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Ellen Willis on Rock Music
Univ Of Minnesota Press
May 2011
On Sale: May 1, 2011
272 pages ISBN: 0816672830 EAN: 9780816672837 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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.
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