Rock and Roll Always Forgets

Chuck Eddy is one of the most entertaining, idiosyncratic, influential, and prolific music critics of the past three decades. His byline has appeared everywhere from the Village Voice and Rolling Stone to Creem, Spin, and Vibe. Eddy is a consistently incisive journalist, unafraid to explore and defend genres that other critics look down on or ignore. His interviews with subjects ranging from the Beastie Boys to the Pet Shop Boys, from Robert Plant to Teena Marie, and from the Flaming Lips to AC/DC to Eminem’s grandmother are unforgettable. His review of a 1985 Aerosmith album reportedly inspired the producer Rick Rubin to pair the rockers with Run DMC. In the eighties, Eddy was one of the first critics to widely cover indie rock, and he has since brought his signature hyper-caffeinated, hyper-hyphenated style to bear on heavy metal, hip hop, country--you name it. Rock and Roll Always Forgets features the best, most provocative reviews, interviews, columns, and essays written by this singular critic. Essential reading for music scholars and fans, it may well be the definitive time-capsule comment on pop music at the turn of the twenty-first century.

"This smart, very funny anthology includes some of the best work by any writer on country, metal, teen pop, Eighties hip-hop and Eminem. It's the only book you'll ever read that compares Jay-Z's The Blueprint to Huey Lewis' Sports - and means it as a compliment." Jody Rosen, Rolling Stone "Eddy won me over. How glad I am to see the publication of Eddy’s new song(s) of himself Rock and Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism (Duke University Press). Glad, first, because it’s truly a representative selection, tracing the slithery paths of Eddy’s enthusiasms from Marilyn Manson to Mindy McCready just to stick with the “M”s, with tart new intros that set up reprints of some of his greatest hits. And glad, second, that there exist publishers still willing to release anthologies of rock writing, since so much great rock criticism remains uncollected, neglected, less forgotten than never known to a wider audience." Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly "Rock critic Chuck Eddy is one of the world’s great music fans. For the past 25 years, his writing for The Village Voice, Creem, Rolling Stone, Spin, and other outlets has kept Eddy at the center of pop music conversations....At his paid and unpaid best, that’s what Chuck Eddy has done for 25 years. He don’t give a damn what other people think. What do you think about that?" Josh Langhoff, Los Angeles Review of Books "Eddy has a written voice as distinctive as the music he critiques. He wears his affection as well as his distaste on his sleeve, and this collection of his work from the 1980s until 2010 (first published in the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Spin, and elsewhere) is a perfect capsule of his eternal enthusiasm." Peter Thornell, Library Journal "Chuck Eddy's Rock And Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism captures a singular critical voice from, arguably, the last great period in which criticism (and physical publications) still mattered." Bill Holdship, Metro Times "Chuck Eddy glides through music criticism like a grumpy fanatic. Each article included in Rock and Roll Always Forgets — culled from Eddy's vast back catalogue of music journalism articles, beginning with the early 1980s — is packed with cultural references, touchstones, facts, witty asides, a dash of snark, and acknowledgments of once-obscure acts. Yet, he approaches each band like he's the first to have discovered it. He's a musical anthropologist, but also, archeologist, digging up the remains of musicians past, lest we forget." Emily Savage, San Francisco Bay Guardian "Few longtime pop music critics have been as fearlessly unhip in both their likes and dislikes, have been so willing to accept oft-ignored music on its own terms and have been as rock 'n' roll as Chuck Eddy, writer, former Village Voice music editor, self-described curmudgeon, ex-Army captain and hair-metal expert." Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times "I don’t always agree with Chuck Eddy. In fact, I only occasionally agree with Chuck Eddy. But I’m always sure he cares, which I can tell not just because I know him, but because I love reading him. For more than twenty-five years he has been an original and indefatigable voice whose openness to new and unheralded music is legendary." Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics "...Its 350 pages contain some of the best, most infuriating, provocative, silly, subversive and hilarious bits of music criticism published over the past quarter century." Kembrew McLeod, Little Village "I’m highly recommending this collection. You can’t know music criticism unless you know Chuck Eddy." W. Scott Poole, Popmatters.com "He has run full speed against conventional wisdom and critical consensus, leaving a Chuck Eddy-shaped hole in the rock critical dialogue." Joe Gross, Statesman.com "When Chuck hears a pop song, it’s like he is the first person who has ever heard it; he’s certainly aware of what the rest of the world already wants to believe, but those pre-existing perceptions are never convincing to him. . . . More than any other critic, Chuck Eddy showed how the experience of listening to music was both intellectually limitless and acutely personal. There was no ‘correct’ way to hear a song, and there were no fixed parameters on how that song could be described in print, and if that song made you reconsider abortion or the Oakland Raiders or your father’s suicide, then that intellectual relationship mattered because your engagement was real." Chuck Klosterman, from the foreword "This wide-ranging collection of essays (from the Voice, Rolling Stone, Spin, etc.) captures Eddy’s cantankerous, spirited, enthusiastic, and forceful takes on music from rap to country and musicians from Michael Jackson to Brad Paisley...Eddy’s far-reaching insights into rock music push the boundaries of the rock criticism, showing why he remains one of our most important music critics." Publishers Weekly "Eddy shows that music is not only something to be audibly enjoyed but something limitless intellectual possibilities, something that can grow organically from one genre to the next and shape future sounds...Chuck Eddy has created a stunning portfolio of sometimes gracious and impressed comments and brutally honest and painful criticisms. Rock And Roll Always Forgets is a wonderful collection of some of his most controversial and well constructed works." Verbicide "Eddy's eccemtricity is not only refreshing and entertaining; it's also valuable... This is a vital counterbalance to the critical herd-mind, and a reminder of how much music making and music fandom exists outside the media radar, and never makes it into the official narrative." Bookforum "...it’s a mother-lode of vibrant writing that captures the passionate energy of having a long-term love affair with America’s most unruly and pervasive art forms" Marc Campbell, DangerousMint.net "...there's never any doubting Eddy's passion for music" Greg Beets, The Austin Chronicle

