Customer Reviews

Ranters & Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-92

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Marcus succeeds in articulating in print what was so wonderful about bands like Gang of Four, the Raincoats, X-Ray Spex, the Clash, etc. There is something truly significant captured in that music between 1976-late 1980s called "punk," and the author explains it unlike no other.

Very readable, good essays on The Clash, Bikini Kill, Sonic Youth, etc., you'll probably be glad to have it around if (70's-)80's(-'90s) pop-rock-punk is your thing and you go hunting for info on each new-old band you discover.

It's not so much that Marcus doesn't love his subject; it's more that he's so invested in having the Biggest Thinks possible about his subject that he comes crashing down in a litter of pompous distortion, at worst, and irritating self-congratulation, entirely too often. As with LIPSTICK TRACES, which this was tossed together to follow, if you want to feel as if you've been intellectually challenged while reading music reviews with a modicum of pop-culture history slathered in, you could do worse. But you can do much better, as well. And you won't even have to suffer through the gosh-wow celebrations of Situationism, otherwise known as the art of overstating the obvious at tedious length.