Great Pretenders
Apr. 19th, 2006 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancerjodiI just finished Great Pretenders - My Strange Love Affair With 50's Pop Music . This is a book I heard discussed on NPR a few weeks back, and was able to find at Barnes and Noble in the music section. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and it served to remind me of things I had forgotten (like, Gram's Connie Francis record collection that used to be in the front hall to be played on the console record player in her living room).
Karen Schoemer seems to have musical tastes akin to my own, at least, what I was listening to in early college. She scoffs at the 50's pop genre, but ends up taking this project on as a way initially to understand her Mom (a 50's bride) and her parent's divorce when she was a teen. It ends up being a project in self understanding.
Ultimately this book was a quick, fun, easy read, but it does get one thinking of the history of Pop, Rock and R&B a bit differently. She touches on the issue of race (white pop stars making black music more digestable for the masses). She talks about the role of gender and sexuality in music. She touches on the mental issues of past celebrities and the things they can do in their lives in another age.
Here are some great quotes that touch a bit on the themes of the book:
"Something started to come over me. All evening I'd been feeling so cynical and above it all, yet the energy in the place was impossible to resist. I'd been to hundreds of rock shows in my life, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a crowd hang their hearts out quite like this . . . Why were we so afraid to fall for a song like a bunch of stupid schoolkids?" (pg. 64)
RE her first Springsteen album, Born to Run: "Rather, it became a refuge, a roadmap to a place where romance might not be so cruel. I submerged myself into the characters, the muscle-car rhythms, the mantra of escape. Sequestered in leafy suburbia, I stumbled upon a world I'd never imagined: scarred highways, crumbling stoops, twilight waterfront vistas. New Jersey. I wanted to go there. I couldn't wait to grow up, get out of sheltered, phony, New Canaan, and bask in a tough, real world." (87)
"It was only after meeting Fabian that I began to put it all together. Falling in love with a pop song, falling in love with a musician or an actor in an interview: they were the same thing. Both provided the thrill of suspended romance, the ecstasy of connecting nonphysically with another person. This kind of love transports you, takes you away from yourself, allows you to escape the confines of the everyday; its the soul of entertainment. Its a joyous, wonderful thing, but it has its down side, because its not real." (pg. 154)
"I know of not a single history of rock that gave the girls in the audience any credibility whatsoever. Our tastes always needed to be expurged or overcome. Yet we were driving the mystery train. More than the guys, were deciding who'd make it to the top, who'd stay there. From Sinatra to Elvis to the Beatles to the Backstreet Boys, we were the voting bloc that swayed every election of heroes. Without us, the music never would have existed." (pg 158)
"Sex can only be as good in bed as it is out of bed." (pg 198), said by Connie Francis. The author describes her as the virgin entertainer, and gets into the role of female purity in the genre.
"This is pop music at its finest; this is its artistry. Its pull is irrational, unideological, inexplicable. Pop music lays its finger on our breast; we can't see it but we feel it, and our blood starts pumping a little faster and our toes wiggle and we respond, without knowing why. It can be artless in every sense of technique and skill, it can *suck* in all the logical ways, but if that mystical element of soul has gone into it, something in us responds." (pg. 209)
"The cheerful sluttiness of pop culture is matched only by its gagworthy Disneyfication. Whose mind isn't a confused swirl of conflicting images and shaky moral boundaries?" (pg. 216)
And in conclusion, her personal gains from the project:
"See, I worry a lot that my life and my marriage and my friendships and relationships aren't perfect. I'm always noticing the flaws, and it makes me feel as though I've failed in some way, and I keep trying to make things better . . . But lately its dawned on me that maybe *this* is the true nature of love: the acknowledgment that the people in our lives aren't perfect, and we aren't perfect, and so we forgive and love onward . . . I was finally able to forge something viable for myself: an imperfect love, the kind that hurts and breaks but withstands the pain and survives. So I'm moving on from fifties pop, and trying to live by this new concept. I hope it has a good soundtrack." (pg 223)
If anyone wants this to read next, let me know :)
Karen Schoemer seems to have musical tastes akin to my own, at least, what I was listening to in early college. She scoffs at the 50's pop genre, but ends up taking this project on as a way initially to understand her Mom (a 50's bride) and her parent's divorce when she was a teen. It ends up being a project in self understanding.
