Edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz
Barnes & Noble link
This was a book I wasn't sure how to approach when it came time to finally review it. At first, I abandoned the idea of doing this, since it is the first book of its kind that I ever reviewed (here or anywhere else). But after some consideration, the review will go on. This unsung lady of rock journalism shall not go ignored any longer! With a little help from her friends (and daughter too), the late Ellen Willis gets a fitting tribute in this collection of her greatest hits in Out of the Vinyl Deeps.
After writing and publishing one essay (on Bob Dylan, how random), Willis gets the position of popular music critic at The New Yorker. But she wasn't going to write just about the good and the bad of music. She was gonna analyze the hell out of it. But not because she wanted to stand out or make her male peers feel her reckoning (though she herself was a staunch feminist). It was her speaking, her telling the readers how she thought about it all. She made the readers feel like they were talking to a friend that knew her stuff, spreading her knowledge to those unsure if the new Creedence Clearwater Revival album was worth getting.
Like any critic, she had her way of doing things and how she perceived even the most popular and beloved. Her topics were all over the place, in the best way possible. They ranged from a list of lyrics that summed up the seventies ("The Decade in Rock Lyrics") to a mini-novel praise on the Velvet Underground's third album and why it was an ideal desert disc ("The Velvet Underground"). There were times of disagreement of opinion (she called Steve Miller Band "third-rate honky-tonk") but moments of camaraderie. Who else can confess to dancing to Creedence Clearwater Revival and also say she prefers them over the Rolling Stones?
She asks the hard questions (read the entire "Feminist" chapter not only for its amazing essays, but to see intelligent discussion on being feminist and a rock-n-roll fan), including how music affects a person:
Around the same time I was beginning to emerge from a confusing and depressing period in my life. I had a problem I needed to face, a painful and scary choice to make, and I had been refusing to think about it. In such circumstances, music was my enemy. It had a way of foiling my attempts at evasion; when I was least prepared, some line or riff or vocal nuance would invariably confront me with whatever I was struggling to repress. And so I had simply stopped listening. I told myself that the trouble was I was tired of old music, and there was no new music that excited me. I wondered if I was coming to the end of an era - was rock and roll no longer going to be important in my life?
-from "Beginning to See the Light", pages 149-150 in the book
We think listening to music can be an escape from all the troubles. Nope. Willis points out otherwise. Music will always remind you of life. Just like the greatest of fiction.
Ellen Willis has been an inspiration to many of today's biggest rock critics, like Ann Powers and Rob Sheffield. She ended her time as a premier rock critic way too soon (she later quit and taught journalism in New York City). Willis' work has been unleashed onto a new generation of critics and audiophiles, those who should wisely buy her other works to learn more. Even in a world now where everyone's a critic (har-har), there are ways you can stand out and be unforgettable. She made it look easy. And it probably is.
COPYRIGHT NOTE: all bold quotes are from the novel and were written by the author herself. Those words are not my own.
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