Noise, three ways

I recently read “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Ellen Willis’s “Music, Etc.” column that ran in the December 27, 1969 issue of The New Yorker. (It’s gathered in Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music, published by Minnesota in 2011.) She’s writing in Colorado Springs, Colorado, “an uptight military reservation,” where she’s hanging with members of the local radical community and enjoying the mountains and fresh air. She notices that her music listening is being affected by her sky-high...