Rating: 
Summary: Marcus Rocks The House
Review: According to a rather tired old aphorism, writing about music makes about as much sense as dancing about architecture. Whoever came up with this one probably never considered the possibility that rather than filling page after page with a lot of dull old stuff about how to tune an oboe, whether Brahms is better than Def Leppard, or what Stevie Wonder eats for breakfast, a writer could actually try to replicate the effects of a really exciting song or symphony by just describing what it feels like to listen to. Greil Marcus is the master of this sort of poetic-slash-jounalistic style of writing: reading his careful reconstruction of the effect of tunes like Elvis' "Baby Let's Play House," The Band's "King Harvest" and Randy Newman's "Wedding in Cherokee County" sent me immediately off to my closetful of old L.P.s and (gasp!) 8-tracks to dig for treasures. The book was originally published in 1973, which turns out to be pretty significant - in an era full of uncertainty and pessimism about America's future, Marcus was able to listen to a few dozen three-minute songs by performers as diverse as Sly Stone, Robbie Robertson and the King Himself (amongst many others) and hear echoes of Jefferson, Melville and Mark Twain. Aside from the fact that it makes you want to just get down and boogie, what makes the book so disarming, especially when one reads it with the benefit of 20 years hindsight, is that it was written in a spirit of informed, but also thoroughly uncyinical patriotism. This comes across especially in the book's last chapter, which is called "Presliad." It's easy enough to pound the table and intone at length about the genuis of Edison or the eloquence of Lincoln, but who would've thought that even after all the rotten movies, the drugs and the peanut-buttter sandwitches, someone could still look at old Elvis with an unsentimental eye and find something that was worthy of celebration?
Rating: 
Summary: Astonishingly bad, by any standards
Review: Back in the 70s, we hadn't yet learned to "just say no." Perhaps that's why some people liked _Mystery Train._ Rampant drug use is the only possible reason anyone might find this gibberish interesting or enlightening. It's so absurdly overwritten, so pompous, and so empty of actual meaning as to be beneath contempt. This is, to books about music, what "Plan Nine From Outer Space" is to sci-fi movies.
Rating:
Summary: Astonishingly bad, by any standards
Review: Back in the 70s, we hadn't yet learned to "just say no." Perhaps that's why some people liked _Mystery Train._ Rampant drug use is the only possible reason anyone might find this gibberish interesting or enlightening. It's so absurdly overwritten, so pompous, and so empty of actual meaning as to be beneath contempt. This is, to books about music, what "Plan Nine From Outer Space" is to sci-fi movies.
Rating:
Summary: Astonishingly bad, by any standards
Review: Back in the 70s, we hadn't yet learned to "just say no." Perhaps that's why some people liked _Mystery Train._ Rampant drug use is the only possible reason anyone might find this gibberish interesting or enlightening. It's so absurdly overwritten, so pompous, and so empty of actual meaning as to be beneath contempt. This is, to books about music, what "Plan Nine From Outer Space" is to sci-fi movies.
