Description
Price: $33.50
(as of Dec 16, 2024 13:32:32 UTC – Details)
Greil Marcus, author of Mystery Train, widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. “I am an antichrist!” shouted singer Johnny Rotten―where in the world of pop music did that come from? Looking for an answer, with a high sense of the drama of the journey, Marcus takes us down the dark paths of counterhistory, a route of blasphemy, adventure, and surprise.
This is no mere search for cultural antecedents. Instead, what Marcus so brilliantly shows is that various kinds of angry, absolute demands―demands on society, art, and all the governing structures of everyday life―seem to be coded in phrases, images, and actions passed on invisibly, but inevitably, by people quite unaware of each other. Marcus lets us hear strange yet familiar voices: of such heretics as the Brethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe and the Ranters in seventeenth-century England; the dadaists in Zurich in 1916 and Berlin in 1918, wearing death masks, chanting glossolalia; one Michel Mourre, who in 1950 took over Easter Mass at Notre-Dame to proclaim the death of God; the Lettrist International and the Situationist International, small groups of Paris―based artists and writers surrounding Guy Debord, who produced blank-screen films, prophetic graffiti, and perhaps the most provocative social criticism of the 1950s and ’60s; the rioting students and workers of May ’68, scrawling cryptic slogans on city walls and bringing France to a halt; the Sex Pistols in London, recording the savage “Anarchy in the U.K.” and “God Save the Queen.”
Although the Sex Pistols shape the beginning and the end of the story, Lipstick Traces is not a book about music; it is about a common voice, discovered and transmitted in many forms. Working from scores of previously unexamined and untranslated essays, manifestos, and filmscripts, from old photographs, dada sound poetry, punk songs, collages, and classic texts from Marx to Henri Lefebvre, Marcus takes us deep behind the acknowledged events of our era, into a hidden tradition of moments that would seem imaginary except for the fact that they are real: a tradition of shared utopias, solitary refusals, impossible demands, and unexplained disappearances. Written with grace and force, humor and an insistent sense of tragedy and danger, Lipstick Traces tells a story as disruptive and compelling as the century itself.
Publisher : Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press; 2nd edition (November 30, 2009)
Language : English
Paperback : 496 pages
ISBN-10 : 0674034805
ISBN-13 : 978-0674034808
Item Weight : 1.46 pounds
Dimensions : 6.37 x 1 x 9.25 inches
Slothrop –
Embrace complexity Secrets from a more intelligent era
Without even commenting on the actual content, the style of this book is the complete opposite of our current oversimplified, dumbed down swill. The prose is dense and stream of consciousness styled, and necessarily complex. Greil Marcus drills down deeply, as far back as medieval times to synthesize an explanation of the Punk movement. He used documented but suppressed or forgotten historic events and movements to prove that Punk is not simply raw youthful rebellion, but part of a larger, self-validating philosophical paradigm. This coherency of this paradigm has evolved over the centuries, and it is never articulated in readily accessible form, but always lurking in the shadows. And it had repeatedly caused radical, worldwide change. Read this book if you dare, and if you can. Embrace complexity.
Vicky –
Musical book of the century
Magnificent view on the counterculture of Punk and its influence over the years. It is far better than Simon Reynold’s Retromania (although this one highlights the pop culture). I want to read it over and over again. Every detail that is mentioned adds up to a new whole. It also makes plausible connections between different movements and artists, which leads to new thoughts about music in general.
alex rubin –
Arrival & Initial Reading
So far, the condition & content of the book have completely met my expectations (of which there were not many but had it been a piece of crap, my rating would have reflected this). I’ve found no complaints, just trying to keep up with the pacing of the book that Greil Marcus has provided which is quite rapid and jumps around in time quite a lot while loading the text heavily with historical, cultural references that at times escape me. It’s a lot to take in at once but I’m enjoying this product nevertheless.
Jason J. Seislove –
Awesome!
A heady cocktail of cultural critique on par with Lester Bangs’ “Psychotic Reactions and Carburator Dung.”
