This volume gathers together twenty articles from among the best scholarly writing on rock music published in academic journals over the past two decades. These diverse essays reflect the wide range of approaches that scholars in various disciplines have applied to the study of rock, from those that address mainly the historical, sociological, cultural and technological factors that gave rise to this music, to those that focus primarily on analysis of the music itself. This collection of articles, some of which are now out of print or otherwise difficult to access, provides an overview of the current state of research in the field of rock music, and includes an introduction which contributes to the ongoing debate over the distinction (or lack thereof) betweenrock andpop.

Mark Spicer is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the CUNY Graduate Center, and also Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music at Hunter College of the City University of New York, USA

Contents: Introduction: the rock (academic) circus; Part I Histories, Aesthetics and Ideologies: Prolegomena to any aesthetics of rock music, Bruce Baugh; Fans and critics: Greil Marcus's Mystery Train as rock 'n' roll history, Mark Mazullo; Synergies and reciprocities: the dynamics of musical and professional interaction between the Beatles and Bob Dylan, Ian Inglis; The hippie aesthetic: cultural positioning and musical ambition in early progressive rock, John Covach; Consuming nature: the Grateful Dead's performance of an anticommercial counterculture, Nadya Zimmerman; The future is now...and then: sonic historiography in post-1960s rock, Kevin Holm-Hudson; Indie: the institutional politics and aesthetics of a popular music genre, David Hesmondhalgh; When women play the bass: instrument specialization and gender interpretation in alternative rock music, Mary Ann Clawson; All singers are dicks, Deena Weinstein; Intimacy and distance: on Stipe's queerness, Fred Maus. Part II Sounds, Structures and Styles: The melodic-harmonic 'divorce' in rock, David Temperley; Triadic modal and pentatonic patterns in rock music, Nicole Biamonte; Transformation in rock harmony: an explanatory strategy, Christopher Doll; The persona-environment relation in recorded song, Allan F. Moore; (Ac)cumulative form in pop-rock music, Mark Spicer; Every inch of my love: Led Zeppelin and the problem of cock rock, Steve Waksman; Examining rhythmic and metric practices in Led Zeppelin's musical style, John Brackett; Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: juxtaposition and transformation All Along the Watchtower, Albin J. Zak III; The learned vs. the vernacular in the songs of Billy Joel, Walter Everett; Sound, text and identity in Korn's Hey Daddy, Jonathan Pieslak; Name index.