- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; 2nd Revised edition edition (21 May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571207499
- ISBN-13: 978-0571207497
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.6 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 577,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"'Murray goes so far inside the myth that it dissolves. What is left is a man pursuing his own destiny piece by piece, day by day.' Greil Marcus"
Product Description
On original publication in 1989, Crosstown Traffic was immediately hailed as the ultimate book on Hendrix and his extraordinary musical legacy. Fully updated with new material, Charles Shaar Murray's awesome examination of Hendrix's influence on the culture has, if anything, grown in stature with the intervening years. '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 of the electric guitar I've ever come across.' Dave Marsh
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astounding,
By aggy_fox@yahoo.co.uk (Leicester, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-war Pop (Paperback)
This Biography of Jimi Hendix's Life is set against the backdrop of the music scene at the time of his work. Murray has a fantasitc writing style and seperates differing aspects of Hendrixs music and compares them with the music of his contempararies. It's not so much a life story of Hendrix I am sure there are hundreds of those Murray takes a stance of examining the music of Hendrix and post war pop. It was an entertaining and insightful read and anyone who is interested in popular music or Hendrix should buy this book.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Book,
By
This review is from: Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-war Pop (Paperback)
This is easily one of the best books on Hendrix, and in fact music, that you'll find.
The book really puts Hendrix' music in context and shows his influences, which are dealt with in discrete chapters, eg, blues, jazz, sex. The book is partly a biography, but is better than that because it emphasises that the music is the most important thing about Jimi Hendrix. As other reviewers have said, there are so many great musicians and bands mentioned in the book that you'll want to check them out. However, a word of caution if you feel like exploring any pre-Experience Hendrix: not only are most of the Curtis Knight and Lonnie Youngblood records mediocre at best, but there are many fakes, re-named but identical tracks, 'remixes' and other rip-offs for the unwary. Even the author trips up here, with a couple of raves about some songs on which Jimi doesn't even appear. Murray loves Jimi's music, and this comes across well; he's also sensible enough to note that not everything Jimi did was brilliant. The book is a really good read and a bargain, highly recommended.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, but too much fuss about race...,
This review is from: Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-war Pop (Paperback)
This was an interesting read for almost start to finish, and the analyses were generally thought-provoking and at times spot on. But I have one major qualm with the book: absolutely everything is interpreted in terms of race. I understand the intial purpose of setting Hendrix in the black tradition of music, and Murray does a fine job in that. The chapter on jazz was particularly fascinating. The r&b and blues background of Hendrix is obvious (the former from his history as a musician and the latter just from listening to "Red House"), but few authors have realized the amount of influence Hendrix drew from jazz (like Roland Kirk). His influence on jazz-rock fusion is of course well known but that's only half the story.
So that part is done commendably in the book: Hendrix's music was not separate from the tradition of black music, and the "honorary white" position attributed to him is laughable and, yes, more than a bit racist. But Murray doesn't stop there. He just has to go on to play down ALL white elements in Jimi's music. Going from "honorary white" to "nothing white" is just as false a conclusion. He does mention the influence of Dylan on Hendrix' lyrics a couple of times, but that would certainly have warranted a chapter of its own. Aside from a couple of blues songs, all of Jimi's lyrics are straight from the folkie-rock tradition - mostly Dylan. And as far the music in concerned, Murray radically downplays the influence of Cream, Beatles, Zappa and others... The downplaying of white music goes into Murray's assessments of other musicians, as well...apparently no white blues or jazz player has managed to bring any feeling to his music. Ok, compare Robert Johnson to Clapton and that's the obvious conclusion. But I fail to see how Robert Cray is real blues while Stevie Ray Vaughan wasn't. Or how Mike Bloomfield was a soulless note-dropping machine (funny that Muddy Waters and Big Joe Williams didn't consider him one). From the post-Hendrix hard-rock bands only one receives Murray's acceptance: Living Colour (Vernon Reid gets to give dozens of quotes in the book). Hmmmm. Ok, in 1989 they might have seemed like a great new hope - and surely they were different from the juvenile fantasies of the Motley Crues of this world - but given the book's general tone, it's hard not to think of another reason for championing them... If only Murray would have been content to show Hendrix's roots in black music, this would have been a very good book. But he turned the whole thing into something of a racial conflict which makes it read very much, well, un-HENDRIX.
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