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Title: In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992 by Greil Marcus ISBN: 0-674-44577-5 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Ranters & Punters!
Comment: I found this Book under it's original Title. I think it is a great collection of Greil Marcus's Writings of Music outside the mainstream. Not Pretentious, but not Dumbed down for some average Music Joe. Post Punk Groups are treated with the respect & relevance that they deserved, at the time of their exhistance! Less convuluted than Lipstick Traces, and more enjoyable. I sought out these different group's music with new insight. Made even more enjoyable by Greil's added depth of his words. I like my Rock writers to actually Love their Subjects, without Jealousy or rancor.
Rating: 5
Summary: TASTY & SUCCULENT
Comment: A collection on punk and related matters from 1977 through 1992, including what was left out of Marcus' earlier book Lipstick Traces. In the author's own words, it's about "records, performances, twists of the radio dial." It moves from the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy" to Nirvana's "Nevermind" in this illumined golden thread. Marcus writes about what moved, scared and disgusted him and what made him feel so privileged to be part of the punk audience. His views of punk encompassed a wide horizon, to include the likes of Bruce Springsteen, early Prince, Laurie Anderson and David Lynch's film Blue Velvet. His point is that punk made wonderful things like Anderson's "Superman" possible even though Superman itself isn't punk. In other words, punk's liberating effect caused sea changes in the perception of pop. A major weakness of the book is that it ignores the entire New York scene, because, as he puts it, "most [New York] punks seemed to be auditioning for careers as something else." So no Patti Smith, no Richard Hell, a cursory mention of Talking Heads, but you WILL find Blondie here. Fascist Bathroom follows many avenues (The Clash, Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello) but maybe its most precious contribution is rescuing from obscurity some lower-profile such as Laura Logic, The Mekons, Marianne Faithfull. It's a joy to read, chronologically arranged and ending with Nirvana and grunge in the 90s. The text swarms with relevant quotes from rock lyrics and references to other rock journalists like Lester Bangs. For anyone with a passionate interest in rock/pop music and youth culture, it's required reading.
Rating: 4
Summary: Valedictorian of the Space Academy
Comment: These are brilliant essays, many of them indeed discussing punk's effect on mainstream culture, but some of them trouble me. Marcus is original and insightful, but can be overly academic. That is, sometimes his thesis takes precedence to the truth, or even common sense.
It's normal to expect brilliant thinkers to be intuitive and obsessive. But Marcus tends to focus on one tiny wrinkle in a work, and to blow it up into an explanation for all the artist's motives, intentions, and finally the Western Dilemma itself. By the time he reaches the end of his inspired flight, we are miles away from the original subject.
One example is his interpretation of the album "Los Angeles" by the band X as a Raymond Chandler story set to music. This approach is clever, and gives him a chance to indulge in some retro literary criticism, but the two works really have nothing in common besides their L.A. low-lifes.
A more inexplicable example is his essay on the L.A. punk scene. In apparent (and inferior) imitation of a famous piece by Lester Bangs, he abandons all logic to portray the L.A. punks as proto-fascist. He describes the Black Flag song "White Minority" as racist, while ignoring the fact that the singer is Hispanic and the song clearly ironic. He describes a punk's hostility to "hippies" as master-race thuggery, when it's clear that by "hippies" the boy means the long-haired metal fans who preyed on the punk minority. Both these facts are explained in the film Marcus is describing. He seems to have overlooked them because they weakened his very New Yorkish, anti-West Coast thesis.
There are other examples, many of them explicable by the eccentricities of a powerful mind and the journalist's need to find an original "handle" on a subject. But if such a goal is pursued too far we get Yellow Journalism, which has caused physical harm in the past and will do so again.
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Title: Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century by Greil Marcus ISBN: 0674535812 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1990 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung : The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock'N'Roll by Lester Bangs ISBN: 0679720456 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 12 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution by Stephen Colegrave, Chris Sullivan ISBN: 156025369X Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: 10 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain ISBN: 0140266909 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: England's Dreaming : Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond by Jon Savage ISBN: 0312288220 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 18 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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