Posted by Trott

I recently finished reading Kill Your Idols, edited by Jim DeRogatis and Carmél Carrillo.

Most of the customer reviews at Amazon.Com deride the book as navel-gazing or worse.

I personally love navel-gazing rock writing.

Sure, a lot of the writers are self-indulgent and misguided. This is a lot better than a bunch of writers that are pandering to their readers and expressing thoroughly conventional opinions.

I say: Line up the blowhards, wind 'em up, and let 'em blow! (This might be the new motto for PalaceFamilySteakHouse.Com.)

This book will make you laugh, bore the crap out of you, provoke you with surprising insights, piss you off with its stupidity, and make you cheer that someone else out there finally agrees with you about that artist that you don't get but everyone else oohs and aahs about.

I honestly don't know what the people who read this book and disliked it were expecting. Maybe they were looking for a book they could dislike in the same way the writers in the book seem a bit too eager to write about artists they hate. Or maybe they truly expected a coherently-argued and tightly-constructed reconsideration of the supposed rock canon. Now that would be a boring exercise in navel-gazing. (Of course, I said I like navel-gazing above. Oh well, so much for consistency.)