Rebels wit attitude: Subversive Rock Humorists

In Rebels Wit Attitude, music writer and professor Iain Ellis throws a spotlight on the history of humor as a weapon of anti-establishment rebellion, paying tribute to the great rebel humorists in American rock history and investigating comedy and laughter as the catalyst and main expressive force in these artists work.
The performers who are the subject of Ellis's study are not merely funny people - they are those whose art exudes defiance and resistance, whether aimed at social structures and mores, political systems, aesthetic practices, or the music industry itself. Subversive rock humor has emerged as a formidable force of modern art, building a reputation for rock music as a rebellious -sometimes dangerous- form of expression that can dismay the adult mainstream as it empowers the youth culture. In this study of rock's impact on youth through the decades, Ellis proves that the most subversive rock humorists serve as the conscience of our culture. They chastise pretensions, satirize hypocrisy, and pour scorn on power, corruption, and lies.

Discussing the work of iconic figures as diverse as Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, the Beastie Boys, Missy Elliott, and Madonna, Ellis examines the nature of the rock humorist, asking why and in what ways each performer uses humor as a weapon of resistance to various status quos. The commentary on these artists' work is the basis for a deeper discussion of the historical foundations and other socio-cultural contexts of humorous art, and Ellis delves into the larger issues of politics, nationality, ethics, geography, generation, art, social class, race, gender and sexuality that surround his subject. Thus Rebels Wit Attitude is at once an entertaining look at some of the greatest rebels in American rock culture and an absorbing historical and cultural study of humor and rebellion. The chapters, divided by decade, include introductory sections outlining each decade's defining forces and contextual features.

CONTENIDO:

Introduction: Subversion, rock, humor
- Subversive Rock Humor's Defining Features
- Subversive Rock Humorists: Who? Where? When? Why?

The Fifties: Evolution to Revolution
- From "Race" music to R&B to Rock & Roll
-- Chuck Berry
-- Little Richard
-- Bo Diddley
- White Boys Who Stole the Rhythm & Blues
-- Jerry Lee Lewis
- Bawdy Women
-- Big Mama Thornton
-- Wanda Jackson
- Novelty Humor
-- The Coasters
- The Comic Craze and Other Visual Spectacles
-- Screamin' Jay Hawkins
- The Days the Music Died

The Sixties: Humor Grows Up... and away
- Seriously Folk
-- Bob Dylan
-- Phil Ochs
- Girl Power
-- The Shangri-Las
- Mid-Sixties Turning Points
-- Country Joe & the Fish
- Bubblegum Pops Up
- The Rock Counter-counterculture
-- The Mothers of invention
-- The Fugs
-- The Velvet Underground
- Retreats into the future

The Seventies: Radical Cynicism
- Lost in L.A.
-- Warren Zevon
-- Randy Newman
- Fight the Powers
-- Gil Scott-Heron
- Wham Glam!
-- Alice Cooper
- Proto-punk Prototypes
-- New York Dolls
-- Modern Lovers
- The CBGBs Scene: Bored in the U.S.A.
-- The Ramones
-- Talking Heads
- Out of the Ashes

The Eighties: Postmodern Regenerations
- Hardcore
-- Dead Kennedys
- Rap Breaks
-- Ice T
-- Beastie Boys
- Metal on Metal
- "Post"-Feminism
-- Madonna
- Novelty Update
-- "Weird Al" Yankovic
- This is radio college
- X-treme Humor
- Extreme Takeover

The Nineties: Rock in Flux
- Slack Attacks
-- Nirvana
-- Beck
- The Years of the woman
-- Misy Elliott
- A Riot of Their Own
- Urban R(h)apsodies
-- Eminem
- Nightmares on Metal Street
-- Marilyn Manson
- Pop Goes the Punk
- Roots Rerouted

The Naughties: Post-Irony and Identity Humor
- Camping Out
- Rock On!
- Country's Crossroads
- Indie Intellectuals
- Back to the Future
Notes
Index