Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This is a secret history of modern times, told by way of what conventional history tries to exclude. Lipstick Traces tells a story as disruptive and compelling as the century itself. Hip, metaphorical and allusive...--Gail Caldwell, Boston Sunday Globe. Full-color illustrations and halftones.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Prologue Version One: The Last Sex Pistols Concert Version Two
• A Secret History
• Of A Time That Passed Faces Legends of Freedom
• The Art of Yesterday's Crash
• The Crash of Yesterday's Art
• The Assault on Notre-Dame
• The Attack on Charlie Chaplin Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette)
• Epilogue Works
• Cited Sources and Credits
• Acknowledgments
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Acclaimed rock reviewer/author Marcus ( Mystery Train , LJ 4/1/75) offers up a fascinating thesis: that modern consciousness is to a great extent shaped by events or documents ``insignificant'' of themselves but collectively very important indeed, perhaps even definitive. While spending much of its time on the impact of the Sex Pistols, this is not purely a ``rock-music'' book--along the way one encounters various ranters, Dadaists, nihilists, whatever--even Theodore Dreiser. If it lacks the rigor demanded of academic historiography, Marcus's book is still great popular culture, and academic historians would do well to be interested. Meanwhile, the cross-referential treatment gives a seeming (at least) validity that sheer facts wouldn't to the idea of a ``secret history'' that permeates unobtrusively and yields more meaning than many would like to believe.-- Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Marcus ( Mystery Train ) believes that rock songs of groups like the Sex Pistols filter into mass consciousness and subtly influence everyday speech and thought. His underlying premise is that pop culture, like radical protest, is capable of altering history. He traces a common thread presumed to link the rebelliousness of punk rockers, medieval religious heretics, the Dada antics of Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball, the films of the anarchist group Situationist International and the anti-bourgeois ravings and graffiti of the lettrist movement in post-war Paris. Marcus contrasts what he sees as the spurious pop revolt of Michael Jackson with Elvis Presley and the Beatles, ``who raised the possibility of living in a new way.'' This deliberately meandering tour of countercultural high and low roads is illustrated with rock posters and handbills, news clippings, photographs, protest art. In this version of history, Little Richard's glossolalia has direct ties to the pre-Christian Essenes. Rock critic Marcus is consistently entertaining even if he doesn't prove his thesis. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

As a study of punk rock, Dadaism since WW II, and movements such as Internationale Situationniste and Lettriste Internationale, Marcus's book is a potpourri of insights and information. Marcus notes that the violence and hatred felt by many were reflected in groups such as Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols. For political, historical, cultural, and humanistic reasons, Lipstick Traces will find itself cited for years to come. Emotional despair is often a hidden element driving the success of perfomers such as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, or Sex Pistols. This drive is exposed here and given context. Well annotated, with a copious bibliography, this work is a must for every scholarly and large community library that claims to note the immediacy of today's mass media world. -W. R. Martin, Michigan State University

Booklist Review

Marcus' Mystery Train [BKL O 15 75] was a groundbreaking analysis that demonstrated rock music's importance in any definition of American culture. Here Marcus draws parallels between punk rock and earlier nihilist movements, some dating back to the Middle Ages. Scavenging the past, Marcus finds surprising connections between Johnny Rotten, Dadaism, and some medieval mystical and heretical movements, and he includes a lengthy discourse on obscure French cultural groups such as the Lettrists and the Situationists. All of these groups share certain unconventional practices and goals, some of which are deliberately passed on while others evolve by coincidence. It's almost as if these groups were all infected by some immortal and amoral ``free spirit.'' Marcus' writing is difficult though not scholarly, as he seems to uphold the belief of his subjects, i.e., ``to speak a language everyone can understand is to say nothing.'' Notes; to be indexed. -- Benjamin Segedin

Kirkus Book Review

The title here, taken from the 1962 hit lyrics ""Lipstick traces/On a cigarette,"" aptly sums up Marcus' (Village Voice columnist; Mystery Train, 1975) paradoxical project--which amounts to fashioning a text on the enduring aspects of the ""hidden history"" of modernism as revealed in that imprint of the ephemeral, pop music. Predicted on the thesis that any given ""groove"" is indicative of the pressing of its time upon the wax of collective sensibility--and that even one-chord wonders and bored teen-agers must say something, however incoherent, about both their parents and the society that produced them--this well-illustrated book is about "". . .the pop magic in which the connection of certain social facts with certain sounds creates irresistible symbols of the transformation of social reality."" Starting with the Sex Pistols and the 70's malaise they symbolized, Marcus traces a recta-musical social history that's informed both by Marxist aesthetics and political economy. Rather like those French annaliste histories devoted to explicating the structures of everyday life obscured by their familiarity, this is an excavation--a kind of cultural archeology of buried evidence of obscured affinities and archetypes from the Paris Commune Revival of May 1968 back through the Situationist International of the 1950's, the surrealists of the 30's and 40's, dada (often thought of as proto-punk), Marx, various medieval heretics, and even the Knights of the Round Table. Marcus deftly orchestrates what might have been a cacophony of voices into a coherent context, thus acquitting himself honorably in his critical function of being the instrument, podium, and conductor ""of a new conversation. . .to lead speakers and listeners unaware of each other's existence to talk to one another."" Ratified but provocative, intriguing, and hip sociocultural analysis. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Greil Marcus is the author of "Invisible Republic," "Dead Elvis," "Lipstick Traces," & "Mystery Train." His pieces have appeared in a wide range of publications, including "Artforum," "Interview," "The New Yorker," "The New York Times," & "Esquire." He will be teaching at Princeton & Berkeley in fall 2000.

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