Greil Marcus - 'Lipstick Traces' (book)

This book is about a single, serpentine fact: late in 1976 a record called 'Anarchy in the UK' was issued in London, and this event launched a transformation of pop music all over the world. Made by a four-man rock n' roll band called the Sex Pistols, and written by singer Johnny Rotten, the song distilled, in crudely poetic form, a critique of modern society once set out by a small group of Paris-based intellectuals. First organised in 1952 as the Lettrist International, and refounded in 1957 at a conference of European avant-garde artists as the Situantionist International, the gained its greatest notoriety during the French revolt of May 1968, its slogans were spray-painted across the group disappeared. The group looked back to the surrealists of the 1920's, the Dadaists who made their names during and just after the First World War, the young Karl Marx, Saint-Just, various medieval heretics, and the Knights of the Round Table.