Reggie Nadelson had to wait on line in East Berlin before owning up that the West had it right and the East had it wrong? Okay, seeing for oneself is believing but that was taking things to extremes.

"Comrade Rockstar" was first published in 1991. Your reviewer seems oblivious to this fact. If she's not, she doesn't share it with the reader. Certainly, for those of us already interested in Dean Reed, it would have been useful to know at least whether this is a simple reprint or a revised edition containing some new material. And those who have not come across perhaps deserve to be informed that Nagelson's book is 15 years old.

It's actually quite a mediocre piece of writing, despite much effective research. Nagelson's homilies about East and West are tired old stuff, and her understanding of how popular music functioned in the communist world is inadequate at best.

The mythical cowboy ethic that reduces complicated human interaction to good guys and bad guys has outlived its usefulness. And it wasn't even all that useful for real cowboys, I don't imagine, except the mythical kind. I believe that the only time it was useful on any kind of regular basis was when people were still hunting and gathering and had not time or security for anything more complicated. It served them. It's very similar to the individual who uses methods that worked as a child, but only impedes the adult.

And war, it's useful on the battlefield.

How educated people can still talk about the former Soviet Union as an example of socialism is beyond me. It was another form of capitalism. A kind that failed. And for the West to claim no responsibility for the horrible excesses of the Soviet Block kind of explains the record low placement of US students on testing in a nutshell.

I imagine Reed's talk w/Arafat was practically the raison d'etre for this review (which might explain why it's after 15 years). But the only irony I sense is that it's the Zionists who strive to paint all Jews w/one brush.

>Nadelson is fully aware of her own political biases and misgivings.

I wonder if Ms. Goldberg is.

I spent the summer of 1975 in the Soviet Union. I spoke Russian and spent a lot of time wandering around talking to people (Soviet surveillance didn't seem to apply to a 15 year old boy from Alaska). I was desperate to hear any kind of rock or pop, and spent a lot of time listening to whatever music I would find. I never, ever heard of Dean Reed from anyone, nor ever on the radio. Everyone just wanted the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and maybe a little Black Sabbath. So I'm inclined to believe that Reed's "superstardom" existed primarily in the minds of the culture apparatchiks, and that, at least in the Soviet Union, he was not nearly as big a star as the write up would lead people to believe.

Why am I not surprised?

By the way, Dean, I've listened to Johnny Cash, I've seen Johnny Cash, I've read Johnny Cash. You're no Johnny Cash, even as metaphor. So shut the fuck up you lameass pretender. You fooled a moron on a slow news day. Go write a song about it. Not that anyone will ever hear it.

Yes, he's no Johnny Cash, but he was popular in the 60s. I still remember the vinyl called something like Songs of Comintern that had various songs by what was called foreign Communists. One was Reed's song "Elizabeth" (another by Victor Jara). If I had to compare him to any American singer (in terms of popularity & probably appeal), it would be Ricky Nelson. And oh yeah, I didn't "visit" Soviet Union: I lived there.