Declare Regarding Books Out of the Vinyl Deeps: On Rock Music
| Title | : | Out of the Vinyl Deeps: On Rock Music |
| Author | : | Ellen Willis |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 234 pages |
| Published | : | May 1st 2011 by Univ Of Minnesota Press (first published April 6th 2011) |
| Categories | : | Music. Nonfiction. Writing. Essays. Culture. Pop Culture. Criticism. Art |
Ellen Willis
Paperback | Pages: 234 pages Rating: 3.95 | 819 Users | 88 Reviews
Representaion In Favor Of Books Out of the Vinyl Deeps: On Rock Music
In 1968, the New Yorker hired Ellen Willis as its first popular music critic. Her column, Rock, Etc., ran for seven years and established Willis as a leader in cultural commentary and a pioneer in the nascent and otherwise male-dominated field of rock criticism. As a writer for a magazine with a circulation of nearly half a million, Willis was also the country’s most widely read rock critic. With a voice at once sharp, thoughtful, and ecstatic, she covered a wide range of artists—Bob Dylan, The Who, Van Morrison, Elvis Presley, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joni Mitchell, the Velvet Underground, Sam and Dave, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Wonder—assessing their albums and performances not only on their originality, musicianship, and cultural impact but also in terms of how they made her feel.Because Willis stopped writing about music in the early 1980s—when, she felt, rock ’n’ roll had lost its political edge—her significant contribution to the history and reception of rock music has been overshadowed by contemporary music critics like Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, and Dave Marsh. Out of the Vinyl Deeps collects for the first time Willis’s Rock, Etc. columns and her other writings about popular music from this period (includingliner notes for works by Lou Reed and Janis Joplin) and reasserts her rightful place in rock music criticism.
More than simply setting the record straight, Out of the Vinyl Deeps reintroduces Willis’s singular approach and style—her use of music to comment on broader social and political issues, critical acuity, vivid prose, against-the-grain opinions, and distinctly female (and feminist) perspective—to a new generation of readers. Featuring essays by the New Yorker’s current popular music critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, and cultural critics Daphne Carr and Evie Nagy, this volume also provides a lively and still relevant account of rock music during, arguably, its most innovative period.
Mention Books During Out of the Vinyl Deeps: On Rock Music
| ISBN: | 0816672830 (ISBN13: 9780816672837) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Criticism (2011) |
Rating Regarding Books Out of the Vinyl Deeps: On Rock Music
Ratings: 3.95 From 819 Users | 88 ReviewsComment On Regarding Books Out of the Vinyl Deeps: On Rock Music
Ellen Willis wrote most of these reviews/essays when the vinyl long playing record was the industry standard. This seems the right moment to go back and check out what she was saying.It has been a delight reading Willis' reviews because she combines a real enthusiasm for her corner of the music world with some deep insight into the artists and their efforts. She came along at the right time in the right place, New York City. She created the position of pop music critic for The New Yorker (whereA truly seminal collection of an excellent rock / pop culture writer that has criminally flown under the radar for far too long. Willis should be mentioned in the same sentences as every other critic who helped shape the form of rock music writing at its genesis. I feel like an idiot for taking this long to investigate the writing of someone who up until now has largely been treated as a footnote when they are actually a crucial part of the foundation of what we know as music writing today.
Willis is a sharp writer and this book is a lot of fun. And it's not just rock criticism as we today understand it; since this is the 60's, that magical time when music, art, drugs, culture and politics were all swirled together into one confusing, thrilling, heady mix, it's more like a devastatingly lucid, moment by moment, on-the-scene chronicle of the times. I particularly like the Bob Dylan piece that kicks things off, and it's hard to find any rock criticism better than her tough minded
Ellen Willis was The New Yorker's first rock music critic. Along with her contemporaries Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, and Griel Marcus, Willis showed the intelligensia that rock music was worthy of the same sophisticated criticism and analysis as art and literature. After the mid-70's, Willis' writing focused more on feminism and politics, so she never became the rock writer emeritus like Marcus or Christgau, but her early columns for the New Yorker forever shaped our understanding of Bob
I had a helluva time getting through this book. If it had been fiction, it would have been bashed against the wall before page 80. But because it's an essay collection, subdivided into sections entitled "The World-Class Critic," "The Adoring Fan," "The Sixties Child," "The Feminist," "The Navigator," and "The Sociologist," with the essays grouped around those themes, I thought, well, I'll just go on. Surely it'll get better.Sadly, it really didn't. Ellen Willis was a pioneering female rock
Before reading this book, I was fairly certain Ellen Willis was my favorite music critic, and now, having experienced her work in the genre in concentrated form, I can say that, groundbreaking as it may be, she isn't. For one thing, she isn't a music critic at all -- she's a rock critic (which she would surely cop to). Her tastes, filtered through the folk precociousness of her adolescence, with its emphasis on MEANING, is as status quo as her politics were radical -- her Bible is Stones, Dylan,
I read a few glowing reviews about this book so I decided to give it a go. I don't read a lot of music criticism so I was curious about the first female rock critic and I was curious about rock writing in general. It wasn't a badly written book, it just didn't interest me as much as I thought it would.The essays are from the 1970's so they focus on 70's rock bands - Bob Dyaln, Velvet Underground, Mot the Hoople, etc. Well, I was born in the late 70's but grew up in the 80's and 90's. Willis was
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