Pop Culture Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race

Selected Critical Essays 1979 to 2001

By Carol Cooper

Reviews

We are pleased to announce the fall release of Pop Culture Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race, the first collection of essays about contemporary music, art, film, literature, television, and nightlife trends by Harlem-based cultural critic Carol Cooper. For the focus of this book Cooper has chosen stories that first appeared in various British and American publications during the last 20 years of the 20th century.

As one of the few pop journalists then allowed to write regularly about emerging trends in world music, ethnic films, and underground genre literature, she was often first on the mainstream scene to offer opinions about subsequently influential artists from Spike Lee and Sade, to sf-author M. John Harrison to graphic novelist Dave Mack.

A partial list of the commercial outlets which have featured her work includes: Elle; Essence; Wired; The Village Voice; Billboard; International Musician; Spin; Latin N.Y; Black Music and Jazz Review; and The New York Times.

—Publisher, Nega Fulo Books

Few pop culture critics understand the complexities and ramifications of race, class, gender, commerce, and pleasure with the command of Carol Cooper. Her prose is lucid, her understanding vast. Reading her essays brings to life key periods in modern culture and casts them in a light all her own.

Where other writers cannot see even one dimension, Carol Cooper sees many. She takes on complex issues—race, politics, gender, spirituality—with clear, precise language, a rare skill that packs this collection with thrills and revelations." Joe Levy, editor, Rolling Stone magazine

—Joe Levy , Rolling Stone Magazine

May the gods continue to bless Carol Cooper. She writes from the heart. one senses immediately that she genuinely cares about the subject. this is rare and most welcoming. She is the only female contender I know, in the field of critical journalism, who deserves the throne. If she is given it, she will take it. Hail Cooper!

—August Darnell, confounder, Kid creole & the Coconuts and Dr. Buzzard's' Original Savannah Band

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When it comes to pop culture, first impressions means a lot. Do you remember the first time you encountered Prince? Sade? A Spike Lee film? Internet Service Providers? House music? Green Day? Gilberto Gil? Cyberpunk? Run DMC? Carol Cooper remembers. And from the late 1970s until the present she documented those encounters with wit and verve for publications ranging from The Face (in England) to American Elle, to regional tabloids like The Village Voice. The first collection of essays cherry-picks work from the last 20 years of the 20th century, giving intellectual closure to America's "modern age."   [ (photo left)— The Author with Sen, Muggs, and B-Real of Cypress Hill]

Here you will find fresh opinions on The Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Cypress Hill, Bob Marley, TLC, Tori Amos, Teddy Riley, Teena Marie, The Clark Sisters, Otis Redding, Brazilian literature, Singaporean rock, Latin hip-hop, Broadway musicals, New York nightlife, and much much more. Over the last two decades of the 20th century, Harlem-based journalist Carol Cooper wrote about pop music, theater, dance, books, nightclubs, television and film for some of the most influential underground trend-'zines and newspapers on the planet. Collected in one volume for the first time are selected essays from a seminal voice in ongoing debates interrogating the social relevance of both "high" and "low" art once they become commodified and distorted by runaway consumer capitalism.

The 1980s and 1990s were shaped by the increasing significance of women's studies, race/identity politics, the international dissemination of global pop culture, and digital communications media of all kinds. To comment on these changes, Cooper brings a resolutely utopian, structurally rigorous, Pan-Africanist perspective to each issue, thereby creating refreshing new contexts for critical meaning. this controversial yet often-imitated approach has kept Cooper among the vanguard of trenchant cultural critics of the present day.

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Table of Contents

Source: Carol Cooper. Pop Culture Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race: Selected Critical Essays 1979 to 2001. Nega Fulo Books, December 2006. Music/Sociology/American Studies, 362 pages, 6 x 9, 5 B&W photographs. $25.00 (CAN $34.00), Cloth, ISBN: 0-9788908-0-9.

Ms. Cooper is available for evening in-store talks and book signings; book-group appearances, and public or private school programs in connection with creative writing classes. [School programs may qualify for special bulk-order discounts.] http://carolcooper.org/pcc.php

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update 18 June 2008

Carol Cooper is a New York-based journalist and cultural critic who has been reviewing music, books, film, and live performance for over twenty years. Her work has appeared in national and international publications including Actuel (Paris), The Face (London), Latin New York, The Village Voice, Essence, Elle, New York Newsday, and The New York Times. Her essays have also been anthologized in following collections: Rock She Wrote, The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, Brooklyn, Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough: Essays in Honor of Robert Christgau and Rolling Stone Press: The '70s. Ms. Cooper has also done short tours of executive duty in the music industry, serving as East Coast Director of Black Music Artists and Repertoire for A&M Records in the mid-'80s, and National Director of Black Music Artists and Repertoire for Columbia Records in the early '90s.

[(photo above right)  The author with Nora lead singer for Orquestra de la Luz.]