Apocalypse Jukebox

Price: 39.95 AUD

Add to Shopping Cart

From its indefinite beginnings through its broad commercialization and endless reinterpretation American rock-and-roll music has been preoccupied with an end-of-the-world mentality that extends through the whole of American popular music. In Apocalypse Jukebox Edward Whitelock and David Janssen trace these connections through American music genres uncovering a mix of paranoia and hope that characterizes so much of the nation's history. From the book's opening scene set in the American South during a terrifying 1833 meteor shower the sense of doom is both palpable and inescapable; a deep foreboding that shadows every subsequent development in American popular music and as Whitelock and Janssen contend stands as a key to understanding and explicating America itself. Whitelock and Janssen examine the diversity of apocalyptic influences within North American recorded music focusing in particular upon a number of influential performers including Bob Dylan Leonard Cohen John Coltrane Devo R.E.M. Sleater-Kinney and Green Day. In Apocalypse Jukebox Whitelock and Janssen reveal apocalypse as a permanent and central part of the American character while establishing rock-and-roll as a true reflection of that character.