This infamous book has enjoyed a lively underground reputation since its first publication in 1970. Richard Meltzer (a.k.a. R. Meltzer) took his training as a young philosopher and applied it with unalloyed enthusiasm to the lyrics, sound, and culture of rock and roll. Never before had anyone noticed the relationship between the philosophy of Heidegger and a tune by Little Anthony and the Imperials, heard the cries of agony in the Shangri Las' "Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)," or transcribed every "papa-ooma-mow-mow" in the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird."From Dionne Warwick to Plato, Jim...

He is one of the inventors of rock criticism. His first book, The Aesthetics of Rock (acclaimed by Greil Marcus as "a disemboweling of rock's soft white underbelly"), became an instant cult classic when published in 1970. And for the next thirty years he fearlessly expanded the boundaries of music writing. Now he has collected the best of his prodigious output into a gonzo sampler of the reviews, profiles, interviews, and essays that form the heart of his rockwriter legacy. Traveling from psychedelia to the "dinosaur-rot early '70s" to the redeeming majesty of punk and the constant...

A sublime and moving collection of essays by an eloquent master writer, Autumn Rhythm is equal parts candor, courage, humor, and desperation. A true-tongued, almost joyous gallows humor permeates the book, a meditation on what it's like to be on the outer edge of "boomerhood," on the cusp of official seniority; what it's like to have been so long associated with a youth movement-rock music-yet to no longer be young.Autumn Rhythm comes from a man whose work has always been music as much as it's been about it, and who now brings his syncopation of word, sound, and sense to the...