Ultimately this book was a quick, fun, easy read, but it does get one thinking of the history of Pop, Rock and R&B a bit differently. She touches on the issue of race (white pop stars making black music more digestable for the masses). She talks about the role of gender and sexuality in music. She touches on the mental issues of past celebrities and the things they can do in their lives in another age.
Here are some great quotes that touch a bit on the themes of the book:
"Something started to come over me. All evening I'd been feeling so cynical and above it all, yet the energy in the place was impossible to resist. I'd been to hundreds of rock shows in my life, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a crowd hang their hearts out quite like this . . . Why were we so afraid to fall for a song like a bunch of stupid schoolkids?" (pg. 64)
RE her first Springsteen album, Born to Run: "Rather, it became a refuge, a roadmap to a place where romance might not be so cruel. I submerged myself into the characters, the muscle-car rhythms, the mantra of escape. Sequestered in leafy suburbia, I stumbled upon a world I'd never imagined: scarred highways, crumbling stoops, twilight waterfront vistas. New Jersey. I wanted to go there. I couldn't wait to grow up, get out of sheltered, phony, New Canaan, and bask in a tough, real world." (87)
"It was only after meeting Fabian that I began to put it all together. Falling in love with a pop song, falling in love with a musician or an actor in an interview: they were the same thing. Both provided the thrill of suspended romance, the ecstasy of connecting nonphysically with another person. This kind of love transports you, takes you away from yourself, allows you to escape the confines of the everyday; its the soul of entertainment. Its a joyous, wonderful thing, but it has its down side, because its not real." (pg. 154)
"I know of not a single history of rock that gave the girls in the audience any credibility whatsoever. Our tastes always needed to be expurged or overcome. Yet we were driving the mystery train. More than the guys, were deciding who'd make it to the top, who'd stay there. From Sinatra to Elvis to the Beatles to the Backstreet Boys, we were the voting bloc that swayed every election of heroes. Without us, the music never would have existed." (pg 158)
"Sex can only be as good in bed as it is out of bed." (pg 198), said by Connie Francis. The author describes her as the virgin entertainer, and gets into the role of female purity in the genre.
"This is pop music at its finest; this is its artistry. Its pull is irrational, unideological, inexplicable. Pop music lays its finger on our breast; we can't see it but we feel it, and our blood starts pumping a little faster and our toes wiggle and we respond, without knowing why. It can be artless in every sense of technique and skill, it can *suck* in all the logical ways, but if that mystical element of soul has gone into it, something in us responds." (pg. 209)
"The cheerful sluttiness of pop culture is matched only by its gagworthy Disneyfication. Whose mind isn't a confused swirl of conflicting images and shaky moral boundaries?" (pg. 216)
And in conclusion, her personal gains from the project:
"See, I worry a lot that my life and my marriage and my friendships and relationships aren't perfect. I'm always noticing the flaws, and it makes me feel as though I've failed in some way, and I keep trying to make things better . . . But lately its dawned on me that maybe *this* is the true nature of love: the acknowledgment that the people in our lives aren't perfect, and we aren't perfect, and so we forgive and love onward . . . I was finally able to forge something viable for myself: an imperfect love, the kind that hurts and breaks but withstands the pain and survives. So I'm moving on from fifties pop, and trying to live by this new concept. I hope it has a good soundtrack." (pg 223)
If anyone wants this to read next, let me know :)
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Date: 2006-04-20 03:03 pm (UTC)50's
Date: 2006-04-20 08:01 pm (UTC)The book focused more on the stuff of late 50's, kind of that awkward time between doo-wop, Elvis and the Beatles (that's often overlooked in music history texts, apparently). Its definitely got a great personal bias in the way she writes and researches, but it was still an interesting read. Let me know if you want to borrow it at some point :)