ATDDTA (6) 178-179

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Ya'll have to read "Lipstick Traces."  Greil Marcus gives a convincing 
demonstration of Punk---The Sex Pistols specifically--- as Surrealistic 
Protest music, as opposed to the more generically activist, left-wing 
stance veering into anarchistic social protest stance of the Clash and
all the progeny of Joe Strummer (Billy Bragg included). More than
anything else, "Lipstick Traces" serves as an alternate telling of the 
long, long history of Anarchy:

        Lipstick Traces
        A Secret History of the Twentieth Century
        Greil Marcus

        Greil Marcus, author of Mystery Train, widely 
        acclaimed as the best book ever written about 
        America as seen through its music, began work 
        on this new book out of a fascination with the 
        Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, 
        invented in London in 1975 and dead within two 
        years, which sparked the emergence of the 
        culture called punk. "I am an antichrist!" shouted 
        singer Johnny Rotten-where in the world of pop 
        music did that come from? Looking for an 
        answer, with a high sense of the drama of the 
        journey, Marcus takes us down the dark paths 
        of counterhistory, a route of blasphemy, 
        adventure, and surprise.

        This is no mere search for cultural antecedents. 
        Instead, what Marcus so brilliantly shows is that 
        various kinds of angry, absolute demands---
        demands on society, art, and all the governing 
        structures of everyday life--seem to be coded in 
        phrases, images, and actions passed on invisibly, 
        but inevitably, by people quite unaware of each 
        other. Marcus lets us hear strange yet familiar 
        voices: of such heretics as the Brethren of the 
        Free Spirit in medieval Europe and the Ranters 
        in seventeenth-century England; the dadaists in 
        Zurich in 1916 and Berlin in 1918, wearing death 
        masks, chanting glossolalia; one Michel Mourre, 
        who in 1950 took over Easter Mass at Notre-Dame 
        to proclaim the death of God; the Lettrist International 
        and the Situationist International, small groups of 
        Paris--based artists and writers surrounding Guy 
        Debord, who produced blank-screen films, prophetic 
        graffiti, and perhaps the most provocative social 
        criticism of the 1950s and '60s; the rioting students 
        and workers of May '68, scrawling cryptic slogans 
        on city walls and bringing France to a halt; the Sex 
        Pistols in London, recording the savage "Anarchy 
        in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen."

        Although the Sex Pistols shape the beginning and 
        the end of the story, Lipstick Traces is not a book 
        about music; it is about a common voice, discovered 
        and transmitted in many forms. Working from scores 
        of previously unexamined and untranslated essays, 
        manifestos, and filmscripts, from old photographs, 
        dada sound poetry, punk songs, collages, and 
        classic texts from Marx to Henri Lefebvre, Marcus 
        takes us deep behind the acknowledged events of 
        our era, into a hidden tradition of moments that 
        would seem imaginary except for the fact that they 
        are real: a tradition of shared utopias, solitary 
        refusals, impossible demands, and unexplained 
        disappearances. Written with grace and force, 
        humor and an insistent sense of tragedy and 
        danger, Lipstick Traces tells a story as disruptive 
        and compelling as the century itself.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MARLIP.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAVlRoGW5wc

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
 
   bekah:
   "Where working folks defend their rights
   It's there you'll find Joe Hill...
   Alive as you and me."
 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6SMAJQW8Y
 
   Dave Monroe:
   I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night
 
   I dreamed I saw Phil Ochs last night
   Alive as you and meSays I to Phil "You're ten years dead"
   "I never died" says he
   "I never died" says he. . . .

   http://www.billybragg.co.uk/releases/albums/internationale/inter2.html