Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century

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Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century

3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 · rating details · 1,847 ratings · 125 reviews

Greil Marcus, author of "Mystery Train," widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. "I am an antichrist!" shouted...more Greil Marcus, author of "Mystery Train," widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. "I am an antichrist!" shouted singer Johnny Rotten--where in the world of pop music did that come from? Looking for an answer, with a high sense of the drama of the journey, Marcus takes us down the dark paths of counterhistory, a route of blasphemy, adventure, and surprise.

This is no mere search for cultural antecedents. Instead, what Marcus so brilliantly shows is that various kinds of angry, absolute demands--demands on society, art, and all the governing structures of everyday life--seem to be coded in phrases, images, and actions passed on invisibly, but inevitably, by people quite unaware of each other. Marcus lets us hear strange yet familiar voices: of such heretics as the Brethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe and the Ranters in seventeenth-century England; the dadaists in Zurich in 1916 and Berlin in 1918, wearing death masks, chanting glossolalia; one Michel Mourre, who in 1950 took over Easter Mass at Notre-Dame to proclaim the death of God; the Lettrist International and the Situationist International, small groups of Paris--based artists and writers surrounding Guy Debord, who produced blank-screen films, prophetic graffiti, and perhaps the most provocative social criticism of the 1950s and '60s; the rioting students and workers of May '68, scrawling cryptic slogans on city walls and bringing France to a halt; the Sex Pistols in London, recording the savage "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen."

Although the Sex Pistols shape the beginning and the end of the story, "Lipstick Traces" is not a book about music; it is about a common voice, discovered and transmitted in many forms. Working from scores of previously unexamined and untranslated essays, manifestos, and filmscripts, from old photographs, dada sound poetry, punk songs, collages, and classic texts from Marx to Henri Lefebvre, Marcus takes us deep behind the acknowledged events of our era, into a hidden tradition of moments that would seem imaginary except for the fact that they are real: a tradition of shared utopias, solitary refusals, impossible demands, and unexplained disappearances. Written with grace and force, humor and an insistent sense of tragedy and danger, "Lipstick Traces" tells a story as disruptive and compelling as the century itself.(less)

Paperback, 512 pages

Published September 1st 1990 by Harvard University Press (first published April 5th 1989)

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Jul 29, 2008 Derek rated it 3 of 5 stars

As a scholarly work, this is some post-modern mush-brained twaddle.

Dude...John of Leyden...John Lydon!...Whoa! Take a rip from the history bong!

It seems to be a gateway drug to Situationism, May '68, etc. for a lot of folks, which is of value.

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Feb 01, 2009 Gaelan D'costa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, music, culture, post-modern

What a bastard! Greil Marcus sucked me in with 70s punk trivia and turned out to be an introductory text on Dadaism, Situationist International and the May '68 riots that shaped contemporary France.

But, if this book as anything to say, it shaped punk too. By bookending philosophy with punk histories it convinced me that listening to protest music was not enough; it uncovered a philosophy that demonstrates the true danger and disruptive joy that should have informed the instruments and ears of ev...more

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May 15, 2007 Jared Colley rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those interested in avant-garde, dadaism, situationism, punk

Shelves: history, culturalstudies

This book is so many things: (1) a non-linear history of the avant-garde, (2) a broad critique of the everyday life of mid/late capitalist society, (3) an account of punk, anarchy, and the historical/cultural roots of such phenomena, (4) a work of art perhaps?

This book is not for everyone, however. It is, at times, a frustrating, incoherent read - an experiment in historical scholarship. Malcom McLaren himself states that Marcus' book "was a crazy, wild, at times almost inarticulate attempt to d...more

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May 07, 2007 space rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: IDIOTS

Marcus not only gets most of it WRONG, he seems intent on politicizing the expressly apolitical (early p-rock). My opinion of this book has always been colored by the fact that this guy is a clown... a fucking PRO-SITU ROCK CRITIC, someone that Debord would've punched in the fucking face (I know this cause I corresponded with Guy- and he agreed this pot-boiler is laughable... as did Jamie Reid.) No one should take this thing seriously. Fuck it off and read the original texts. Don't let this POP-...more

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Feb 25, 2007 Julie Fishkin rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who listens to good music