Rating: 
Summary: A book for the lover of the rock and roll idiom
Review: Founding rolling stone writer Greil Marcus is what you'd describe, were you English and of a certain age, as an "Anorak". He's an obsessive, passionate, academic lover of rock 'n' roll in all its many forms. Here he sketches out a book structured in a loose fashion like the bible, in that it has an "old testament" surveying two of rock's 'ancestors' and a "new testament" on five of their 'inheritors'. It's a book about rock 'n' roll. In short, Marcus waxes long and with great hyperbole on things which most grown ups in this day and age find rather trifling. Well, I don't, and I think this is a fantastic book. It's subjects are eclectic as can be: Robert Johnson is a reasonable enough choice for "ancestor of the rock 'n' roll tradition" but it would be a brave man who would pick one-man band "Harmonica Frank" Floyd, from Toccopola Mississippi, as the other. But Marcus does, and creates a fascinating case for his inclusion. The threads he picks up of rock iconography are incredible - the myth of Stagger Lee, blended into the history of Sly Stone was something I'd never heard of, but it prompted me to head off in that direction and see what I could find. Likewise the short chapter on Robert Johnson. In a lot of ways, that's the beauty of this book: For all its obsession-shot prose, it functions as a bunch of references; directions which the reader can follow up at leisure, and Marcus's effervescent writing style functions like a firm push between the shoulder blades. The bibliography is almost as long as the text, and it's well worth the read. There are some who find Marcus' style too garish, and there is a view that he is too much of a boffin - an anorak, if you will - for his own good. I don't agree with that - Marcus is self-aware enough to see the funny side of himself and his subject matter, and he is always so enthusiastic that it isn't fair to say he misses the point, or the energy, of what he's writing about. Marcus' later work, especially on punk rock, is well worth investigating too. Don't believe the nay-sayers who don't like his "straying" into punk: "In the Fascist Bathroom", Marcus' anthology of essays on punk rock is one of the funniest, most compelling reads I've had in a long while.
Rating:
Summary: A book for the lover of the rock and roll idiom
Review: Founding rolling stone writer Greil Marcus is what you'd describe, were you English and of a certain age, as an "Anorak". He's an obsessive, passionate, academic lover of rock 'n' roll in all its many forms. Here he sketches out a book structured in a loose fashion like the bible, in that it has an "old testament" surveying two of rock's 'ancestors' and a "new testament" on five of their 'inheritors'. It's a book about rock 'n' roll. In short, Marcus waxes long and with great hyperbole on things which most grown ups in this day and age find rather trifling. Well, I don't, and I think this is a fantastic book. It's subjects are eclectic as can be: Robert Johnson is a reasonable enough choice for "ancestor of the rock 'n' roll tradition" but it would be a brave man who would pick one-man band "Harmonica Frank" Floyd, from Toccopola Mississippi, as the other. But Marcus does, and creates a fascinating case for his inclusion. The threads he picks up of rock iconography are incredible - the myth of Stagger Lee, blended into the history of Sly Stone was something I'd never heard of, but it prompted me to head off in that direction and see what I could find. Likewise the short chapter on Robert Johnson. In a lot of ways, that's the beauty of this book: For all its obsession-shot prose, it functions as a bunch of references; directions which the reader can follow up at leisure, and Marcus's effervescent writing style functions like a firm push between the shoulder blades. The bibliography is almost as long as the text, and it's well worth the read. There are some who find Marcus' style too garish, and there is a view that he is too much of a boffin - an anorak, if you will - for his own good. I don't agree with that - Marcus is self-aware enough to see the funny side of himself and his subject matter, and he is always so enthusiastic that it isn't fair to say he misses the point, or the energy, of what he's writing about. Marcus' later work, especially on punk rock, is well worth investigating too. Don't believe the nay-sayers who don't like his "straying" into punk: "In the Fascist Bathroom", Marcus' anthology of essays on punk rock is one of the funniest, most compelling reads I've had in a long while.
Rating:
Summary: In The American Grain
Review: I am a 20yr old English American Studies student, a verified "america-phile" (this is how i've been described by americans in my year abroad at an american university, shocked as they are by my fascination w/ american culture)...this is one of the things that started it all for me. I first became interested in american culture through the music of the country and this book convinced me that american music could be seen "not as youth culture, or counterculture, but simply as American culture." (for me the book's key line, its thesis, the simplist and yet greatest explanation for the worth of studying popular music as you would literature or even film)...yes, i admit, the book is often complex and obscure, imprenatrable (most of it rests on Marcus's own assumptions and overriding optimism for the promise of the American dream), assuming a great deal of knowledge of american history and culture (as i learn more about this country, i find it extraordinarily rewarding to keep re-reading it, to pick up on more of the allusions) and yet it is still possibly the most rewarding and influential (to me anyway) book i have ever read, reminding me time and time again of the social-cultural-human power in american music, rather than simply its commercial power (which a lot of popular music studies, ie media studies, seem to focus on)...and the discography! this is worth the price of purchase alone! its like TS Eliots notes to 'The Waste Land'! So many albums I have bought simply from reading about them here...i recommend that anyone interested in american culture and rock n roll read this! and then peter gularnick's "sweet soul music" etc etc...
