Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

Marcus, Greil

Paperback

Blues & SoulPop/RockMusic Reference

Publisher Price: $17.00

ISBN10: 0300216920
ISBN13: 9780300216929
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: Sep 15 2015
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.00
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.20 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
One of our finest critics gives us an altogether original history of rock 'n' roll

Unlike all previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points that everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008, then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out--a new language, something new under the sun.

Transmission by Joy Division. All I Could Do Was Cry by Etta James and then Beyoncé. To Know Him Is to Love Him, first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus's hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways that these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This book, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism--and its most gifted and incisive practitioner--is destined to become an enduring classic.

Also in

Pop/Rock

View All