Derrick Smit –
When Punk was as Punk did
It’s interesting since we’ve became of consumers meta formerly known as the genre, retro, derivative packaging to occasionally hear tale of newness as it was experienced. Before it was clear that it was actually something.
Kakihara –
A MUST READ for today’s “Hip” Kids!!!!
I feel extremely positive over the fact that this book is considered important enough to have a twentieth anniversary edition rerelease! Since it’s original publication, the internet has crawled into everyone’s life & spread the Spectacle to a “Matrix”-like dominance, yet there is this book which MAY offer any who read it a mere highway sign towards the exit ramp! This is probably one of my all-time favorite books since (though it took several readings) it opened my eyes to a (secret) history of things that really must become common knowledge to anyone who considers themselves somewhat intelligent & well informed and/or leaning towards what used to be referred to as the “counter-culture” (now “alternative” or “hipster” or any other tag for those that gag on what spectacular society spoon feeds them with a shovel). Greil Marcus takes the Sex Pistols 1st 45 “Anarchy in the UK” as the starting point & hopscotches free-style across centuries of the hidden & forgotten &/or purposely ignored for what informed the raw scream of that first listen. And though it may seem a tough go on your first dig into its pages (especially in today’s A.D.D. world), Lipstick Traces rewards around each corner, never knowing where it will lead next. Starting with the first UK Punks back to the Situationists who took equal inspiration from the Dadaists of the Cabaret Voltaire AND the heretics of Europe’s middle ages, most notably the Movement of the Free Spirit – this is an often heavy read that never fails to F#@k with your preconceptions, leaving you sometimes with the realization that everything you already know is WRONG! Very few books I’ve read left me with a similar effect and after rereading it several times (there is so much here that a quick run through just doesn’t do it – be forewarned!), I’ve dug deeper into the books of Guy Debord Society of the Spectacle & (especially) Raoul Vaneigem The Revolution of Everyday Life as well as Dada, the Free Sprit The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Galaxy Books), etc, etc and I’m still digging many years after reading this the FIRST time. This book may change you too if you are the right person who has a deep curiousity for what is on the hidden side of our so-called “culture” and what you are NOT being told. As in the famous scene in “The Martix”: which pill will YOU take??
philprof –
stretches for significance
Marcus’s almost trademark “just connect” approach to cultural history does not work as well here as it does in his books more closely concerned with rock music. It is simply a lack of depth in dealing with the non-rock antecedents to punk. Almost a textbook case of reach exceeding grasp. Disappointing
john100 –
a detailed read
It should have been titled “A Radical Secret History …” Most of the info in this book details the philosophical history of all the bad ideas we’re all living under in the 21st Century. If you want to know why things are so screwed up today in Western Culture this is a good place to start, but a warning should be issued for general readers. If you haven’t got a good grounding in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophical thought you’re going to be lost.
Susana –
Llegó perfecto u muy bien estado. Subrayado y comentado a lápiz pero es lo que se avisaba antes de comprar.
Amazon Customer –
A great book I first read 25 years ago. I bought as a Xmas present for my beautiful Colombian girlfriend and I hope she loves it as much as I did!
tiresias –
rougher reading than some of his other stuff.I’m no fan of punk, but he does a wonderful travel book between dada, surrealism, paris commune, punk and situationismrecommended
Rudy –
This is my third copy of “Lipstick Traces: The Secret History of the 20th Century” in the past 20 years. Every other copy I owned was given away, never to be returned. And now, reading the book for the third time (am I dense?), I still – sorta – kinda get it, but I always feel like I’m hanging on by a thread as I turn the pages. And it is the telling of a history/story that is tenuously connected by a very thin thread. Fascinating. Intriguing. Perhaps a university education might have helped me navigate these pages much more easily. If you remember the days when the Sex Pistols 45 RPMs landed in your local record store, and may or may not have changed your life, this essay/book on this subject, and much more, may interest you greatly. Perhaps.
dan plopeanu –
Excellent!