Acknowledgments Foreword by Chuck Klosterman Introduction 1 1. Predicting the Future ; 2 Over and Out; 3 Rhymed Funk Hits Area; 4 Skin Yard, Skin Yard; 5 Drug Crazed Teens: Flaming Lips; 6 Music That Passes the Acid Test; 7 New Kids in the ’90s: A Decade in the Life; 8 Radiohead, The Bends; 9 Walking into Spiderwebs: The Ultimate Band List; 10 Talking World War III Blues; 11 2. Alternative to What; 12 Bombast in the Blood: Bad Religion; 13 Conscience of Some Conservatives: The Ramones; 14 Punk’s First Family Grow Old Together: The Ramones; 15 Howls from the Heartland: The Untamed Midwest; 16 An Indie Rises Above: SST Records; 17 Slime is Money (Bastard); 18 Big Black Give You a Headache; 19 Nirvana, “All Apologies”; 20 Wrong Is Right: Marilyn Manson; 21 Live: Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, 18 February 1997; 22 City of Dreams: Rock in Mexico; 23 Chumbawamba at the Piss Factory; 24 Mr. and Mrs. Used To Be: The White Stripes Find a Little Place to Fight ’Em Off; 25 3. Umlauts from Heck; 26 Five Great Beats-Per-Minute; 27 Seduce, Seduce; 28 Agnostic Front, Beyond Possession, Dr. Know, Helstar, Raw Power; 29 Top 40 That Radio Won’t Touch: Metallica; 30 Welcome Home (Sanitarium): Metallica Seek Psychiatric Help; 31 Mentors, Up The Dose; 32 Robert Plant, Technobilly; 33 Def Leppard’s Magic and Loss; 34 AC/DC’s Aged Currencies; 35 White Wizzard Escape Each Other; 36 4. To the Beat Y’All; 37 Mantronix: Strange Loops; 38 Spoonie Gee: Unreformed; 39 Just-Ice: Rap With Teeth; 40 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1989: N.W.A.; 41 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1992: Arrested Development; 42 Sir Mix-A-Lot: Chief Boot Knocka; 43 From Taco Bell to Pachelbel: Coolio; 44 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1997: Erykah Badu and B-Rock & The Bizz; 45 Timbaland, Magoo, and Ma$e, As the World Turns; 46 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 2001: Jay-Z; 47 Licks: Bone Crusher, Turk, Crunk & Disorderly; 48 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 2003; 49 5. Race-Mixing; 50 Emmett Miller: The Minstrel Man From Georgia; 51 Mississippi Sheiks vs. Utah Saints; 52 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1984; 53 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1985; 54 Boogie Down Productions: Ghetto Music: The Blueprint Of Hip-Hop; 55 Yothu Yindi: Tribal Voice; 56 Living Colour: Biscuits EP; 57 3rd Bass: Cactus Love; 58 Teena Marie in Wonderland; 59 Shake Your Love: Gillette; 60 The Iceman Cometh Back: Vanilla Ice; 61 Motor Suburb Madhouse: Kid Rock and Eminem; 62 The Daddy Shady Show: Eminem’s Family Values; 63 Spaghetti Eastern: The Lordz Of Brooklyn; 64 6. Country Discomfort; 65 Yippie Tie One On: Rural Roots and Muddy Boots; 66 John Cougar Mellencamp: Life Goes On; 67 K.T. Oslin, Greatest Hits: Songs From An Aging Sex Bomb; 68 The Temptations of Mindy McCready; 69 CMT; 70 Banda, Si, Por Qué No; 71 Big & Rich Boogaloo Down Broadway; 72 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 2004: Montgomery Gentry and Chely Wright; 73 Please Stop Belittling Toby Keith; 74 Brad Paisley Is Ready to Make Nice; 75 7. Pop Muzik; 76 Cutting It as a Bay City Roller in 1989; 77 People Pleasers: The Village People; 78 Arrivedérci, Bay-BEE: Nocera and Fun Fun; 79 Debbie Gibson: Angel Baby; 80 It Was In The Cards; 81 Pet Shop Boys’ Mad Behavior; 82 Gimme Back My Bullets: Will to Power Shoot for Disco Valhalla; 83 Michael Jackson Loves the Sound of Breaking Glass; 84 If It Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It: Michael Jackson and Faithless; 85 They Know What They Really Really Want and They Know How to Get It: Spice Girls and Gina G; 86 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1998; 87 8. Singles Again and Again; 88 Sucking in the ’70s: Have A Nice Day, Volumes 1–10; 89 Zager and Evans: “In The Year 2525”; 90 Radio ’86: Dead Air; 91 Radio On reviews; 92 Ten Cents a Watusi; 93 Singles Again: Tangled Up in Blue; 94 Singles Again: Paranoia Jumps Deep; 95 Singles Jukebox reviews; 96 The Year of Too Much Consensus; The End? Index