
The world needs more music critics like Charles Shaar Murray. Looking forward to the release of Jimi Hendrix's Valleys of Neptune (yes, a new Hendrix album!), I've been reading Murray's Crosstown Traffic . It's brilliant writing. Hendrix is the book's centerpiece, but there's a load to learn here for anyone who likes books about music. The subtitle of its best chapter yet asks, "So was Jimi Hendrix a sexist pig or what?" Murray argues that " the sexuality expressed through the blues gradually mutated into the [...]