Bruno MacDonald

666 Songs to Make You Bang Your Head Until You Die by Bruno MacDonald is a surprisingly fun trip through rock and roll history with an emphasis on the harder side.

While you are probably familiar with the vast majority of the songs and all but a couple of the artists this is still a nostalgic trip (if you're as old as I am) or a source of older songs (if you're younger). As he acknowledges at the beginning, this is a very broad definition of hard rock/metal/etc. It really is about the songs and artists that contributed to what came after. So the first part is mostly what passed for hard in the early years yet helped to pave the way for later metal and hard rock bands.

I can't imagine there is a reader that won't think some songs should have been included and that some should have been excluded. Such is the nature of lists, and also a large part of what makes them fun. MacDonald also states upfront that a similar history could have written using 666 different songs.

What I found particularly fun here was rather than actually disagreeing with a song being included I thought about what other songs from the same time, and often from the same album, would have been just as good. Which gave me the excuse to pull out old albums, tapes, CDs, and go to streaming sites to listen to music under the guise of "research." I think I had a couple flashbacks, but that is for another time.

It is a bit disingenuous to complain that there isn't enough written about each song. This is a themed list, not an encyclopedia. I mean, really, just how many volumes does someone want? 666 songs with in-depth write-ups would have to be prohibitively long. This is a fun list, not an encyclopedia. If you want a more detailed history there are plenty of good ones around. But they often make it difficult to simply find a list of songs to enjoy. Here, the list is the thing.

Highly recommended for those who simply want to follow one of many possible threads through the history of rock and roll. Also those who like album/45 covers will enjoy this, though the images are not very large.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.… (mere)