Rating: 
Summary: an exercise in masturbatory, pointless BS
Review: "lipstick traces" is nothingbut an incomprehensible mess written by an author driven not by the spirit of dada or punk, but buy the spirit of the dollar signs, a very prevalent one in our culture. the ultimate purpose of this book is precisely nothing, except the opposite of what everything discussed in it respected--money. and jesus, if you actually got into this book, get out of the house every once in awhile.
Rating: 
Summary: BEST DAMN BOOK YOU WILL EVER READ!
Review: DO NOT WASTE ANY TIME. READ THIS BOOK. IT WILL CHANGE YOUR WORLD FOREVER. FIND THE EXTRAORDINARY LURKING BEHIND THE ORDINARY THAT YOU ALWAYS SUSPECTED WAS THERE, THE BEACH BENEATH THE COBBLESTONES.(TO PARAPHRASE THE BOOK'PROTAGONIST) IN THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR OF THE 1968 PARIS UPRISING, THIS BOOK IS MORE THAN TIMELY. I ORIGINALLY READ THIS BOOK BECAUSE IT WAS ABOUT THE SEX PISTOLS, BUT CAME AWAY WITH A THIRST TO KNOW THE SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL.
Rating:
Summary: do your homework, Greil!
Review: Greil Marcus manages to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse. The subject matter is ideal fodder for an inflammatory book-to-be but he flubs it big-time. To those unfamiliar with the work of the surrealists, dadaists, futurists, situationists etc.. this may seem fascinating. To those of us more familiar with the genuine thing in its original form it's a shoddy hodge-podge of lazy research, self-aggrandising opinionated padding and (most damning)typical sensationalist journalism.
Without going into details, Marcus takes terrible liberties with his subjects - by that I mean he tries to be daring and original and ends up sloppy and ridiculous.
The best that can be said about this is that it will point people towards the genuine article. Save yourself some time and go to the genuine source material.
Or read Stewart Home's "Cranked Up Really High" instead.
Rating:
Summary: This book makes me want to tear down my idols
Review: I think that a lot of people would probably want to read this because they love the sex pistols, but I love the sex pistols because I read this book. The faming and defaming of the situationists, Zurich dada, and other unpopularized attacks on culture are depicted here, not for their ideas as much as the spirit that balked when facing the homogenization of all culture. He quotes Adorno!
Rating: 
Summary: oh yeah, baby!
Review: I'm in the midst of reading this badboy at this very moment. And though the likelihood of my reaching the end of it is slim, the book has proven beyond doubt, its ability to "muss" with my head. Like the topics with which it deals, one finds that after encountering it, if only a little teeny-weeny bit, things are different. What else could you people want from a gosh darn book!
Rating:
Summary: Add this to that list of monotheistic texts...
Review: I'm not kidding. Well, maybe it would be better placed in a collection of gnomic tracts... the point is that this book, mad, spectacular artifact that it is, has done more for my previously-thought-lost senses of glee and invention than any number of wholly Marxist offerings. It's a tilt-a-whirl, a labor of love that turns into a stalking then turns into a far more colorful prom than ever is dreamed of in the philosophies of the otherwise educated. Yes, I'm ranting, and you will too. Anabaptists were never this much fun back in high school...
Rating: 
Summary: The Breathless Pursuit of Protest
Review: I'm still wondering what it is about 'Lipstick Traces' that has so polarised Amazon's readers. I don't consider it a great bit of writing/journalism, and I agree, with the benefit of 20/20 rear vision, that the author who wrote this tract in the early 80s might well reconsider the emphasis he'd placed on Johnny Rotten as a perveyor of Dadaist angsty pranks.In the epilogue, he makes clear that the story was very much a personalised view,(stemming from his student days at Berkley in the early 60s) rather than a serious rewrite of history, which gives him some leeway about the provisionality of his own opinion. I enjoyed the stuff on Huelsenbeck, on Debord, on Hugo Ball. I liked the graphic layout and the photos of main suspects & reproductions of 50s & 60s Situationist texts. I feel a more judicious editorial hand might have produced a less repetitive text, though the side alleys were fantastic, nevertheless. Marcus has written tighter, tougher stuff than this & his breathy, blow by blow accounts of Dylan and his sources are wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: Salut!!!
Review: Il y a un paquet de gens en France qui n'ont pas attendu Greil Marcus pour faire le lien entre les punks et les situs. Sinon le livre est très interessant d'un point de vue documentaire et historique. Quant au coté politique des situs, il est tout simplement passé à la trappe. Les surréalistes sont classés d'emblée dans le camp des staliniens. Bref il vaut mieux lire directement ce qu'ils ont écrit pour se faire une idée.Enfin, s'il y a un endroit ou je n'acherai pas ce livre, c'est bien sur ce site (pour être un brin fidèle à l'esprit de ces gens).Tchao.
Rating:
Summary: Just read it!
