Customer Reviews

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, Twentieth Anniversary Edition

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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??

I bought this book when it first came out more than twenty years ago now, and couldn't put it down. And still today I have similar reading fits whenever I pull it off my shelf. Similar to the previous reviewer, while reading Lipstick Traces, I was introduced to cultural and political figures and movements such as Guy Debord, Dada, Theodor Adorno and the Situationists for the first time. In Lipstick Traces, punk and the Sex Pistols provide a historical pivot around which Marcus weaves his narrative, an alternate narrative; alternate to the received history of the twentieth century we've all been given.

I've loved Marcus' writing since discovering his first book 'Mystery Train' in the stacks of my high school library in the mid-1970s. I subsequently stole that library copy and to this day have not returned it. Mystery Train remains for me the most important book ever written about rock-n-roll and the music's place in American culture. And that book's influence is immeasureable. Lipstick Traces is different in that its focus is international and less specifically American than Mystery Train's.

In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus goes to great lengths connecting the Sex Pistols and cultural/political movements such as the Situationists. In an interview following the book's release, John Lydon called such connections "rubbish," leading me to wonder what Marcus would say about Lydon's comment. Which isn't meant in the least to dissaude you from reading Lipstick Traces: Like all of Marcus's writing, its full of ideas, rich in history, and deeply intriguing: All qualities missing from much of popular music at present. In any case, Lipstick Traces' subtitle alone should make you want to read it.

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.