popular music. A key figure among music critics for his contentious, perceptive writings, Kogan has been contributing to the Village Voice and underground publications since the early 1970s. The first book-length collection of his writing on music and culture, Real Punks Don't Wear Black samples the best of thirty-plus years of essays, reviews, and rants, and also includes new pieces written specifically for this edition.

If you're after no more than backstage dish or a judgement on whether some song is "good" or "bad," then look elsewhere. From the Rolling Stones to the New York Dolls, from Mariah Carey to the Ying Yang Twins, through hip-hop, Europop, disco, and metal, Kogan insists on the hard questions: Our popular music is born in flight, chased by fear, and heading toward unattainable glory, he says. Why is this so? What fears, contagions, divisions are we ignoring that our music cannot?

Remember, says Kogan, this is about you, too. Keep your mind alive, your hairstyle in flux, and your tongue sharpened. Whether you're a gutterpunk or a cultstud geek, you're a bigger part of the story than you realize. It's your ideas that you're hearing on the radio, it's your song that gets sung.

Frank Kogan is the publisher and editor of the fanzine Why Music Sucks. His work has also appeared in the Village Voice, Spin, Radio On, Cometbus, and ilXor.com.

[This might give the impression that I've been writing for the Voice since the early '70s, which isn't true. It also might give the impression that I spell judgment the Brit way. This also isn't true.]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0820327549/qid=1141232969/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_0_1/202-5996931-4023045

I feel that the "sourcing fee" is some kind of badge of honour.

Doesn't this book at least partly fall into the 'academy is doomed/betrayed' genre (albeit way off on its own wing) vis-à-vis 'closing of the american mind'/'tenured radicals'? Certainly one of the questions it persistently seems to be asking is: 'what is college/knowledge for?' Obviously I think Frank Kogan's answer is a bit different from Allan Bloom's. Isn't it also about restoring the grand ambitions and claims for self of ‘60s rock-crit culture/counterculture: refusing to settle for a specialist niche, whether ivory-tower cultstud thinkage or leisure-industry enablage? (I am somewhat projecting my own dreams and hungers onto it for sure.)
—Mark Sinker, author of if. . . . (BFI Film Classics) and The Rise and Sprawl of Horrible Noise

Frank Kogan dares you not to listen to music in the context of your life. He knows that dare is impossible, and that in itself puts him head and shoulders above pretty much every other rock critic of the past couple decades. As do his tastes, which are impeccable, even though his format is the farthest thing from a consumer guide. As does the fact that he has more ideas worth stealing than anybody else writing about music; in fact, I kind of hate that this book is coming out, because now everyone will know where I stole all of mine. The book is a mess, full of trap doors, just like the music Frank likes best. He knows none of it is as simple as people pretend.
—Chuck Eddy, Village Voice music editor, and author of The Accidental Evolution of Rock'N'Roll: A Misguided Tour through Popular Music and Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe

http://web.pitas.com/tashpile/noise1.html

so how are the two related? What kind of push-pull is in effect when we need Adorno to feel smart about Heino and hip to the way the culture industry works, but we can only do so from this position of total security in our smug sense of the impossibility/ "deadness" of Adorno's own project? Anyway, this is part of what I am interested in, and also could be a way to speak to Susan's concerns and Sterling's observation.

I'm just curious if Drew or anyone ever did start such a thread (if there is one I'd like to see it).

over on the sylvester thread someone calls NS's gaffe 'situationist'.

So, the check is in the mail, the dog ate the homework, I won't come in your mouth, etc. etc. etc.

(I got in touch with the marketing and sales director, and he said the book should reach their warehouse by next Wednesday March 8. I will say that the University of Georgia Press has been golden throughout this process, absolutely supportive and willing to take risks, and I'd recommend them to anybody. Furthermore, I tossed them some formatting curveballs plus a whole lot of quoted lyrics that they had to get permission for (and that they were willing to pay for when necessary!). But there were occasional communication problems, and I had no idea there would be a delay, and they screwed up in not warning me of the delay or changing the posted release date on their Website or informing Amazon etc., and I told them so. But college presses are basically indies when you come down to it, and these things happen. (I remember that last year's Fannypack album kept not getting released and not getting released, which made it hard to decide when to run the review.) In the meantime, I'm glad to see "FRANK KOGAN Real Punks Don't Wear Black" sitting spine out on my music shelves in between "Bob Dylan, a Retrospective edited by Craig McGregor" and "The Aesthetics of Rock by R. Meltzer."

Frank Kogan's two rock-critic heroes are both Village Voice veterans: Robert Christgau, the self-appointed "Dean of American rock critics," and Chuck Eddy, the wisecracking current music editor. But unlike the writers he emulates, Kogan is piercingly intelligent without ever being pompous, pedantic or inscrutable, as Christgau often is, and Kogan is funny, perverse and contrarian without resorting to shtick or insincerity, as Eddy does. When he makes a wacky claim that Axl Rose and Michael Jackson are the only two "real punks" left on the music scene, he backs it up -- sort of.

Now, Kogan, the former editor of the giddy Why Music Sucks, has compiled his work from his own fanzine as well as the Voice, Spin and numerous other publications in the anthology Real Punks Don't Wear Black (University of Georgia Press, $24.95).

Writes the author: "A piece of music can be many things, often at once: decoration, diversion, distraction, conversation piece, mood enhancer, mood alterer, narrative signal (in the movies), theme song, guide to physical movement (on the dance floor), guide to social interaction (ditto), message to the gods, tool of the gods, mnemonic device, conveyor of lyrics, social bond (sing-alongs), social marker, scene disrupter (blasted out of car windows), self-expression, etc."

In essays about artists ranging from the Ying Yang Twins to the New York Dolls, Mariah Carey to Spoonie Gee, and Bob Dylan to Britney Spears, Kogan is interested in exploring all of the above. And it never fails to be an illuminating and entertaining ride.

- Jim DeRogatis

Moron.

I was saying to a friend of mine at the weekend, while waving the book excitedly: "it just infects the way you think, you find yourself approaching everything in this Kogan manner."

I was flattering myself.

*drools, drools, drools despondently, despondently, exponentially so*

Anyway, I've got a couple of pedantic points:

(1) I disagree that I am never pompous, pedantic, or inscrutable (nor are such characteristics always flaws)(he says inscrutably).

(2) I don't see how Jim got the idea I've only got 2 rock-critic heroes (perhaps the copy desk shortened "two of Frank Kogan's rock-critic heroes"); the number is more like 200. Not to list them all (I don't come close to listing them all in the Acknowledgements), but note that I actually say on p. 341, "My first rock-critic hero was Ken Emerson." (Emerson's got a new book out about the Brill building; Christgau gave the book a rave.)

(You can do this even if you already own a copy of the book, hint hint. You can do this at every library where you have a library card.)

James, it may take the UGA Library a while to process a new book. I'll get in touch with UGA Press and tell them that the library still doesn't have the book. In the meantime, if the book is available at any of local stores, thumb through it and take a look at p. 43.

Speaking of that, Frank, the show he was on -- Soundcheck -- would be an ideal venue for publicizing RPDWB. Hopefully your publisher is on it but if you want contact info email my private add via ILXOR.