Sunday, September 20, 2009

The Top 30 Rock Books I Own: #13 Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island

Title: Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island
Editor: Greil Marcus
Year Originally Published: 1979
Edition I Own: Da Capo Press first edition, 1996

What They Say: 1) San Francisco Chronicle: "One of the most fascinating books yet written about rock and roll ... Although Stranded in no way pretends to be a history of rock and roll, the pieces of rock that are included form enough of the puzzle." 2) The Washington Post: "Each chapter of Stranded is thoughtful, superbly focused, precisely written. There exist very comparable efforts." (Both quotes from the book's back cover.)

Tuomala's Attempt At A Take: Lester Bangs's essay on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks from this book famously appeared in the opening section of his anthology Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, which led me to pounce on Stranded when it was finally republished in the mid-nineties. The premise of the book is simple: Greil Marcus asked writers to write essays on the one album they would take with them if stranded on a desert album. Some of the selections are bizzare - the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt. (I would take 1979 Linda Ronstadt with me to a desert island, but her music would stay behind.) Probably even more baffling is that nobody picked a Beatles album. And while we get white seventies critics faves like Jackson Browne and the Ramones, nobody picked landmark black artists like Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, or James Brown.

I picked this up again a couple of weeks ago and was absolutely baffled by language like: "The Velvets compel belief in part because, given its context, what they are saying is so bold: not only do they implicitly criticize their own aesthetic stance - they risk undermining it altogether, ending up with sincere but embarrassingly banal home truths" (Ellen Willis) and "The Dolls carried to its illogical conclusion the egalitarian communalism that was one logical response of fun-filled affluence to alienation: they refused to pay their dues. So we had to pay instead" (Robert Christgau.) However, M. Mark's words on growing up in a rural area ring true: "When I lived in Iowa, my wardrobe and vocabulary were as sophisticated as possible, befitting one bound for the Big City; now that I live in New York, my wardrobe consists of jeans and my vocabulary is littered with phrases like 'real good,' befitting one reared in the heartland. I don't recall deciding to make these changes." She also chose a Van Morrison album.