Greil Marcus
Author
Language
English
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Description
The legendary critic and author of Mystery Train “ingeniously retells the tale of rock and roll” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Unlike previous versions of rock ’n’ roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs and dramatizes how each embodies...
Unlike previous versions of rock ’n’ roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs and dramatizes how each embodies...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The best critic of popular culture in America considers the attraction of the Doors, which has endured despite the band's short life, sampling the lasting songs and legendary performances that made Jim Morrison and his band rock 'n' roll legends. A fan from the moment the Doors' first album took over KMPX, the revolutionary FM rock 'n' roll station in San Francisco, Greil Marcus saw the band many times at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium and the...
Author
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English
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Description
"Van Morrison," says Greil Marcus, "remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music." When Astral Weeks was released in 1968, it was largely ignored. When it was rereleased as a live album in 2009 it reached the top of the Billboard charts, a first for any Van Morrison recording. The wild swings in the music, mirroring the swings in Morrison's success and in people's appreciation (or lack of it) of his music,...
Author
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English
Description
From the author of Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces, an exhilarating and provocative investigation of the tangle of American identity.
"America is a place and a story, made up of exuberance and suspicion, crime and liberation, lynch mobs and escapes; its greatest testaments are made of portents and warnings, biblical allusions that lose all certainty in the American air." It is this story of self-invention and nationhood that Greil Marcus rediscovers,...
Author
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English
Description
From the critic who knows music and culture like no other, a fascinating look at two outsiders who epitomize America's fractured self-image.
In June of 1992, when all polls showed Bill Clinton didn't have a chance, he took his saxophone onto the Arsenio Hall Show, put on dark glasses, and blew "Heartbreak Hotel." Greil Marcus, one of America's most imaginative and insightful critics, was the first to name this as the moment that turned Clinton's...
Author
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English
Description
Previously published as Invisible Republic and already considered a classic of modern American cultural criticism, this is an updated edition of Greil Marcus's acclaimed book on the secret music made by Bob Dylan and the Band in 1967, which introduced a phrase that has become part of the culture: "the old, weird America."
Marcus's widely acclaimed book is about the secret music (the so-called "Basement Tapes") made by Bob Dylan and the Band while...
Author
Language
English
Description
It was the twang heard 'round the world: Rockabilly was born out of country, bluegrass, jazz, and the blues in the 1950s, becoming rock 'n' roll and ruling the world. Here's the story of Elvis Presley's first Sun records that inspired all. And here's Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and many more rockabillies from the golden years of 1955—1959, in a book chock full of photos, collectible memorabilia,...
9) Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment and the Stubborn Myth of the Great Gatsby
Author
Language
English
Description
A deep dive into how F. Scott Fitzgerald's vision of the American Dream has been understood, portrayed, distorted, misused, and kept alive
Renowned critic Greil Marcus takes on the fascinating legacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. An enthralling parable (or a cheap metaphor) of the American Dream as a beckoning finger toward a con game, a kind of virus infecting artists of all sorts over nearly a century, Fitzgerald's story has become...
Author
Publisher
Blackstone Publishing
Pub. Date
2011
Language
English
Description
The best critic of popular culture in America considers the attraction of the Doors, which has endured despite the band's short life, sampling the lasting songs and legendary performances that made Jim Morrison and his band rock 'n' roll legends.
A fan from the moment the Doors' first album took over KMPX, the revolutionary FM rock 'n' roll station in San Francisco, Greil Marcus saw the band many times at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium and
...Author
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the national songbook in a way that comes from his own vision and yet can feel as if it belongs to anyone who might listen. In Folk Music, Greil Marcus tells Dylan's story through seven of his most transformative songs. Marcus's point of departure is Dylan's ability to "see myself in others." Like Dylan's songs, this book is a work...
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Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism...