Apocalypse Jukebox

For a cultural movement that has no definite beginning, the sense of an ending is never very far below the surface of rock and roll music and lyrics. American popular music--from its earliest hymnals, through its growing commercial presentations via minstrelsy and vaudeville, through the explosion of technology that enabled a market for recorded music--has been shaped by an apocalyptic world view. In Apocalypse Jukebox, Edward Whitelock and David Janssen, inspired by their recollection of the end-of-the-world paranoia that so deeply infused the music of their youth (1970s-80s), trace the connections between that sense of endings and the surprisingly expansive and all-encompassing mix of paranoia and hope that characterizes so much of American history. That sense of impending doom is palpable from the book's opening in an unexpected place and time, the American South amidst a terrifying meteor shower in 1833. From there, Apocalypse Jukebox traces the influence of apocalypticism upon the development of American popular music, with the premise that America itself can be fruitfully understood, defined, explicated, and sung in apocalyptic terms [Publisher description].