Review: In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus explores the Twentieth Century in an interesting and unconventional way by viewing popular music and art as a social critique of Western culture. Marcus asks the question, "Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and measured...or is it also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?" (page 4). He uses movements such as Dada, Surrealists, Situationalist, Letterist, and most importantly, the punk movement as his evidence. For Marcus, the connections between the movements are clear, and through his exploration he finds that although there is not an undeviating chronological lineage between the movements, the spirit and strategies employed by the respective revolutionists are eerily similar. The author explains that these movements brought about a new kind of social dialogue, a new language so to speak. This language is left behind in traces through the existence of popular art and music that was influenced by the movements. Marcus acknowledges this connection between the movements and popular culture saying, "All the demands that dada made on art, that Michel Mourre made on God, that the LI and SI made on their time, came to life as demands on the symbolic milieu of pop music" (page 441). He explains that the spirit of these movements all amounted to a conscious desire to create history and denounce the path laid out for humans as individuals. Though it seems somewhat obscure, the strength of the author's argument in Lipstick Traces lies within his detailed discussion of each of the movements. Marcus spends most of his book explaining the key facets of the movements, and by doing this his connections seem to make themselves. Each of the groups attempted to alter reality though rebellion or through an expansive conversation of negotiation, and as the conversation grew, historical and institutional power dissolved (page 444). Through the examination of Dada, Surrealism, Situationalism, Letterism, and Punk, Marcus uncovers the radical demands made on the reality of Western culture during the respective times. While none of the revolutions ever came to any triumphant ends, each of the movements made their mark on reality by pushing the limits of ordinary life and are therefore undeniably connected through the traces that they left behind: the expanded borders of reality. "Everything connected to a totality, and the totality was how you wanted to live: as a subject of an object of history" (page 444). This is the reason that Marcus relies so heavily on the music of the Sex Pistols and other punk bands of the Seventies. These bands conveyed the idea that anyone could reject their reality and embrace the idea of "no future" to the extent that they experience freedom from reality or from the conventions of history. Anyone could be an anarchist, reject order, and embrace rebellion simply by entering into a new social dialogue. Collective destiny was no longer the only option; now an individual destiny existed as well. The desire to change the world continues to manifest itself within social movements and popular culture, what makes Lipstick Traces so important is the fact that it points out that it doesn't matter whether these movements succeeded in their mission to change the world, because by simply existing, they changed history though influencing popular art and music.
Rating:
Summary: Punks, Pop Culture, and History
Review: In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus explores the Twentieth Century in an interesting and unconventional way by viewing popular music and art as a social critique of Western culture. Marcus asks the question, "Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and measured...or is it also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?" (page 4). He uses movements such as Dada, Surrealists, Situationalist, Letterist, and most importantly, the punk movement as his evidence. For Marcus, the connections between the movements are clear, and through his exploration he finds that although there is not an undeviating chronological lineage between the movements, the spirit and strategies employed by the respective revolutionists are eerily similar. The author explains that these movements brought about a new kind of social dialogue, a new language so to speak. This language is left behind in traces through the existence of popular art and music that was influenced by the movements. Marcus acknowledges this connection between the movements and popular culture saying, "All the demands that dada made on art, that Michel Mourre made on God, that the LI and SI made on their time, came to life as demands on the symbolic milieu of pop music" (page 441). He explains that the spirit of these movements all amounted to a conscious desire to create history and denounce the path laid out for humans as individuals. Though it seems somewhat obscure, the strength of the author's argument in Lipstick Traces lies within his detailed discussion of each of the movements. Marcus spends most of his book explaining the key facets of the movements, and by doing this his connections seem to make themselves. Each of the groups attempted to alter reality though rebellion or through an expansive conversation of negotiation, and as the conversation grew, historical and institutional power dissolved (page 444). Through the examination of Dada, Surrealism, Situationalism, Letterism, and Punk, Marcus uncovers the radical demands made on the reality of Western culture during the respective times. While none of the revolutions ever came to any triumphant ends, each of the movements made their mark on reality by pushing the limits of ordinary life and are therefore undeniably connected through the traces that they left behind: the expanded borders of reality. "Everything connected to a totality, and the totality was how you wanted to live: as a subject of an object of history" (page 444). This is the reason that Marcus relies so heavily on the music of the Sex Pistols and other punk bands of the Seventies. These bands conveyed the idea that anyone could reject their reality and embrace the idea of "no future" to the extent that they experience freedom from reality or from the conventions of history. Anyone could be an anarchist, reject order, and embrace rebellion simply by entering into a new social dialogue. Collective destiny was no longer the only option; now an individual destiny existed as well. The desire to change the world continues to manifest itself within social movements and popular culture, what makes Lipstick Traces so important is the fact that it points out that it doesn't matter whether these movements succeeded in their mission to change the world, because by simply existing, they changed history though influencing popular art and music.
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