Shelves: read-already

Brilliant. This imperative, Benjamin Buchloh endorsed, piece of cultural history examines, re-defines and formulates the entire history of punk movement from its inception centuries ago with various revolutionary anarchists all the way up to Malcolm McLaren and, yes, the sex pistols. He understands Guy Debords fundamental contributions to punk through the inception of the Situationists during the Paris May 68 revolts and covers everything an educated kid like you needs to know to call yourself p...more

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Sep 17, 2007 John rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: art rock kids who feel the need to trump their art history/film major roommates pop culture ace

Shelves: music

this is a tedious book, almost a textbook. (i actually have seen it taught in universities.) at its best, lipstick is engaging in waves; at its worst it is mundane, bordering on inane, and repetitive in marcus' masturbatory doldrums. reading about subversive political turn-of-the-century art movements in france and central europe can be very interesting. there's a bit on dada if you're into that. of course marcus couldn't resist indulging himself - as is his m.o., i'm finding - with firsthand ac...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Lilly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this book because it was the only book at my library about the Sex Pistols... or so I thought. It isn't really about the Sex Pistols all the much... it's one of the those hop-around-history books that has you in the 1920's at one moment and then the 60's the next, and by the time you're done with the book you've read each page three times trying to understand it but you still haven't a clue what the author was trying to get across.

I don't mean to sound conceited, but I'm a rather sma...more I picked up this book because it was the only book at my library about the Sex Pistols... or so I thought. It isn't really about the Sex Pistols all the much... it's one of the those hop-around-history books that has you in the 1920's at one moment and then the 60's the next, and by the time you're done with the book you've read each page three times trying to understand it but you still haven't a clue what the author was trying to get across.

I don't mean to sound conceited, but I'm a rather smart, intellectually capable individual, and a singular book on any one of the many topics and ideas presented in this book would have been easy for me to read and absorb. However, this book was just something different. It could be the non-linear writing style (for a book that it's pretty historically-oriented, there's not a spot of chronological ordering to speak of), or the tedious detail, but either way it's just not a book that makes a lot of sense.

Half of the book is so densely packed with information about individual subjects (Dadaism, Conceptualism, Situationism, etc.) that it's absolutely astounding. Should it have been labeled and advertised as a reference book of sorts, there's not a doubt in my mind that it would already be in the topmost echelons of modern books on the twentieth century. There is, however, the other half, which is filled with information that is not only unrelated to the subject at hand, but also so incredibly specialized and particular that there's really no imaginable scenario in which you would call upon that knowledge.

I guess that's where the "secret history" comes into hand. Much of what is presented in the volume would seem to be secret- it's not anything that you would find in a random book on whatever Marcus happens to be talking about at that time. And, while the particularity of the information is what makes this book so unique, it's also what makes it's quite annoying: The author oftentimes forgoes telling you what is it he's actually talking about, instead just leaving a bread-crumb trail of seeming random facts until you arrive at the next chapter to read about something else.

Even if you're like me, and you still don't comprehend totally what it is that Marcus was trying to convey, I'd still read this, if not for the crazy-random facts but the artistic experience and literary dedication that went into it. Greil Marcus connects some of the most bizarre dots in the oddest ways. It's almost as if that's the point of this book: To confuse you beyond all end while educating you so thoroughly on things you didn't even know existed. I imagine that, somewhere, the author is sitting in his writer's nook, either horribly upset with how confusing his work is, or terrifically proud of how many people he conned into reading about 16th century priests when all they really wanted to read about was the Sex Pistols.(less)

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Dec 26, 2011 Stewart Home rated it 1 of 5 stars

A COSMETIC UNDERGROUND

The emphasis Marcus places upon personalities ultimately nullifies any sense of individuality which his subjects might possess. The links drawn between free spirit heretics and members of the Lettriste, Situationist and PUNK movements, are forged without acknowledgement of the fact that the former lived in feudal communities while the latter were attempting to effect change within industrialised societies. Since the mental sets and social networks of individuals living unde...more

