Feb 22 2012
∞
“ Hearing things like ‘Wake Up’ by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats’ ‘In Love’ – that was something I wasn’t prepared for. I couldn’t hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn’t want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness. Records that were the sound of somebody – more often than not, a she – speaking with a voice that had never been heard before. Somebody who’d never had the nerve to speak up before. I felt: ‘I wanna meet these people.’ Which is unusual for me: I don’t usually want to meet the people who are making music that I like. But they sounded interesting.
— Greil Marcus on post-punk in an interview with Simon Reynolds. So, of course it’s wonderful. I got Marcus’ collection on that era, Ranters & Crowd Pleasers, as a gift in high school, and it introduced me to so much music — X, Essential Logic, even Gang of Four before their big revival. His special talent has always been to convey enthusiasm without losing intellectual weight. I had to hear the bands he described, and I had to hear them now.
