The most compelling art form to emerge from the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, rock & roll stands in an edgy relationship with its own mythology, its own musicological history and the broader culture in which it plays a part. In Present Tense, Anthony DeCurtis brings together writers from a wide variety of fields to explore how rock & roll is made, consumed, and experienced in our time.
In this collection, Greil Marcus creates a collage of words and pictures that evokes and explores Elvis Presley's grisly fate as an American cultural image, while Robert Palmer tells the gripping tale of the origins and meanings of the electric guitar. Rap music, MTV, and the issue of gender identity in the work of Bruce Springsteen all undergo thorough examination; rock & roll's complex relationship with the forces of censorship gets a remarkably fresh reading; and the mainstreaming of rock & roll in the 1980s is detailed and analyzed. And, in an interview with Laurie Anderson and an essay by Atlanta musician Jeff Calder, the artists speak for themselves.
Contributors. Jeff Calder, Anthony DeCurtis, Mark Dery, Paul Evans, Glenn Gass, Trent Hill, Michael Jarrett, Alan Light, Greil Marcus, Robert Palmer, Robert B. Ray, Dan Rubey, David R. Shumway, Martha Nell Smith, Paul Smith
- Contents
- Preface
- The Eighties
- The Church of the Sonic Guitar
- The Enemy Within: Censorship in Rock Music in the 1950s
- A Corpse in Your Mouth: Adventures of a Metaphor, or Modern Cannibalism
- Why Don’t We Do It in the Classroom?
- Playing for England
- Rock & Roll as a Cultural Practice
- Tracking
- Signposts on the Road to Nowhere: Laurie Anderson’s Crisis of Meaning
- Concerning the Progress of Rock & Roll
- Los Angeles, 1999
- Sexual Mobilities in Bruce Springsteen: Performance as Commentary
- About a Salary or Reality?—Rap’s Recurrent Conflict
- Voguing at the Carnival: Desire and Pleasure on MTV
- Living by Night in the Land of Opportunity: Observations on Life in a Rock & Roll Band
- Index
- Notes on Contributors
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Audio
Adobe DRM
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