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Aug 29, 2011 5pac3m0nkey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm not sure why I picked up this book originally. It may have been due to a book review I scanned through. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. One of the reasons I liked it was because I thought the thesis of the book was original. Greil Marcues attempts to critique western culture through the prism of pop music and art. To do this he goes back to some avante garde art movements in Europe that later influenced punk rock bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The latter bands...more I'm not sure why I picked up this book originally. It may have been due to a book review I scanned through. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. One of the reasons I liked it was because I thought the thesis of the book was original. Greil Marcues attempts to critique western culture through the prism of pop music and art. To do this he goes back to some avante garde art movements in Europe that later influenced punk rock bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The latter bands were and are familiar to most readers nowadays, but the precursors to their work such as the Dadaists, Lettrists, and Situationalists are not. Or if one is familiar with these art movements, there isn't much out there to describe their history in the high detail found in this book. I was interested in knowing where punk rock came from outside of the impulses and history of the punk rocks band themselves, and this book makes the case that their style of music came from. Now I'm not talking about a simple explanation like punk rock learned their ideas from these earlier movements, but rather, what punk rock was doing was not that different than other movements before punk rock, framing this musical phenomenon in a much more sophisticated and interesting light than one might be inclined to believe about punk rock. Often people write punk rock off as juvenile stupidity, which it is on one level I suppose, but it is just a continuation, according to Marcus, of heretics in the middle ages, anti-religious zealots in the 50s, and Parisian anti-artists. In other words, the point of this book is that modern art is not really as new as we may think. History shaped what we often think of now, depending on your point of view, as silly, excessive, even frightening reactions against the norms of conventional society. Is it just pure destructiveness or is there a justifiable point behind the mayhem?
For me, I think Marcus was right to uncover some of the hidden depth behind modern art, so-called postmodernism, and punk rock. This stuff has been going on for a long time and we're just seeing the latest incarnation of it. Society has always put excessive and unwarranted pressure on people, and revolt and rebellion comes in many forms throughout the ages. Now some teenage skater discovering punk rock for the first time may sense there is some significance to their music; this book really helps back up that intuition, and give some respectability to what is often viewed as offal. I mean even offal serves a purpose too does it not? You need to shove people's faces in the shit sometimes, especially when they're a part of your problem in their apathetic ignorance about how society really works.
At any rate, I give this book four stars because it is an original history of art and music, and a unique critique of western culture. If you love modern music and art this book will explain why it has a timeless quality after all, despite all the body fluids, gashing wounds, and spitting. (less)

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Mar 15, 2010 Betsy marked it as to-read

***Greil Marcus is coming to Skylight Books in May to do a reading for his new book. Time finally to read all of Lipstick Traces?

Details:
http://www.skylightbooks.com/event/gr...
Friday May 7, 2010
GREIL MARCUS discusses and signs "WHEN THAT ROUGH GOD GOES RIDING"
Start: 7:30 pm
End: 9:30 pm
When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison (PublicAffairs)

We're thrilled to announce that Greil Marcus, music and culture critic, Believer columnist, and author or editor of many Skylight staff and...more

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May 19, 2012 Tim Chaplin rated it 4 of 5 stars

At the time of writing the Country is getting ready to celebrate the impending Olympics and 60th Jubilee. Union Jacks are everywhere and everyone is getting ready for a public holiday. For some of us it will be an escape from the boredom and austerity measures of the current government. In 1977 another Jubilee was being celebrated and a song came out that encapsulated the feelings of all of those people who felt alienated from the patriotism and nostalgia for a Britain that no longer existed. Th...more At the time of writing the Country is getting ready to celebrate the impending Olympics and 60th Jubilee. Union Jacks are everywhere and everyone is getting ready for a public holiday. For some of us it will be an escape from the boredom and austerity measures of the current government. In 1977 another Jubilee was being celebrated and a song came out that encapsulated the feelings of all of those people who felt alienated from the patriotism and nostalgia for a Britain that no longer existed. This book is a history of The Sex Pistols and the various Punk movement that originated at that time but it is also a secret history of the art movements that preceded the Punk explosion of the late 20th Century,

Greil Marcus focuses on the rage of the young Johnny Rotten singing 'I am the antichrist'. He is fascinated on how a band like the Sex Pistols could create such anti-music in a pop song. He follows the history of the Sex Pistols and the emerging punk movement to the decline of the Sex Pistols in their infamous US Tour. There is a tenuous link to a young girl who is enraged at not getting tickets for a Michael Jackson concert to try and explain where this alienation came from. How could a pop song be influenced by the anti-establishment religious movements like the Brethren of The Free Spirit of medieval England, the Dutch religious reformer John Of Leiden and the Seventeenth Century Ranters? Why did Punk and the Sex Pistols have so much in common with the failed Spartacist uprising in 1919 and the German Dada movement and anti-art in the Cabaret Voltaire? How could the works of Isidore Isou and the Lettrist International and Guy Debord and the slogans of the Situationist s have been revived in a pop song in the late 1970's?

