Amazon.com: It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music: Amanda Petrusich: Books

Review

“Like a smart, genial Persephone, Amanda Petrusich wanders the underworld of American roots music and reports back her insights with an open mind and an open heart. She has a respect for history and an even greater respect for the passion that keeps history alive and meaningful.” —Anthony DeCurtis, Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone

"Obsessed with roots but founded on uprooting, America has always been characterized by restless internal migration: people are always leaving home to find a better, truer home. In It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the American Music, Amanda Petrusich hits the road too, looking to crack the conundrum of the culture that produced Robert Johnson, Lead Belly and Hank Williams but also Cracker Barrel, Graceland, and Clear Channel. Talking and listening and eating her way across an American landscape as earthy as grits 'n' gravy yet as ethereal as the wraith-like plaint of pedal steel, she finds that the mystery doesn't so much resolve as grow more vivid. In this sharply observed, intensely felt audio-travelogue, "Americana" emerges as not so much a sound or musical genre as an imaginary country, a dream land superimposed over the real U.S.A. Above all it's a fantasy of the South spun by people mostly not from there, a salve for that feeling of hollowness that haunts modern urban existence, a remedy for our aching sense that real life is elsewhere." —Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84.

Product Description

"Where lies the boundary between meaning and sentiment? Between memory and nostalgia? America and Americana? What is and what was? Does it move?"

--Donovon Hohn, A Romance of Rust

Part travelogue, part cultural criticism, part music appreciation, It Still Moves does for today’s avant folk scene what Greil Marcus did for Dylan and The Basement Tapes. Amanda Petrusich outlines the sounds of the new, weird America—honoring the rich tradition of gospel, bluegrass, country, folk, and rock that feeds it, while simultaneously exploring the American character as personified in all of these genres historically. Through interviews, road stories, geographical and sociological interpretations, and detailed music criticism, Petrusich traces the rise of Americana music from its gospel origins through its new and compelling incarnations (as evidenced in bands and artists from Elvis to Iron and Wine, the Carter Family to Animal Collective, Johnny Cash to Will Oldham) and explores how the genre is adapting to the twenty-first century. Ultimately the book is an examination of all things American: guitars, cars, kids, motion, passion, enterprise, and change, in a fervent attempt to reconcile the American past with the American present, using only dusty records and highway maps as guides.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Faber & Faber (August 19, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 086547950X
ISBN-13: 978-0865479500
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #669,038 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Lead Belly, New York, Woody Guthrie, Elvis Presley, Carter Family, Johnny Cash, Sam Phillips, Cracker Barrel, Alan Lomax, Beale Street, Music Row, Jerry Lee Lewis, Robert Johnson, Nashville Sound, John Lomax, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Grand Ole Opry, Coney Island, Smithsonian Folkways, United States, Pete Seeger, Sun Records, Hill Country, Pretty Ole

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	81% buy the item featured on this page: It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music 2.0 out of 5 stars (3) $19.00
	11% buy The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present 3.4 out of 5 stars (8) $12.48
	3% buy 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die (1,000 Before You Die) 4.1 out of 5 stars (70) $6.20
	3% buy Country Music, U.S.A. 4.5 out of 5 stars (4) $25.51

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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2.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great read, June 10, 2009

By	JimONeal (Decatur, GA) - See all my reviews

Would have preferred more information on the newer music scenes but love the personal perspective on the more historical stuff. Great for someone looking for a crash course in American roots music with a younger voice.

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your money, February 27, 2009

By	J. Cox (Bowling Green, KY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Kevin, above, was right. I didn't believe him and bought this book for my wife. She would read large portions to me so that we could jointly mock this one. Petrusich writes like she wants to be Greil Marcus when she grows up. She has his flatulent verbosity, but unfortunately, she missed out on delivering actual content, which Greil does do occasionally.

Petrusich uses adjectives as if she gets paid per use. This would be great if it added anything, but unfortunately, this books reads more like a thesaurus than a creative work. She has little to say and says it badly. This is a good concept that gets more or less ruined. Don't buy it.

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7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It Didn't Move Me: Bad Writing about Country Music and Highway Travel, January 5, 2009

By	Kevin Schlottmann (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an unsuccessful combination of a travelogue, a history of country music, and an analysis of current trends in Americana. The historical portions are thinly researched, the analysis is at best trite and unoriginal and at worst confused, and the travel writing is a failed attempt to channel the mystique of the American road. Everything is in a blog style that is far too lightly edited. Despite Ms. Petrusich's clear affection for the music, she has nothing interesting or new to say about it. The only crumbs of insight come from artist interviews and quotes from other authors. There is plenty of great writing about country music and its history; off the top of my head, recent enjoyable reads include Havighurst's Air Castle of the Sky, about WSM; Colin Escott's Hank Williams bio; Gura's America's Instrument, about the banjo; and No Depression, in its magazine, anthology, and online forms. Check those out instead.

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