Features
Friday, May 6 2011
The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes
Despite or even because of its jumble of missing pieces, half-finished recordings, garbled chronologies of composition or performance -- the basement tapes can begin to sound like a map; but if they are a map, what country, what lost mine, is it that they center and fix?
Monday, October 25 2010
20 Questions: Greil Marcus
"Few if any American cultural historians take the great deep American Breath like Greil Marcus," writes Robert Loss. With his latest, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010 in mind, we’re pleased to have Marcus back with us, this time in the playful framework of PopMatters 20 Questions.
Monday, April 26 2010
High Stakes Criticism: An Interview with Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus on Van Morrison, the yarragh, the blues, the memoir, race, authenticity, imagination, his career and what constitutes 'high stakes' criticism.
Friday, February 5 2010
Risk and Equilibrium: The Impact of Greil Marcus
The entirety of Marcus' famous 1970 "What is this shit?" review prefigures the sense of profound, disturbed wonder in the best of Marcus’ criticism.
Thursday, April 3 2008
Live Fast, Die Young, or Get Off the Stage
Why wouldn't they burn out instead of fade away? Berman examines the sad spectacle of punk-rock reunions and shows how they destroy the two elements that actually made punk attractive: sex appeal and impermanence.
Columns
Wednesday, December 7 2011
When the Music’s Over: Greil Marcus on the Doors
Apparently seeking to account for every important rock act of the '60s, Greil Marcus turns his critical attention to the Doors.
Monday, April 19 2010
Greil Marcus on Van Morrison: When That Rough God Goes Riding
This is the story of a burly monk in shades, of flesh chasing the divine, of a voice ecstatic in southern blues and gospel and Celtic mysticism.
Reviews
Friday, July 15 2011
What Came Out of the Basement: 'The Old Weird America'
Bob Dylan and his compatriots found the hidden republic, the place where playing a blues, a railroad song and murder ballads provides access to the old, weird America.
Thursday, February 14 2008
The Shape of Things to Come by Greil Marcus
Convinced as I was by Marcus' readings, I couldn't help noticing that the primary subjects of all four chapters were works produced by white men: Philip Roth, David Lynch, Bill Pullmanm and David Thomas.
Friday, May 20 2005
Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads by Greil Marcus
Like a Rolling Stone is not great cultural analysis or musical study, but it's a work that's both insightful and fantastic.
