Armond White is film critic for the New York Press and author
of The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World
(Overlook) and Rebel for the Hell of It: The Art-Life of Tupac
Shakur (Thunder's Mouth).
Pop music's eternal appeal can be found in one instance out of many:
"This Magic Moment," a 1960 song by The Drifters.
Only the joy of capitalist expectation could move a pre-Reagan-born
American to utter the line "civil rights is dead," let alone write a
book devoted to that proposition.


