Monthly Archives: June 2022

I recently read through, and reviewed, Greil Marcus’ earlier collection of columns about pop culture, music and politics — Real Life Rock — without realizing that he had a brand new collection out called More Real Life Rock. So I grabbed that one, too, and, as with the first, I enjoyed most of what Marcus has written in these Top Ten formatted short pieces of analysis and insights, almost always with some connection to music.

While the first collection covered a span of time from 1986 to 2014, as Marcus jumped from different platforms to host his column, this second collection is more modern day, with a big part taking place during the Trump years. The years covered in this one is from 2014-2021, and again, was hosted in a variety of places.

The insights of Marcus are always intriguing as he mixed quotes and editorials and reviews of music and shows, and sometimes, friends writing in to him about the world, and yet, he always seems fixated on some central artists of the past — Bob Dylan and the Band continue to get featured quite a bit, sometimes in celebratory mode but just as often, with a critical eye. Sleater-Kinney gets lots of ink in this collection, and that’s a good thing.

I appreciated learning about many musical artists that I had not heard of before, and it’s clear that Marcus has a veracious appetite for music and art, and through the reading of these columns (which ran in places like Barnes & Noble online magazine, Pitchfork and others), one can make a connection to the larger world, of how art intersects with culture and politics. His playfulness with skewering the Top Ten format is appreciated.

I won’t say I agreed with all of his views, and that’s OK. He can have a biting way with words, particularly if he doesn’t like something or finds it lacking in integrity or originality. I prefer that voice of his in this context, as it resonates through the entire collection of pieces. Apparently, he’s once again without a platform home (I wonder what editors think of his pieces), but I read that he is might be moving his Top Ten column over to Substack as a newsletter in the near future, so I might wander over and see what he’s up to there.

Peace (and criticism),
Kevin

Ben Shattuck’s wonderful new book — Six Walks (In The Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau) — is built on a quest, of sorts. Shattuck wants to wander, and he uses six different adventures that Thoreau wrote about in various books and journals as a guide to leave home and explore. Where Thoreau goes, so goes Shattuck.

The result becomes more of an internal journey, as Shattuck uses the explorations (Cape Cod, New Hampshire, Maine, etc.) as a way to think about his own world, in the quiet of contemplation from being alone (mostly). Throughout the book, Shattuck weaves in the voice of Thoreau, in his many complications as a person and writer and thinker, while making his own observations of nature and the world.

Quite a bit of time passes between the first three walks and the last three, and Shattuck’s own life has changed, as he is engaged and has a child on the way, and the gap between that earlier, uncertain life and the one where he finds love as a force of stability gives the writing balance and ballast.

I enjoyed his observations of the forests and sea coasts and lakes, and the ability Shattuck has for weaving narrative from those observational strands, never flinching from difficult stories nor worrying about celebratory ones. And Thoreau hovers like a ghost in the book, his words and own travels guiding Shattuck forward into the wilderness of discovery.

I could see this book, and the model of the hikes inspired by another writer, as a possible text for folks who participate in the yearly Write Out adventures.

Peace (in the farther woods),
Kevin

Greil Marcus is a legend in rock music criticism, a longtime voice on the scene that often cuts through the surface of music to go deeper by observing the cultural moments and the lens of musical history. He can be witty, supportive and insightful, and he can just as quickly be harsh, snarky and critical. Whether you agree with him or not, he’s clear on what he thinks about a particular artist, song or cultural moment.

In his book Real Life Rock, Marcus gathered together decades of columns in various publications (starting with The Village Voice and ending in The Believer) of a column by the same name of the book, where Marcus uses the Top Ten list concept by examining music, culture, art, books, television, politics and whatever else caught his attention at the moment. (Note: he also has a new book out, with more recent columns)

For each of the ten topics in any given column, he mostly opines in only a few sentences, although there are other times when he takes liberty with the space offered, writing a short editorial beneath any given topic. You can tell he has found something passionate, and has sunk his hooks into an issue. His breadth of knowledge is pretty impressive.

Common artists emerge across time for his opinion (often skeptical but sometimes celebratory): Bob Dylan, cover albums, the Mekons, Lucinda Williams, Bonny Prince Billy, Sleater-Kinney, Allison Krause, and more.

I flipped to a page in the book, and here are the topics at a glance, which give a sense of the wide scope of Marcus interests:

• Dido’s Thank You song (and what Eminem did with it)
• Live concert of Rock Your Baby (Portland) by Dick Slessig Combo
• Billy Bragg and Wilco (Woody Guthrie covers in Mermaid Avenue Vol.2)
• Shalini (singer from North Carolina)
• Thread Waxing Space (art display in NYC) – life casts of musicians

Reading his pieces across time (1986 through 2014) is pretty fascinating, and even if I skipped through many of his pieces as I sort of did a power reading tour of musical criticism, Marcus’ voice is always loud and clear, confident and critical. I didn’t always agree with him but I always kept on reading him. The rewards in terms of tiny nuggets of insights were always worth the time.

Peace (in books about music),
Kevin