The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

De: Greil Marcus

Narrado por: Henry Rollins

Unlike all previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 and then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out - a new language, something new under the sun.

"Transmission" by Joy Division. "All I Could Do Was Cry" by Etta James and then Beyoncé. "To Know Him Is to Love Him", first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus' hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This audiobook, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism - and its most gifted and incisive practitioner - is destined to become an enduring classic.

©2014 Greil Marcus (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Reading Marcus's words with the intensity and focus of a performance artist, Rollins describes how songs such as 'Crying, Waiting, Hoping' by Buddy Holly, 'Sweet Home Chicago' by Robert Johnson, and 'Money Changes Everything' sung by Cyndi Lauper changed music and changed lives." (AudioFile)

Much different than I expected

Not a book for those with an average knowledge base of rock music, but for those with an interest in the real intricacies of the same. I found in interesting, but not particularly entertaining.

Great story but wrong narrator

What didn’t you like about Henry Rollins’s performance?

I really enjoy & like Henry Rollins and have seen him on stage for his spoken word tour. Phenomenal story teller but not for this book. He needs to take a breath once in a while so the story will transition better.

How to make the history of rock n roll boring

Monotonous unexciting/uninspiring mater of fact audio read is good only to cure insomnia. Overwhelming detail spitting out facts could have used some of the music softly playing in the background while the songs/lyrics were being described. That would have made a huge difference and advantage to an audio over a history book read reminding me of boring history books of high school years.

Bait and Switch

Greil Marcus, the shamelessly judgmental music critic, uses the word "cheat" at least twice in this book, most heinously in dismissing Beyonce's entire body of work a "cheat". I barely know Beyonce's music, but I know enough about rock 'n' roll (having been accused, not affectionately, of being a walking RnR encyclopedia and music snob) to know that Marcus is the cheat.

If he wanted to call this book "Hipper Than Thou: Songs I know every little thing about that you never even heard of (and even one that is not a song at all)", then I'd shower him with praise for being honest. He even admits it in the interview tacked on at the end where he confesses that the initial idea for this book was to write about the Flamin' Groovies' Shake Some Action, a song he knew full well has never heard by the vast majority of listeners (and which, along with the entire chapter devoted to it, is not even a footnote in RnR history).

But THE History? The TRUE history, as he promises in his introduction? No. Not here. Not at all. He comes close in only one chapter, using Buddy Holly as a fulcrum to connect Elvis to the Beatles, Stones and Dylan, but his 12,000 word essay does not cover as much ground as the 870 words (repeated choruses and all) of Don MacLean's American Pie (which Marcus does not deign to mention, citing songs and poems referring to Holly's death that no one else ever heard of).

If you're seriously considering listening to this book, start with the chapter on Guitar Drag, which is just noise, not even a song, created by a non-musician (and a friend of the author, to no one's surprise). With all of the songs he could have chosen, even snobby selections like Shake Some Action, Money Changes Everything, Transmission, and Crying Waiting Hoping, he wastes one of his ten entries on noise. He could have written this essay based on John Brown's Body or Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner, that may have made a sense. As is, it's nothing short of drek. You will not want to read further after sampling it.

Among his other crimes: mistaking movie recreations of scenes of spontaneous creativity for the real thing (Transmission, All I Could Do Was Cry), ranting about commercialism and then failing to address the issue in a chapter covering two songs about money, going on two long fantasies imagining if Robert Johnson and Buddy Holly had lived on in which he engages in the crassest kind of mythologizing that he disparaged in his introduction (the hypocrisy of "I can deify my idols, but you're not allowed"), and worst of all, mistaking his insecure need to re-establish his identity as the smartest guy in the room for true knowledge. As if we care.

Henry Rollins does an excellent job of narration, though he himself doesn't rate a mention by Marcus despite his status as a highly influential punk rock icon.

Runs all together

If you love Rock history of all kinds you’ll like this. I don’t know if the book doesn’t translate well to audio, but there were times I couldn’t tell if he was focusing on a song or artist, or which song.
I have to say that I’ve attempted to listen to this book multiple times and now I’ve worked out why. I tend to listen while doing something else - in this case, sorting through a pile of papers and miscellania, folding laundry, driving, grabbing a few items at Walgreen’s, etc.
The first thing you notice is Rollins’ deliciously smooth voice. Wonderful, but that smoothness with a very wordy recording tends to disappear into the background and there’s nothing that grabs your attention to say “starting on a new song”. The chapter headings could have been given the song titles - no such luck.
Then there’s the text - while it’s interesting to hear the back stories it tends to be very wordy and it all blends together. To be fair, some stories are more interesting. But is he talking about a song or a group, and which song?
Then there’s the songs - many are obscure and uninteresting to me :::forehead in hand:::
I love music and still have LPs (and a turntable), many CDs, my original dial up iPod, (guess I will be updating my iPhone this year) etc. so that should give me some street cred. But I think T. Bone Burnett would have done a better job of it.