The revised edition includes a foreword by Nicky Wire from Manic Street Preachers. This book was a huge influence on Richie Edwards who wrote about the 'boredom, alienation and despair' that had been included in the writings of the SI many years earlier. The Situationist s tried to build a Marxist and Avant-garde alternative to Capitalism in what Debord called the 'Society of The Spectacle'. People would create situations as an alternative to the capitalist system. They were influential in the General Strike and student protests in May 1968 and their writings are as Marcus argues a huge influence on Malcolm MacLaren and Jamie Reid who had both been in the radical group King Mob. Marcus features the bands that came out of the Punk era like The Raincoats, Gang Of Four, Mekons, Wire, X-Ray Spex and many others who shared a similar outlook. This was an enjoyable and informative book but sometimes Marcus tends to ramble in his narrative.(less)

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Aug 16, 2011 Malcolm rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cultural-studies

A fabulous history of the cultural trends that became punk, tracing the underground cultures of 20th century Europe (and with a great soundtrack, if you can find it). Marcus has presented us with a significant contribution to cultural history at two levels - he has traced the 20th century history of a set of disruptive cultural movements from Dada through Surrealism, Lettrism, and Situationism to Punk. His grasp of the movements and of their political and philosophical foundations is monumental...more A fabulous history of the cultural trends that became punk, tracing the underground cultures of 20th century Europe (and with a great soundtrack, if you can find it). Marcus has presented us with a significant contribution to cultural history at two levels - he has traced the 20th century history of a set of disruptive cultural movements from Dada through Surrealism, Lettrism, and Situationism to Punk. His grasp of the movements and of their political and philosophical foundations is monumental and the case he makes for the links betwen these art and political movements (although that may be too strong a term for things such as Lettrism) is compelling and although others such as Stuart Home (with his discussion of the genealogy of groups such as Class War) or Hakim Bey (with his philosophy of Immediatism) have drawn on similar sets of ideas, this remains the most comprehensive and impressively analysis of the politics of 20th century cultural disruption which also has the advantage of avoiding modernist and elitist notions of those as avant-garde movements.

At a second level his is a challenge to many of the ways we do history, especially cultural history which so often deals with elites, with high culture and the like. There is no doubt that the groups he is exploring here are elites, are unorthodox, are well outside the mainstream - but crucially they are not groups that are validated or valued by those with power, and indeed in some cases such as the Situationists found themselves actively fighting those in and with power, while others such as the Lettrists were so obscure and abstract that few if any knew they existed let alone what they were on about. But the point is that these undergrounds do, from time to time, surface - as we saw with the four key 'movements' here, Dada, Surrealism, Situationism and Punk - while they may and often do have a much more profound general impact (which I realise it taking me close to some of the truisms of analyses of the avant-garde). The point is not the extent to which these movements were well known or had an impact though, but that they existed, that they mounted philosophical and political challenges and debates, that they in some ways articulate a zeitgeist/i> and for those reasons tell us much about their times, while Marcus's sensitivity to how the various protagonists told their own stories further draws out their cultural politics, their archaeologies, and their forms of self-creation and the control of memory.

Of course, it is not a 'perfect' case – they don't exist – and I could challenge the book’s tendency to reify and almost deify Punk. That said, it challenges our understandings of 20th century art, politics, culture in ways that demand we revisit what so often seems the ephemerality of the popular, the everyday, and seemingly trivial, obscure, inane, and frankly ‘weird’ and explore their links, growth and significance. Most obviously, it demands that we think anew about what makes up the sphere we think if as politics and the relevance of both pleasure and the absurd – after all, it was the Situationists who told us in what seemed and absurdity, sous les pavés, la plage.

Read it!(less)

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Dec 20, 2010 Steve Rosenstein rated it 2 of 5 stars

First of all, is the history all that secret? Maybe to Americans who are completely ignorant of European art movements of the twentieth century, but dada, surrealism, and the Situationists aren't all that obscure to anyone with at least a passing interest in cultural history, and even if you have no idea what any of those words mean, this really isn't the book to educate yourself with. About 20% of the material here is fascinating, and the other 80% is Marcusbabble, the type of prose where you r...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Geoff marked it as to-read

Recommended to Geoff by: Nathan "N.R." Gaddis

I met Greil Marcus one weekday afternoon when I was supposed to be at work; I was leafing through sale books in the basement of Politics and Prose here in DC and he was at a table surrounded by copies of his newest book on Dylan getting ready to give a reading. I said "hi" and picked up a copy without asking and flipped through it and told him Love and Theft might be the best record of Dylan's career. Marcus didn't seem to be particularly interested in talking with me, so I put his book back dow...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Rally Soong rated it 5 of 5 stars

