ABSTRACT
In this paper I want to deal with one particular ‘popular variety’ of music, rock, and to suggest that when rock was constructed discursively as a new kind of popular music in the late 1960s, the initial discussion of the role of recording in rock practice was, if not perfunctory, certainly somewhat grudging. Rock ideology also disparaged ‘mechanized’ music;2 rock writers, too, tended to restrict critical analysis to matters of composition and performance.
