Real Life Rock by Greil Marcus Page A

fact, which Krawiec gets across on every page: the country has established enclaves of material and spiritual deprivation—black holes of possibility—that are so absolute pop messages cannot enter them, save as the tawdry beats against which a woman without money stands before a roomful of drunks and takes off her clothes.
    8
San Francisco Chronicle:
Entertainment listing, March 1 “Reno, El Dorado Hotel: Bill Haley and the Comets.”
Ars brevis, vita longa?
    9 Crime Story, (NBC, February 27) “Paulie,” says mob boss Ray Luca (a pompadoured Elvis-from-hell) to his gofer/hitman, “what you lack in intelligence, you make up in stupidity.” As this show was rock ’n’ roll from its Del Shannon theme song to its buried, fannish asides (“Let’s
all
get Dixie fried,” crows another Luca goon after a good bombing), that line is a perfect example of a form revealing its spirit.
    10 Andrew Britton, “Blissing Out—The Politics of Reaganite Entertainment” (
Movie
31/32) After defining the hegemonic significance of two mystifications—the everyday notion that a work of popular culture can be “just entertainment,” and the “academic fiction” of autonomous textuality—Britton goes on, through more than 30,000 words, to investigate the American movies of the last several years as a reactionary project that has implicated its audience—gained its assent—in ways far more complex than the concurrent political project the cultural version at once trivializes and deepens. The extraordinary weight and determination of Britton’s essay has a side effect: the exposure of the impoverishment of what, in every realm of discourse, music no less than movies, politics no less than music, passes for criticism in the pages you and I read and write.
    MAY 5, 1987
    1 Michelob TV commercial, “I Move Better in the Night” (Needham Harper/Jeremiah Chechik, director) In this best of all possible music videos, every situation is infinitesimally developed, and then left completely open. A blond woman turns her head after kissing her boyfriend; there’s a blithe, irreducibly autonomous sensuality in her face that will never have anything to do with beer. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with her boyfriend.
    2 Slits, “New Town,” from
The Peel Sessions
(Strange Fruit, EP, UK, 1977) Cute—until you realize it’s about heroin.
    3 Oingo Boingo, “Not My Slave” (MCA) Pointless old “new wave” group finally devolves into the new Raspberries. I guess it was worth the wait.
    4 77’s, “I Can’t Get Over It” (Island) Faceless: words and music just this side of absolutely nothing, but the band finds a tough groove, and the guitarist knows just what to do with it, and what not to.
    5 Nike TV commercial, “Revolution” (Beatles/Wieden & Kennedy) “Poetic justic,” says Howard Hampton. “The song’s essential mealiness of mouth comes home to roost.” Licensing by Michael Jackson, with the approval of Yoko, who says (by permission of Michael Jackson), “You know it’s gonna be/Alright.”
    6 Fleetwood Mac,
Tango in the Night
(Warner Bros.) Some people find this kind of dull, but it’s saving dentists millions on novocaine, the American Association of Anesthesiologists is sponsoring the tour, and Wizard won a furious bidding war for the air freshener rights—in a month or so, when you spray your room with “Evergreen” or “Floral,” you’ll hear FM’s new melodies at the very same time. Of course, some people think they already do.
    7 Joyce Milman and Mark Moses, “You Read It Here April First” (
Boston Phoenix
, April 3) Gossip columns are boring because they try to make you care about what boring people actually do. The one-step-beyond approach turns up the real inside dope, as in this notably sustained