Greil Marcus has been writing his Real Life Rock Top 10 lists for 30 years through a variety of venues: New West, the Village Voice, ArtForum, Salon, City Pages, and, most recently, The Believer. Cranky ("Aren't tribute albums horrible...") or celebratory (pop songs, TV shoes, live music), they are always fun to read. Now Yale University Press has published the lot in Real Life Rock. Happy New Year fellow listophiles!Here's #10 from a December 1986 column from the Village Voice that shows some love for a WFMU fanzine and a slant six:
10. WFMU-FM, Lowest Common Denominator, Fall ’86 (Upsala College, Fast Orange, New Jersey 07019)
Fanzine from the left-side dial spot (91.1) already described in these pages as “The #1 Choice of Lowlife Scum.” There’s an homage to Bobby Sherman, a poem about Vince Everett (Elvis in Jailhouse Rock), serious analysis of pop trends, and, completing our survey of contemporary religion, a summation of what it means to live in a world where God is dead, “JEAN-PAUL SARTRE FOR DODGE DARTRE,” a flyer apparently scavenged from a telephone pole in Seattle, which plumbs the black hole of existential vertigo even better than Sartre: “In my journey to the end of the night, I must rely not only on dialectical paths of reason. I must have a good solid automobile, one that eschews the futile trappings of worldly ennui and asks only for the most basic maintenance. My Dodge Dartre offers me this basic solace, and as interior parts fall off I am struck by the realization of their pointlessness. I may not know if the window is up or down. It is of no consequence.”