You haven't lived your punk rock life until you read this. A history of music, gestures, and artistic protest movements and manifestos so obscure you feel like you were there at THAT dingy cafe when it happened . I don't know how to catagorize this book but Dadaist, sex pistols, etc all had their moments in time and this book is successful in bringing alive why it happened and why it mattered at that moment in time and why it was able to live on despite being forgotten in attitudes, songs, gestu...more

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Mar 07, 2012 macartain rated it 1 of 5 stars

Nah... This is one of those books with little black-and-white reproductions of gestetnered Dadaist zines that stoned punks pored over in bedsits decades ago and thought they were into a genuine subculture... You know, like Chaos Magick and Apocalypse Culture? All this shit was mysterious back then but went out the window when the love-it-or-hate-it internet pipe got hooked up to everybody's house about a decade ago and now knowing about Situationism or Throbbing Gristle is as simple as hitting w...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

So don't go into this looking for a book about the influences on punk rock. That's not quite what this is, though it might be what it pretends to be. If certain ways of looking at the world are each a river, then this is a look at some of those who each drank from a river of negation. Marcus does not claim that the Dada movement, the Lettrists or the Situationists influenced Punk. But he does look at how those movements as well as punk shared a way of looking at the world, at art, at work, at li...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Evan rated it 1 of 5 stars

A lot of art school bollocks. Since much of the book was concerned with the links between the late-'70s British punks (and the entrepreneurs who masterminded them) and various French art movements (Dada, Situationism), it might as well have been *called* "Art School Bollocks." ... Written as it was before the explosion of Nirvana, let alone Green Day et al, Marcus' insistence that the initial punk explosion didn't set off any lasting ripples and his glorification of it on those grounds seem quai...more

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Sep 25, 2012 stew rated it 3 of 5 stars

Connected connections. The Sex Pistols not just pisstake. Also means "penis" and "a-band-who-made-songs-that-sounded=like-they-were-falling-apart-instead-of-staying-together," which makes making connections more/most difficult. But Dada is involved. And the French Theorists. And obscure typographers and someone who may or may not be John Lydon, who also goes by the name "penis" and "Fallon Part," even though his passport says, "Johnny Rotten." If it means anything it means nothing. But we can be...more

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May 10, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

Greil Marcus, author of "Mystery Train," widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. "I am an antichrist!" shouted singer Johnny Rotten--where in the world of pop music did that come from? Looking for an answer, with a high sense of the dra...more Greil Marcus, author of "Mystery Train," widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. "I am an antichrist!" shouted singer Johnny Rotten--where in the world of pop music did that come from? Looking for an answer, with a high sense of the drama of the journey, Marcus takes us down the dark paths of counterhistory, a route of blasphemy, adventure, and surprise.

This is no mere search for cultural antecedents. Instead, what Marcus so brilliantly shows is that various kinds of angry, absolute demands--demands on society, art, and all the governing structures of everyday life--seem to be coded in phrases, images, and actions passed on invisibly, but inevitably, by people quite unaware of each other. Marcus lets us hear strange yet familiar voices: of such heretics as the Brethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe and the Ranters in seventeenth-century England; the dadaists in Zurich in 1916 and Berlin in 1918, wearing death masks, chanting glossolalia; one Michel Mourre, who in 1950 took over Easter Mass at Notre-Dame to proclaim the death of God; the Lettrist International and the Situationist International, small groups of Paris--based artists and writers surrounding Guy Debord, who produced blank-screen films, prophetic graffiti, and perhaps the most provocative social criticism of the 1950s and '60s; the rioting students and workers of May '68, scrawling cryptic slogans on city walls and bringing France to a halt; the Sex Pistols in London, recording the savage "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen."

