On Becoming a Rock Musician

H. Stith Bennett has taught at the University of Illinois, the University of Washington, the University of Missouri, and Colorado Women's College. He now lives off the grid in a cabin in Colorado, where he writes his own prose, poems, and songs.

The information captured in these pages remains as relevant today as it was thirty years ago when rock and roll was still in its nova stage. Bennett's book is perhaps the only one of its kind to explain the relatively inscrutable process of how one finds their own 'sound,' and in so doing, he expands the reach of sociology deeper into the meaning of social music. A rare combination of scholarship and street smarts. -- Ben Sidran, host of NPR's Jazz Alive At long last back in print and with a foreword by Howard Becker! This book is indispensable for any ethnomusicology of contemporary pop music. H. Stith Bennett brings the resources of phenomenology to the sociology of pop and rock music, meaning not only field work but method. Bennett's celebrated notion of recording consciousness is the key to On Becoming a Rock Musician, yet the book as a whole shows the reader how ethnomusicology is done. -- Babette Babich, author of The Hallelujah Effect: Music, Performance Practice, and Technology

• Foreword to the Legacy Edition, by Howard S. Becker Preface A Guide for the Reader Acknowledgments Part I. Group Dynamics 1. Introduction 2. Group Definition and Redefinition Part II. Rock Ecology 3. Instruments and "the Outside World" 4. Equipment and the Band Van 5. Gigs Part III. Mastering the Technological Component 6. Technology and The Music 7. The Realities of Practice Part IV. Performance: Aesthetics and the Technological Imperative 8. Playing 9. "Other People's Music" Afterword Appendix: Loudness and Equalization Notes Bibliography Index