Rock Music Imagination

Robert McParland is professor of English at Felician University.

In this addition to the "For the Record: Lexington Studies in Rock and Popular Music" series, McParland (English, Felician Univ., and an ASCAP member) focuses on the period between 1964 (the beginning of the "British invasion") and the 1980s and joins the daunting discussion of rock’s social and artistic contexts and rock music in relation to literature as a product of rock music’s imagination. McParland focuses such classic themes as liberation, freedom, utopia/dystopia, the outsider, imaginative vision, and mystery. Including abundant references to songs and artists, discussions hinge on the author's extensive source work. He researched the standard literature on American popular music (specifically music of the 1960s), including work by all the usual suspects—Walter Everett, Susan McClary, Robert Walser. McParland discusses significant aspects of the musical imagination in reference to the blues, progressive rock, punk and new wave, the lyricist as poet, rock in literature, music as community identity/identifier, and the role of the musical imagination in the face of crisis. Part music history, part cultural analysis, The Rock Music Imagination works hard to address heady issues in American popular music.Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

• Introduction: Themes in Classic Rock Music: Rebellion, Utopia, and LiberationChapter One: Listening to the BluesChapter Two: The Imaginative Legacy of the Beats: Countercultural UtopiaChapter Three: Science Fiction Imagination and Fantasy in Progressive RockChapter Four: The End of the World as We Know It: Rock Music DystopiaChapter Five: Rock Romanticism: Power Chords and the Imaginary Company: Chapter Six: Paperback Writers: Rock Music and FictionChapter Seven: Human Rights, Community, and Global Rock