Although the Sex Pistols shape the beginning and the end of the story, "Lipstick Traces" is not a book about music; it is about a common voice, discovered and transmitted in many forms. Working from scores of previously unexamined and untranslated essays, manifestos, and filmscripts, from old photographs, dada sound poetry, punk songs, collages, and classic texts from Marx to Henri Lefebvre, Marcus takes us deep behind the acknowledged events of our era, into a hidden tradition of moments that would seem imaginary except for the fact that they are real: a tradition of shared utopias, solitary refusals, impossible demands, and unexplained disappearances. Written with grace and force, humor and an insistent sense of tragedy and danger, "Lipstick Traces" tells a story as disruptive and compelling as the century itself.(less)

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Sep 01, 2011 Ted Burke rated it 5 of 5 stars

Marcus is obsessed with secret histories as manifested in the inchoate habits of a populations seeking to amuse and distract themselves, and his decades-worth of rants, ruminations and reiterations wherein he tried to wed his original concern with rock and roll as an inevitable counter cultural force that galvanized various energies that would, finally, transform the world in very Hegelian way with the larger aims of politics and social theory, we are met with decidedly mixed results; lots of in...more Marcus is obsessed with secret histories as manifested in the inchoate habits of a populations seeking to amuse and distract themselves, and his decades-worth of rants, ruminations and reiterations wherein he tried to wed his original concern with rock and roll as an inevitable counter cultural force that galvanized various energies that would, finally, transform the world in very Hegelian way with the larger aims of politics and social theory, we are met with decidedly mixed results; lots of insight, extended bits of associative brilliance that only a word-drunk can manage, but as thesis, as an articulated examination of what is happening in our world typified by art, music, demonstrations, technological upheaval, the good author falls short.

Lipstick Traces, of all his work, is the best example of what he does, and I would recommend it to the reader is interested in reading the poetic extrapolations of a writer who thinks that he's found something significant in the rock and pop album he bought --things as significant as the books he read in college--who cannot,or will not, stop microscopically examining the examples he brings up and construct a theory on which his metaphors can rest.

Marcus seems to assume that the theory is implicit in the examples he pulls from the dustbin, but he makes the mistake of forgetting that he is supposed to be writing criticism, not poetry. Implicit is the idea that there are discrete but discoverable bits of spontaneous resistance in the arts to the dominant ideologies that control the money, the armies and navys, the cops, that are leading civilization to a blind-sided destruction; that it is human nature to reinvent the world in forms and concept that attempt to break an enforced world view. Marcus links Cabaret Voltaire, Dada, Rock and Roll, French Cinema and , of course, Situation-ism into this scheme, but he never makes his case convincing beyond the obvious need for him to believe it himself. It seems a beautifully rendered bit of what might have been. (less)

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Jan 29, 2010 Derek Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Still reading it, but it's pretty interesting so far. I enjoy the writing style even though it does jump around a bit. The sentences are complete and coherent, but the narrative exhibits a cut-up type of technique, punctuated by headlines - it does remind me of the Aeolus chapter of Ulysses (but it is much easier reading than Joyce). It pays to re-read certain sections once you move a bit further on.

This book glorifies the music and its importance a bit too much at times - but linking the poses...more Still reading it, but it's pretty interesting so far. I enjoy the writing style even though it does jump around a bit. The sentences are complete and coherent, but the narrative exhibits a cut-up type of technique, punctuated by headlines - it does remind me of the Aeolus chapter of Ulysses (but it is much easier reading than Joyce). It pays to re-read certain sections once you move a bit further on.

This book glorifies the music and its importance a bit too much at times - but linking the poses and attitudes of early punk with the Situationists and other philosophical antecedents is a great idea that does form some real connections. I love love love the Sex Pistols, it's that dirty guitar tone that gets me most. This book has increased my respect for Malcolm McLaren, the man really was well-read, and so far seems to be the only real link between early punk and the outsider philosophers Marcus discusses. His honesty about the whole thing being a scam is great too, especially since so many people have taken the idea of punk and developed this snobby, holier-than-thou, idiotic, amateurism-glorifying, exclusive stance from it. I like breaking down boundaries and creating new ideas and connections, I like intensity, I like beautiful noise. I don't like attitudes, I don't like exclusive-ism, I am not impressed by willful amateurism. So clearly, there are a lot of things about punk that I love, and a lot of things that I hate.

As I said, this book glorifies the music and the attitude of punk, as well as the stance of willful amateurism, in ways that only a partisan can. Nonetheless, Marcus does recognize that while purporting to expose and stand against the banalities and the insularity of society at large, punk adopted its own set of banalities and its own brand of insularity from the very beginning.

