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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Tonight! Greil Marcus: More Punk Rock Than John Lydon

Posted by Mark Lore on Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 6:46 AM

Nerds unite! Yes, I know Public Image Limited is playing tonight at the Crystal Ballroom at 35 bucks a ticket (unless, of course, you were part of the lucky bunch that grabbed a free one yesterday), but let me just say this—it's way more punk rock to go to a book reading... especially a free one (aka sticking it to the man).

Greil Marcus has written for everyone from Rolling Stone (back when it mattered) and Creem (which has and always will matter) and the Village Voice (matters 74-79 percent of the time). He's one of the most interesting rock scribes of the past quarter-century—making some sort of political-socio connection to rock music—and has written a few books on the subject, most notably "Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes" and "Ranters & Crowd Pleasers," which looks at pop in punk rock from 1977 to 1992 (PiL?!).

Marcus currently writes for The Believer, and has just completed his new book "When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison" in which he dissects Morrison's work from the 1970 bootleg Caledonia Soul Music to his more recent live gigs. His book reading tonight should be an interesting discussion on Morrison as well as pop culture and music writing in general.

Greil Marcus will be at Powells Books (Burnside location) tonight at 7:30 p.m.