Crosstown Traffic

Jimi Hendrix ''transgressed many boundaries; both arbitrary musical definitions separating blues and soul or jazz and rock, and also those fundamental divides between the archaic and the avant-garde, between individualist and collectivist philosophies,between blacks and whites, between America and Britain, between passive acquiescence and furious resistance,between lust for life and obsession with death.'' Charles Shaar Murray Crosstown Traffic charts the routes Hendrix took to arrive at his ''unique musical formulation''. The result is a bravura study of his art and life that has become established as the definitive work on ''the most eloquent instrumentalist ever to work in rock.'' Winner of the Ralph Gleason Music Book Award on first publication, this brilliant and ambitious book, hailed as ''the most compelling and literate essay on rock since Greil Marcus'' Mystery Train, is being reissued with an updated introduction.