Greil Marcus (2006)

Greil Marcus (born 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 514 × 599 pixel Image in higher resolution (708 × 825 pixel, file size: 61 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) This was originally uploaded to the English language Wikipedia; this supersedes that. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 514 × 599 pixel Image in higher resolution (708 × 825 pixel, file size: 61 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) This was originally uploaded to the English language Wikipedia; this supersedes that. ... Authorship redirects here. ... This does not cite any references or sources. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Marcus was born in San Francisco. He earned an undergraduate degree in American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also did graduate work in political science. He has been a rock critic and columnist for Rolling Stone (where he was the first reviews editor, at $30 a week) and other publications, including CREEM, the Village Voice and Artforum. This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Sather tower (the Campanile) looking out over the San Francisco Bay and Mount Tamalpais. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Political Science is the field concerning the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. ... This article is about the magazine. ... CREEM, Americas Only Rock n Roll Magazine, was a monthly rock n roll publication started in 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. ... The Village Voice is a New York City-based weekly newspaper featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. ... Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. ...

His 1975 book Mystery Train re-defined the parameters of rock music criticism. The book places rock 'n'roll within the context of American cultural archetypes from Moby Dick to Jay Gatsby to Stagger Lee. Marcus's "recognition of the unities in the American imagination that already exist" inspired countless rock scribes. Moby-Dick[1] is a novel by Herman Melville. ... The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. ... Stagger Lee (also known as Stagolee, Stackerlee, Stack OLee, Stack-a-Lee and by several other spelling variants) was an African American murderer whose crime was immortalized in a blues folk song, which has been recorded in hundreds of different versions. ...

His next book, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989, developed from an earlier essay), stretched his trademark riffing across a century of Western civilization. Positing punk rock as a transhistorical cultural phenomenon, Marcus examined philosophical connections between entities as diverse as the Sex Pistols, the Dadaists, and medieval heretics. Lipstick Traces (1989), is a non-fiction book by American rock-music critic Greil Marcus that examines popular music and art as a social critique of Western culture. ... Punk rock is an anti-establishment music movement beginning around 1976 (although precursors can be found several years earlier), exemplified and popularised by The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. ... The Sex Pistols were an iconic and highly influential English punk rock band, formed in London in 1975. ... Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. ...

In 1991, Marcus published Dead Elvis, a collection of writings about Elvis Presley, and in 1993 published Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, an examination of post-punk political pop. In 1997, using old Dylan bootlegs as a starting point, Marcus dissected the American subconscious with Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. Elvis Aron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), often known simply as Elvis and also called The King of Rock n Roll or simply The King, was an American singer, musician and actor. ... This article is about the recording artist. ...

From 1983 to 1989, Marcus was on the Board of Directors for the National Book Critics Circle. He writes the column "Elephant Dancing" for Interview. His latest book, The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in the American Voice, was recently published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American association of approximately seven hundred book reviewers. ...

Bibliography

• Rock & Roll Will Stand (1969), edited anthology
• Double Feature: Movies & Politics (1972), co-authored with Michael Goodwin
• Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music (1975, fourth revision 1997)
• Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island (1979, editor and contributor)
• Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), a book on 20th century avant-garde art movements like Dadaism, Lettrist International and Situationist International and their influence on late 20th century countercultures and The Sex Pistols and Punk Movement.
• Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (1991), about the phenomenon of Elvis Presley in the years since his death
• In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992 (1993, published in the US as Ranters and Crowd Pleasers)
• The Dustbin of History (1995)
• Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (1998; also released as The Old, Weird America: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, 2001), a treatise on America as seen through Dylan's famous Basement Tapes recordings
• Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives (2001)
• The Manchurian Candidate (2002)
• The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (2004, co-edited with Sean Wilentz)
• Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (2005), a "biography" of the Dylan song
• The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in the American Voice (2006)

Lipstick Traces (1989), is a non-fiction book by American rock-music critic Greil Marcus that examines popular music and art as a social critique of Western culture. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ... Cover of the first edition of the publication, Dada. ... The Lettrist International (LI) was the first breakaway group from Isidore Isous Lettrist Movement (LM). ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... In sociology, counterculture is a term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. ... Elvis Aron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), often known simply as Elvis and also called The King of Rock n Roll or simply The King, was an American singer, musician and actor. ... Invisible Republic, fully entitled Invisible Republic Bob Dylans Basement Tapes by author Greil Marcus, is a treatise on the creation and cultural importance of The Basement Tapes, a series of recordings by Bob Dylan made during 1967 in collaboration with musicians who would subsequently be known as The Band. ... The Basement Tapes is a studio album by Bob Dylan and The Band, released in 1975 by Columbia Records. ...

External links

• "Obsessive Memories", essay by Marcus on memory and on his father, Greil Gerstley, who died in World War II.

• "Online exchange with Greil Marcus" at rockcritics.com