RISKY BUSINESS
This book began as an essay I wrote for a graduate seminar with R. Serge Denisoff during my doctoral studies at Bowling Green State University. Denisoff pioneered sociological study of the recording industry. Among his publications are Solid Gold: The Popular Music Industry (1975), Waylon: A Biography (1983), Tarnished Gold: The Record Industry Revisited (1986) and Inside MTV (1988). He recognized this study of the merger of the film and recording industries as an important industry trend inspired by the advent of MTV and I became the “junior” author on what the publisher described as “a major new book re-examining and extending Denisoff’s pioneering examinations of the record industry and how it interacts with other media.” Denisoff died in August 1994.
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FROM THE PUBLISHER:
The role of motion pictures in the popularity of rock music became increasingly significant in the latter twentieth century. Rock music and its interaction with film is the subject of this significant book that re-examines and extends R. Serge Denisoff’s pioneering observations of this relationship. Prior to Saturday Night Fever rock music had a limited role in the motion picture business. That movie’s success, and the success of its soundtrack, began to change the silver screen. In 1983, with Flashdance, the situation drastically evolved and by 1984, ten soundtracks, many in the pop/rock genre, were certified platinum. Choosing which rock scores to discuss in this book was a challenging task. The authors made selections from seminal films such as The Graduate, Easy Rider, American Grafitti, Saturday Night Fever, Help!, and Dirty Dancing. However, many productions of the period are significant not because of their success, but because of their box office and record store failures. Risky Business chronicles the interaction of two major mediums of mass culture in the latter twentieth century. This book is essential for those interested in communications, popular culture, and social change.
Reviews & Awards
“In their analyses of the cross-fertilization among media industries, Denisoff and Romanowski offer both original and significant contributions to the contemporary popular music literature. Their examinations—of the economics of production, marketing, and distribution—offer very useful insights into those hybrid mechanisms of late capitalism designed to eliminate all risk from the business of mass entertainment.” —Journal of Communication
“A landmark study.” —Journal of Popular Culture
“[Risky Business] is valuable in two ways. First, as a work of reference . . . Second, as a guidebook through the corridors of the culture industries, it traces the history of the ways the media have become totally integrated as industries, beginning from the halting first steps at accommodation in the late 1950s and maturing in the late 1970s in the ‘synergy’ (an industry term) by which the music, film, and eventually video divisions of entertainment corporations have subsequently fed off each other. . . . a veritable treasure of information that will be indispensable for the foreseeable future.” —Film Quarterly