Peter Blecha

I will state that I don't recall having such a love-hate relationship with a book and its author.

Love: Taboo Tunes is a very good history of songs, album art and artists that have been censured in mostly the United States and by the BBC. While a few inaccuracies and major omissions were noted, it offers a very good list of songs pertaining to the subject matter that were censured for references to drugs, sex, political views, ethnicity and other issues. It reinforces how music has been villified throughout time and gives lots of specific examples in increasing numbers beginning with the founding of America to the date of the books writing in 2005, most of which were from the 60's and 70's.

Hate: The author is so into "partisan politics", one might think he is a politician himself or a hack on radio/tv talk shows. While this is pretty mild at first, it nearly makes the book unreadable in the last chapter. Instead of leaving well enough alone on the reasons for censorship, the author offers commentary on their opinion of that censorship. While the author puts forth that "free speech" whould rule and that the market (not givernment or "big business" should take care of what is acceptable and what is not, they ignore that "big business" is a key part of the market. Most annoyingly, however, is that (with rare exceptions) the author overtly criticizes the "conservitive" types censuring music but then applauds the few examples of "liberal" types of censorship (their words, not mine), not staying true to their underlying theme of letting the market forces, not government, take care of what is allowed.

I would have much preferred that the author put more examples and more details into the book in the spaces he took to purput partisan hackery. It would have been a better read and more true to the title ("A history of..." and not "A History and Political Commentary of..."). I would have ranked it much higher if so.… (meer)