Of course, now that we are living in the days of pop-punk and fashionable, so-called indie rock, it's probably worse than ever. The Harvard Press published this book in 1990, so Marcus had yet to witness to what extent there would be not just ignorant lemmings jumping on the subculture bandwagon so as to make themselves believe they were unique, but also how much the mainstream would co-opt and adopt these stances and fashions so that now you have the musical and philosophical equivalent of Britney Spears and bubblegum pop being presented as punk - pop-punk,emo and indie boy bands and girl bands and the like. Quotes from McLaren throughout this book indicate that he always envisioned his band as teen idols, that the idea of a revolution through a pop culture medium was, even if it could spread the popularity, or at least popular knowledge, of revolutionary ideas, essentially a scam. Nonetheless I would gladly take his teen idols over today's teen idols any day. Even if their cynicism was not well thought out, seeming more like a bratty, negative stance than rigorous social criticism, it was an original stance at the time and one that truly shocked the old guard (for no good reason), which is quite amusing to read about in Lipstick Traces. Also their music rocked. The crappy "punk" bands of today do sometimes get some good guitar tones I will admit - their producers, sound engineers and record company reps must be telling the kids which kinds of guitars and amps to play - but they overlay it with that crappy, sentimental radio-friendly sound, making it unlistenable, and even crappier lyrics, making it vomit-inducing. Then you have hardcore bands, a charade for the most part. There's really not much music out there nowadays calling itself punk that is good. The revolution was swallowed up, as they knew it would be. Every now and then it pops out again, but once it does, you can feel the impending doom. The moment it breaks into the consciousness of the widest set of people, in that same moment opens up the black hole that will envelope it, and before it even does, it manufactures the clones who will replace it, gradually introducing the clones to the mass consciousness, one after the other, until the original spark has been quietly removed and the mass consciousness, none the wiser, is happily sated with the clones who remove any hint of aesthetic or political revolution in the original ideas and use them as mere fashion accessories to dress up the tired, old ideas that the mass consciousness was seeking to maintain all along. I came of age in the early 90s, not too long after this book was released, so I was witness to an excellent example of this cycle playing itself out once more. I appreciate Marcus presenting me with its antecedent, which I have heard a certain previous generation harp on at great length many times (as most older generations are wont to do), and for taking it back even further to speculative antecedents that are now only remembered by devoted students of fine arts, art theory and philosophy.

Thus whatever I may say about the shallowness and insularity of many counter-culture revolutions, or at least of a good number of those who take part in them, whatever the so-called practical-minded will say about the ridiculousness of presenting a new set of aesthetic ideas and ideological stances through a pop culture medium, or for that matter through any artistic medium or any medium other than the earthly plane of existence in the here and now and the political and economic structures which control it, punk rock and its descendants produced (and continue to produce, despite the claims of heritage from them laid by vast amounts of crap) a great amount of variety and interesting ideas and sonic textures. Punk, hardcore, post-punk, new wave, modern rock, alternative - all the weird variants within those. All the intelligence, politics, alluring aesthetics, experimentalism, pounding rhythm and energy that came into music since. There are so many bands and artists that took music to really cool places. They celebrated the amateur the way the amateur should be celebrated, as one who can approach the medium from a perspective free of the set tendencies that institutionalized instruction ingrains, and from that amateur perspective they developed a wholly original brand of virtuosity.

I am inclined to think that in the modern world, where we are understanding through history that bloody revolution will not only mistreat vast numbers of people, but probably won't even achieve our aims, where we are still trying to work out all the snags that catch people's economic, political and psychological conditions in modern society, that perhaps pop culture and artistic culture in general - the vast entertainment industry - really is a great place to wage the war of ideas.(less)

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Jan 30, 2012 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Before I forget: turns out Hurlements en faveur de Sade is on YouTube. Of all things: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJvFOUU6QS4

It is difficult to impossible to overstate how important this book is to me. When I first read it I was already passingly familiar with Debord, situationism, dada and, of course, British punk rock (North American punk is completely excised from this account) and I had an idea that they were somewhat related. I was looking for this book to explicate those ideas; instead I found...more Before I forget: turns out Hurlements en faveur de Sade is on YouTube. Of all things: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJvFOUU6QS4

It is difficult to impossible to overstate how important this book is to me. When I first read it I was already passingly familiar with Debord, situationism, dada and, of course, British punk rock (North American punk is completely excised from this account) and I had an idea that they were somewhat related. I was looking for this book to explicate those ideas; instead I found a book I've been unable to shake long past my radical and punk days.

