I can't wait to check out music critic Karen Schoemer's new book, Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with '50s Pop Music. It's new from Free Press which is the major contender as the imprint I most trust to produce thoughtful & substantive work by women in the midst of our trashy trashy sexist & insipid cultural landscape.
From the lovely review at roundheadedboy:
As Schoemer criss-crosses the country to track down these forgotten American idols, she also finds herself questioning the whole male-centric view of rock criticism and what is acceptable music and what is not. She comes to a realization that cheesy pop music need not be a guilty pleasure. As Schoemer writes, it is intensely freeing to think for yourself and enjoy the music that moves you, no matter what the rock-ocracy has to say.
By doing this, she starts to realize:
1. That women, especially screaming teen girls, have determined the great idols of music from Elvis to the Beatles on down, but men get to write the histories.
2. That rock history is the only "history" that is written by critics, and not accountable to verifiable facts, such as popularity and chart success, but instead is determined by subjective opinions of what the club of critics thinks is worthy. (Sort of like that other hairy-chested conclave, the Baseball Hall of Fame.) This is interesting stuff.
Schoemer writes with a honest, startling clarity as she begins to understand that despite her outwardly feminist trappings and love of avant-garde, punk music, she has been repressed for decades, especially sexually, by her mother's fears. She is afraid to openly express her romantic ardor for '50s music because that is unacceptable to the rock/journalism establishment.