Punk/metal rules!(Briefly Noted) (This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk ) (Brief article) (Book review)

• Author: Root, Damon W.

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Despite its distracting academic jargon, Steve Waksman's This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk (University of California Press) pinpoints an under-appreciated truth: While elite critics have championed punk as the vanguard of pop cultural revolution, "the emergence of metal has never been treated as a historically significant event." Punk struck the intellectuals as properly conceptual and arty; metal just seemed like brutal noise for brutes.

Waksman, who teaches music and American studies at Smith College, retells the history of pop music from 1970 to the...