REVIEW | The Cambridge Companion to The Rolling Stones
2020; International Association for the Study of Popular Music; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5429/2079-3871(2020)v10i1.11en
ISSN2079-3871
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoThe Rolling Stones are one of the most successful, long-lasting and influential popular music acts of all time.As such, it is perhaps surprising that academic accounts of them are so thin on the ground.Lacking the harmonic and melodic innovation of The Beatles, or the lyrical dexterity of Bob Dylan, they have yet to catch the eye of the musicologists and literary theorists whose collective efforts have resulted in groaning bookshelves throughout the land.Neither have they attracted those with a more cultural studies bent, perhaps warded off by an aversion to anything that smells of rockism and its awkward relationship to sexism, racism and other kinds of identity politics.The Stones, it seems, are immune to academic analysis (or academic analysts, perhaps, are immune to The Stones).In this context, Victor Coelho and John Covach's collection, The Cambridge Companion to The Rolling Stones, is a very welcome addition to the select field of Rolling Stones studies.According to the preface, the book is 'intended to stimulate fresh thinking about the group...It further broadens the approach to their music by considering new issues about sound, culture, media representation, the influence of world music, fan communities, group personnel, and the importance of their revival, post-1989' (xix-xx).The book is structured into three parts: 'Albums, Songs, Players, and the Core Repertory of the Rolling Stones'; 'Sound, Roots, and Brian Jones'; and 'Stones on Film, Revival, and Fans'.The ragtag nature of those titles reveals that the essays themselves are rather diverse, without any overarching theme or narrative.They range from an analysis of the band on film to a Deleuzian reading of Brian Jones as an 'assemblage'.The chapters I found most rewarding were: Paul Harris's discussion of The Stones' reception during in the 1970s, in which he argues
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