The Daily Swarm caught this: Joe Carducci, author of Rock and the Pop Narcotic, Ur-text for everyone who, way back when, thought Henry Rollins was a deep thinker, is back, with a new book of fiction. Ann Powers in the LA Times pricelessly captures Carducci’s point of view:

In 1991, Joe Carducci published a massive, brilliant, stupid, exhaustive, exhausting book called “Rock and the Pop Narcotic,” which set out a theory of what mattered in rock music that inspired many and infuriated more. Since he was office manager/utility infielder at SST, one of the key labels defining American punk, Carducci had more right than most to spout on about the importance of bands like Husker Du and Black Flag.

I hated that book: Carducci came off as a macho libertarian in love with some romantic idea of the working class, who thought male bonding was the key ingredient in music-making, that establishment rock critics were namby-pamby liberals and that anything aimed at the marketplace (i.e., at girls) was hopelessly corrupt.