The Top 30 Rock Books I Own: #2 Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age Of Rock

Title: Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age Of Rock
Author: Nik Cohn
Year Originally Published: 1969
Edition I Own: First Grove Press Edition, copyright 1996 by Grove Press

What They Say: 1) Cosmic Debris Magazine 2) Book Reporter 3) The editors of The Rolling Stone Record Guide (the first red one): "The best-written, wittiest rock history ... So if he thinks that Bob Dylan is fairly useless and that the Rolling Stones should have died in a plane crash at thirty, that's just part of the sport."

Tuomala's Attempt At A Take: Bought this one in the mid-to-late nineties at the now-closed Hungry Mind in St. Paul, which always had a great selection of music publications on its shelves. I've read it twice and love it. Nik Cohn is an interesting cat: 1) This book is considered one of the first critical histories of rock 'n' roll, and some of its narraration went on to become the basis for the prose in Rock Dreams. 2) Pete Townshend played Cohn some of Tommy before it was finished, Cohn wasn't entirely impressed, so Townshend went and wrote "Pinball Wizard." Cohn is a huge pinball fan, and funny - he went on to write a glowing review of the album. 3) He wrote an article about disco that went on to become the inspiration for Saturday Night Fever. He later admitted he had fabricated much of the article and that he had inserted some of the characteristics of the Mods he had known in England into the disco people in his article.