Crosstown Traffic Jimi Hendrix and Post-war Pop
- 15 Nov 2012
- 9780857867742
- £14.99
- 336 pp
- 129×198mm
- 15 Nov 2012
- 9780857868015
- £11.99
- 336 pp
In a few words
The best and most ambitious book about Jimi Hendrix, being reissued with a revised introduction on the 70th anniversary of Hendrix’s birth.
In a few words
The best and most ambitious book about Jimi Hendrix, being reissued with a new introduction on the 70th anniversary of Hendrix’s birth.
The artistry of this book matches that of its subject.
Nick Tosches
We've seen several biographies of Jimi Hendrix but Crosstown Traffic's thrust is considerably more ambitious . . . Murray's exploration of Hendrix's role as a black rocker in a practically all-white pop-music elite is as telling an examination of rock and race, and of tensions and prejudices behind the sixties peace-and-brotherhood facade, as popular music writing has seen. Crosstown Traffic is an important book and, in its range and clarity of thought, an exemplary one.
Robert Palmer
The artistry of this book matches that of its subject.
Nick Tosches
We've seen several biographies of Jimi Hendrix but Crosstown Traffic's thrust is considerably more ambitious . . . Murray's exploration of Hendrix's role as a black rocker in a practically all-white pop-music elite is as telling an examination of rock and race, and of tensions and prejudices behind the sixties peace-and-brotherhood facade, as popular music writing has seen. Crosstown Traffic is an important book and, in its range and clarity of thought, an exemplary one.
Robert Palmer
More about
the book
Jimi Hendrix ‘transgressed many boundaries; both arbitrary musical definitions separating blues and soul or jazz and rock, and also those fundamental divides between the archaic and the avant-garde, between individualist and collectivist philosophies,between blacks and whites, between America and Britain, between passive acquiescence and furious resistance,between lust for life and obsession with death.’ Charles Shaar Murray
Crosstown Traffic charts the routes Hendrix took to arrive at his ‘unique musical formulation’. The result is a bravura study of his art and life that has become established as the definitive work on ‘the most eloquent instrumentalist ever to work in rock.’
Winner of the Ralph Gleason Music Book Award on first publication, this brilliant and ambitious book, hailed as ‘the most compelling and literate essay on rock since Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train, is being reissued with an updated introduction.
More about
the book
Charles Shaar Murray once asked B.B. King if he considered Jimi Hendrix to be a bluesman. ‘I consider him to be a musician, a great, great musician.’
And Charles Shaar Murray has written the book that does justice to that accolade. It is more than a biography. The salient facts of Hendrix’s life are summarized but the book’s purpose is altogether of a higher order. Through a succession of wide-ranging, richly informed chapters the author describes Hendrix’s very individual journey ‘to the other side of town.’ As Charles Shaar Murray says, Hendrix ‘transgressed many boundaries; both arbitrary musical definitions separating blues and soul or jazz and rock, and also those fundamental divides between the archaic and the avant-garde, between individualist and collectivist philosophies, between blacks and whites, between America and Britain, between passive acquiescence and furious resistance, between lust for life and obsession with death.’ ‘Hendrix was Hendrix’ it has been said. Charles Shaar Murray demonstrates the truth of this, compellingly elucidating the ‘unique musical formulation’ that was Hendrix’s art.
Mouthwatering stuff for any serious Jimi Hendrix fan . . . Murray is certainly the first writer to fully portray the ways in which Hendrix shaped the future in which we now live, from hard rock to funk to jazz. Crosstown Traffic also stands as the best layman's history ot the electric guitar I've ever come across.
Dave Marsh
Murray goes so far inside the myth that it dissolves. What is left is a man pursuing hiw own destiny, piece by piece, day by day.
Greil Marcus
Mouthwatering stuff for any serious Jimi Hendrix fan . . . Murray is certainly the first writer to fully portray the ways in which Hendrix shaped the future in which we now live, from hard rock to funk to jazz. Crosstown Traffic also stands as the best layman's history ot the electric guitar I've ever come across.
Dave Marsh
Murray goes so far inside the myth that it dissolves. What is left is a man pursuing hiw own destiny, piece by piece, day by day.
Greil Marcus
