Beginning To See The Light (in Re: Ellen Willis)
... And so I had simply stopped listening. I told myself that the trouble was I was tired of old music, and there was no new music that excited me. I wondered if I were coming to the end of an era—was rock and roll no longer going to be important in my life? Then I gave up trying to censor my thoughts. Immediately there were plenty of records I needed to hear: Blood on the Tracks ; Loaded ; Heat Treatment and Howlin’ Wind ; Astral Weeks ; Exile on Main St. ; The Bessie Smith Story, Volume 4 ... (Ellen Willis, Village Voice, 1977) Willis was writing about personal crisis as much as about lack of interest in current music, and about how punk rock, particularly The Sex Pistols energized and reinvigorated her passion. But it is the first couple sentences that resonate so strongly for me. I became a passionate rock and roll fan in my late teens. With rock books and rock writers such as Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau et al leading the way, I became obsessed e