Rating: 
Summary: Tired Cliches and Endless Sentimentality
Review: I am so happy to see that other people realize what a pile of crap this so-called "classic" is. I read it about twenty years ago and even then recognized what a fundamentally phony book it was. A book on images of America in rock and roll, huh? Well, let's see, who's missing here?
CHUCK BERRY -- not a word.
BRIAN WILSON -- nothing.
LIEBER AND STOLLER -- nothing.
BOB DYLAN -- nope.
EDDIE COCHRAN -- zero.
Griel Marcus is the kind of guy who thinks he can make anything sound classy by comparing it to Huckleberry Finn. And not the text written by Mark Twain, either. No, that might mean having to quote and cite evidence. Marcus loves to talk about the "myth" of Huckleberry Finn, like the culture created it. No,
as Huck tells us on page one, "that book was written by Mr. Mark Twain." And you know what, Griel bubbe? You -- ain't -- him!
Most of the music Marcus actually writes about in this book is fifth rate crap nobody ever heard of. He doesn't review big hits because then the reader could actually critique his views and compare his raving with what the songs actually say. Harmonica Frank was a nobody, a non-talented non-entity, but Marcus gives the guy a full chapter so that Marcus can say whatever he wants without any contradictions. It's the dumbest form of elitism and one-upmanship masquerading as populism.
Another problem is Marcus' sentimentality about violence. Note well that this is a coward who wouldn't have made it through Army basic, let alone combat in Vietnam, yet he writes page after page after page about how joyous and invigorating it is to listen to songs about Stagger Lee shooting Billy, and rednecks slashing each other with razors, and God knows what else. Forget drugs and groupies, this is true rock and roll decadence.
The best part of the book, as most critics admit, is the section on Elvis Presley, pretentiously named "The Presliad." Elvis was no Achilles, and Griel Marcus is no Homer. Elvis was a coward, a liar, a weakling, who despised his audience and betrayed his music every chance he got. Marcus never comes close to owning up to Elvis' failures as a man and an artist. Elivs sells his soul to the devil, or to Nixon, and somehow it just makes Elvis more of a victim. Why can't Marcus admit that Elvis was trash? The music was good, sure. But the man was trash. Marcus isn't adult enough to handle that kind of contradiction so he falls back on endless babble about Ahab and Huck and the American "myths" that are not written down, not subject to rational discussion, and in fact seem to exist only in Marcus' head.
And they call this rock criticism?
Rating:
Summary: mystery train blues
Review: I had to struggle to get through this one. I found the writing style contrived and full of meandering attempts at placing rock and roll in a larger philosophical context. If you can get past the uninspired political & cultural observations, and also the party line, accepted musical interpretations as well as a writing style still staggering from the excesses of the 60's then perhaps this is the book for you. There is also a minor point of a liberal interpretation of the facts (such as the erroneous retelling of the meeting between Elvis and Nixon in the footnotes of the "ELVIS: Presliad" chapter). If you're looking for good, intelligent, insightful commentary on rock and blues music I recommend Peter Guralnick, who lives up to the praise that undeservedly graces the back of "Mystery Train".
Rating:
Summary: Tops man!
Review: I'm not going to lie. I only read one chapter, Sly Stone, but this book is incredible because of it. It ties in the way Sly grew up, made his music, and how he was the perfect example of the rage, optimism, and culture of black America in the 60's and 70's. But he doesn't stop there. He branches out talking about other artists, films, books, and tv shows of that era all while showing the socio-political climate of the people the art was representing. It's like a very poetic magic trick where you are shown things in a way and make the connection based on what's given to you. As a film and music fan I think a similar study needs to be done on cinema, although it is touched upon here.
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