This book is less about any of the above, and more to do with humanity's innate desire to destroy itself, and the notions of freedom found within destruction. It focuses on acts of refusal - against church, capitalism, artistic masterpieces, popular entertainment, whathaveyou - because in those no's are found to be tantalizing yesses, "a new way of walking and a new way of talking," as Marcus explicates. That it uses all of these things - as well as the Starkweather murders, the Invasion of Notre Dame, and a Penguins song - is only done in the service of a basic throb of negation, "a debt that history owes that all of the actors have forgotten." Rather than arithmetically connecting the situationist to Malcom McLaren to Johnny Rotten to John of Lydon, Marcus senses something baser than that, connecting historical actors who poorly understood or never heard of each other in an attempt to find something more psychological, something about the human condition that as yet has gone unarticulated. Or, at least, poorly articulated until British punk bands began pressing 45's, "which is why they sound like the greatest thing in the world while they're playing."

There are vastly more lucid accounts of situationism, punk, and the latter's aesthetic debt to the former; I highly recommend Savage's England's Dreaming for the latter, and Leaving the 20th Century for the former. But as an attempt to do what, exactly, the punk movement does - to change the discussion of punk rock beyond Thatcherism and purposeful crudity, beyond cross-Atlantic rivalries, to find a new way of walking and a new way of talking - this book succeeds more than it doesn't. One of the very best books I've ever read.
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May 02, 2007 Xio rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booksfrommy20s, historysociologyetc

When I first read this I was so excited someone had managed to reasonably accumulate so much of this particular variety of comparative history. I recall being impressed by ideas moving through history, time and again there being such movements toward liberty of self expression.

I believe recent times reflect that pattern in an oddly popular manner. Its been assimilated somehow via capitalism or something commercial. Now it seems as though the people who in past times might have been subversive, c...more

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Apr 04, 2010 Rob rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, history, criticism, read-in-2010

This book is a sensory experience. Greil Marcus traces the history of 20th-century counterculture using text, images, marginalia, and (at least if you're a compulsive YouTuber like me) sound. His prose style is also attractive, beautiful and disjointed, making the whole thing feel less like a history book and more like a drug trip. The connections and arguments Marcus makes are kind of strained, but on the other hand clear logic would seem out of place here. And even if you don't appreciate Lips...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Azzief rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: music, history, theory-philosophy-sociology-etc

There's nothing particularly wrong with the book, I don't think, but I gotta say that I'm really quite bored with writers'/researchers'/cultural critics' obsession with the Pistols. These are probably the same people that keep shouting "punk is dead" because, well, the Pistols were the beginning and the end (or so it would seem).

That, and how bands like X-Ray Spex, while not exactly bad, always seem better in writing--such as in Marcus' book--than when I actually listen to them. Of course, this...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Joaquín rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is one of those books that discovers you that the History is written in a background that just seldom appears in the books of History. Cultural Studies? This books is History of the Culture. from the avant-gardes to the punk, through the forever-forbitten-heretical Situtionism, here is what the a pretended prty-revolutionary-professor would never avoid to you. Highly recommended for those who mistrust of the Grand Narrative

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Jun 29, 2011 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars

(mdc) it's about the situationists and guy debord, punk rock, the last sex pistols concert, lettrist international, a whole lot of post punk and some other stuff too. really interesting and the author is one of my favorites but it's pretty all over the place - like one minute it's paris in 1889 and then all of a sudden it's an x show in los angeles. i kept having to stop and re-orient myself! took me forever to read.

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Apr 11, 2013 Steven Pilling rated it 2 of 5 stars

Well sometimes a book seems better in your head than in your hand.

i have wanted to read this since i was old enough to know it existed. I like Marcus articles that i have read but the book seems contrived and at times downright boring.

Marcus is so determined to find a BIG philosophy and throws everything at it which seems to demean his theory. Individual strands are interesting but he is so determined to link his subjects and find an unified theory of super everything that you want to scoff. Th...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Randolph Carter rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Dense and intellectual but worth the effort. See how popular culture subverts and exploits all shocking revolutionary movements until they become mainstream and no longer threatening.

This cover is not what my dust jacket looks like!!!! I have a first edition. I think this ISBN or this cover image is wrong.

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About Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus is the author of Mystery Train (1975), Lipstick Traces (1989), The Shape of Things to Come (2006), When that Rough God Goes Riding and Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus (both 2010), and other books. With Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America (2009). In recent years he has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, Minnesota, NYU, and the New School in New York. He lives in...more

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Books by Greil Marcus

Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll

The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes

Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads

In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992

The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice

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