Rating: 
Summary: can I make a horrible confession?
Review: Sigh. Okay, okay... I never actually finished reading this one... but I had a lot of fun trying! Pop culture critic Marcus weaves the history of the Sex Pistols -- and their disasterous final tour to America -- in with sideways social analyses and neo-surrealist "Situationism". A heady, stream-of-consciousness, Lester Bangs-ian nouveaux rock book that'll give you plenty to think about. You'll get dizzy being pointed in so many directions at once. A classic.
Rating: 
Summary: A much simpler explanation
Review: There's a much, much simpler explanation for why the Sex Pistols hated the Queen so much that Marcus misses in this fun but hilariously convoluted confection about French intellectual influences on punk: Johnny Rotten hated the Queen because he's an Irish Catholic. See John Lydon's autobiography, where his Irishness takes centerstage. - Steve Sailer
Rating:
Summary: 99 Molotov Cocktails on the Wall
Review: Think non-linear. Think connective. This book isn't exactly art history or criticism, it isn't a manual on how to start an artistic revolution, it isn't sociological theory - but it touches on all these. Marcus traces currents of thought and action in musical and artistic "movements" in an illuminating and inspiring way that swings from such 20th century horrors as Nazi death camps to Michael Jacksons' "Thriller", although he gets bogged down in the second half with the "lettristes" who really, from his description, don't sound exciting enough to spend so much time on. Okay, letter poetry, sounds stupid, what next? The person this book would be perfect for is the edgy artist who needs some instigation (the person who recommended it to me), intellectual "punk rock" fan (I might qualify), or the anarchist with a taste for literature (who I am mailing my copy to). If you are unfamiliar with the situationists, the sex pistols, the dadaists, European revolutions, etc. then this book is a good starting point. (I'd never heard of Guy Debord but the extensive quotes from "Society of the Spectacle" convinced me to rush out and read that, too.)
Rating:
Summary: 99 Molotov Cocktails on the Wall
Review: Think non-linear. Think connective. This book isn't exactly art history or criticism, it isn't a manual on how to start an artistic revolution, it isn't sociological theory - but it touches on all these. Marcus traces currents of thought and action in musical and artistic "movements" in an illuminating and inspiring way that swings from such 20th century horrors as Nazi death camps to Michael Jacksons' "Thriller", although he gets bogged down in the second half with the "lettristes" who really, from his description, don't sound exciting enough to spend so much time on. Okay, letter poetry, sounds stupid, what next? The person this book would be perfect for is the edgy artist who needs some instigation (the person who recommended it to me), intellectual "punk rock" fan (I might qualify), or the anarchist with a taste for literature (who I am mailing my copy to). If you are unfamiliar with the situationists, the sex pistols, the dadaists, European revolutions, etc. then this book is a good starting point. (I'd never heard of Guy Debord but the extensive quotes from "Society of the Spectacle" convinced me to rush out and read that, too.)
Rating:
Summary: ooh it good
Review: this book is amazing. it's tough though. for one, you won't want to put it down, but it makes you wanna go do stuff. it's a must read for those who like punk. marcus puts it all in a beautiful perspective. i keep wanting to go visit him and have a beer and talk about all the stuff he covers -- only take a year or so. . .
Rating: 
Summary: Much Ado About Nada
Review: This book is so inept it makes the writings of Ayn Rand look like the Summa Theologica. Lipstick Traces is a heap of dust and gas swirling around in the dark about a center full of sound and pseudo-fury that signifys even less than nothing. Marcus' rediculous prostrastion before that testosteroniholic Johnny Rotten is rotten. Marcus fails to ask himself serious questions when contemplating the pseudo-revolutionaries in the Sex Pistols.
Point: Any fool who sings out loud "I am an Anti-Christ!" is absolutely not an anti-christ. The real anti-Christs (like the televagelists, let us say) run around saying "I am a *Christ*!". But such obvious points completely pass over Marcus' mind which is obsessively and worshipfully focused on the dark forms of romanticism he seeks to portray.
I have had, for some time, a bit of knowledge in my brain about the dadaists, the surrealists, and the situationists but by the time I got done reading the book I felt I knew *less* than before I read it. Greil had performed the improbable feat of destroying the subject matter he sought to save. He succeeds in that dire task by a rambling prose (which some functional illiterates among the book's reviewers call "connective") that meanders around a thousand tasteless factoids on its journey to a philosophically haunted gazebo in a wasteland disguised as a deranged amusement park.
I am afraid that there is yet to be a book written about the subject matter in "Lipstick Traces" that does justice to it. Marcus did, at least, give us "The Old, Wierd America" a fine and competent book that quietly strips away the bright white optimistic facade of America to reveal the dark and strange culture beneathe, embodied by the likes of the sublime Bob Dylan.
Mr. Marcus has no right to call his tome a secret history of the twentieth century. His scope is too small. He leaves out the Wierd movement in American literature embodied by writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. He neglects the strange and unexpected history of literature's underdog science-fiction. He seems ignorant of the great autumn of Christianity in politics (Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Ellul) and literature (Bernanos, Maritain, Claudel, and others).
Besides lacking scope the book - I must say again - is radically incoherent. It is not enough to drag our imaginations through the squalors and splendors Mr. Marcus writes about - one must manfully press forward towards wisdom, something in short supply all throughtout the book.
Rating:
Summary: Music or Mayhem?
Review: This is not your father's music history book. If you are expecting a book about punk rock, read it. It is about punk rock in a manner of speaking. But even if you aren't a punk rocker, still read it. I know they always say this and then you think to yourself, why would I want to read a book about something I could care less about? But this book only uses punk as a kind of centerpiece or metaphor. But this book is about everything--Dadaism, revolution, Situationism, even a medieval religious fanatic who walled himself into a city with a group of followers resorting to canabalism and self-annihilation. See, it seems interesting. It is scholarly, but quite readable (and God knows, most aren't). Sometimes a little unfocused, but if it had too much structure, it wouldn't be punk.
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