Heartfelt and often amusing, these essays will have you reaching into your record collection to listen with fresh ears.
Selected essays from an acclaimed music critic.
Marsh (b. 1950) was a founding editor of Creem, where he was mentored by his colleague Lester Bangs, and he has been an editor and writer for the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He has also published numerous books on bands and musicians, including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, the Who, Michael Jackson, and Sly and the Family Stone, and he is a committee member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame known for his unapologetically candid opinions on rock. Most importantly, though, he’s someone who truly loves music, regardless of genre or style. This volume brings together his best essays from 1984 to 2017, ranging from the personal to the political and everything in between. A self-proclaimed “musical omnivore,” he tackles artists as varied as Nina Simone, Green Day, and Madonna—who, he writes with characteristic humor, “has entered the rarified ranks of those pop stars who function as lightning rods for assholes.” The author also explores lesser-known musicians such as gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates (“In her music, the African American tradition of the social gospel comes to full, fierce life”) and the Chinese rock artist Cui Jian (“Chinese, with its guttural intonations and short words, is perfectly suited to rock and roll”). Throughout, Marsh’s deep passion for the music and the artists he writes about provides a bassline of energy and excitement. The author breathes new insight into well-known artists and provides avenues of discovery for new music while maintaining humor and heart. Many of the best essays are not about artists but the industry itself, including critiques of record companies that remain relevant today and astute analyses of music’s relationship to politics. Springsteen, for one, offers Marsh an avenue to examine Ronald Reagan, and Kurt Cobain leads to a larger discussion of the punk revolution.
Heartfelt and often amusing, these essays will have you reaching into your record collection to listen with fresh ears.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781982197162
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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