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Magazine Sections + Fashion + Art & Design + Travel + Food + Culture * Sports Sections + Beijing 2022 Olympics + MLB + NBA + NFL + Golf + Tennis + Soccer Columns + Jason Gay Search [ ]Search BEST OF Books & Arts in Review Books to Read This SpringBest New Movies & ShowsBest Books of March 'WeCrashed' Review7 Books on Ukraine & RussiaBest Books of 2021 Share * Facebook * Twitter * LinkedIn * Copy Link * Books & Arts * Books * Bookshelf 'Real Life Rock' Review: Finding Treasure in Music's Basement In his unpredictable spin on the 'Top 10' list, Greil Marcus searches the depths of American culture for fragments of beauty. By David Kirby April 29, 2022 10:46 am ET Where to begin? Anywhere, really. How about the Supreme Court case of Troxel v. Granville, which deals with the visitation rights of grandparents, and particularly the television coverage on Jan. 12, 2000, much of which featured one of the plaintiffs, "a bald, stocky, tight-lipped man in glasses" named Gary Troxel? Then age 60, Mr. Troxel had formed a vocal trio in 1958 called the Fleetwoods, whose "Come Softly to Me" and "Mr. Blue" topped the pop charts in both the U.S. and England. His son had killed himself in 1993, and Mr. Troxel and his wife would go on to lose their bid to gain access to the two grandchildren, who were being raised by their mother. On television, wrote Greil Marcus in his "Real Life Rock" column from later that month, Mr. Troxel looked bitter, "as if he had settled all questions in his heart and knew no one would ever feel as he did, as if he had nothing to say to anyone." He sets off that bleak moment against Charles Taylor's memory of Mr. Troxel onstage five years earlier at an Olympia, Wash., oldies concert: a "wonderful" performer "for whom none of the uncertainty of those songs had ever been settled." That's most of an entry in a 10-item list by Mr. Marcus that appeared on Jan. 24, 2000, on the website Salon. Together, his 2015 collection "Real Life Rock"and the just-released "More Real Life Rock" contain upward of 3,000 such lists, each a column that Mr. Marcus wrote between 1986 and 2021. The "Real Life Rock" column appeared first in the Village Voice; later it ran in a succession of other venues--including Artforum, Interview, Pitchfork and the Los Angeles Review of Books--as Mr. Marcus went from one to another on an editor's whim or his own. Each column is 700 words, give or take, and each itemized list includes everything in music, TV, radio, politics and advertising, together with overheard comments and accidental encounters with both the celebrated and the unknown, that Mr. Marcus found worth mentioning because it was quirky or notable or, as in the above case, both. To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In [wsj-logo-b] Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options Resume Subscription We are delighted that you'd like to resume your subscription. 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