Kitty Empire -The Observer,
Things are rarely as they seem with Greil Marcus, probably the rock’n’roll era’s most lateral thinker. His works – such as 1975’s Mystery Train (loosely about Elvis) and 1989’s Lipstick Traces (loosely about the Sex Pistols) – play out as allusively as any cult classic from a heady fringe subgenre.
The title of the US critic’s latest playful, erudite and passionate work, The History of Rock’n’Roll in Ten Songs, should come with lurid neon inverts around each constituent part: “The History” of “Rock’n’Roll” “in Ten “Songs”.
It’s a magnificently subjective history, in which significant chunks are set outside the realm of rock, in pop or soul. All I Could Do Was Cry – both the Etta James original and the Beyoncé cover, playing James in the Chess Records film, Cadillac Records (2008) – is a touchstone, but it’s a rhythm and blues single, with shades of doo-wop.
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The title of the US critic’s latest playful, erudite and passionate work, The History of Rock’n’Roll in Ten Songs, should come with lurid neon inverts around each constituent part: “The History” of “Rock’n’Roll” “in Ten “Songs”.
It’s a magnificently subjective history, in which significant chunks are set outside the realm of rock, in pop or soul. All I Could Do Was Cry – both the Etta James original and the Beyoncé cover, playing James in the Chess Records film, Cadillac Records (2008) – is a touchstone, but it’s a rhythm and blues single, with shades of doo-wop.
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