You have to hand it to American rock brains Janssen and Whitelock: they’ve attempted to cram a vast subject between Apocalypse Culture’s covers. If life is basically about sex and death (having as much as possible of the first, while putting off the latter as long as you can), this is doubly true in the case of popular music. This book paints a satisfyingly bleak picture of how American musicians since time immemorial have been reminding us that, despite our best efforts, Homo sapiens are ultimately destined for a fiery demise, whether in a supernova in eight billion years or a nuclear holocaust rather sooner than that. From a superb analysis of folk, gospel and blues, via postwar rock’n’roll to the modern era, the authors deliver a convincing, if slightly over-academic, treatise.
The only reasonable criticism is that this can’t possibly cover the subject in its entirety. There’s little attention paid to eschatology-related subcultures such as gothic rock, black metal and psychedelia. This is reflected in the authors’ choices of subject, spending rather too much time analysing Dylan, Cohen, Devo and REM. We only need Clapton and the Dave Matthews Band and we’d have the full Rolling Stone-reader set. Despite this inevitable bias, Apocalypse Culture is an impressive achievement.
