It's to the best of our knowledge from PRX.

I'm Doug Gordon, sitting in for Anne Strange Hamps.

Today, who needs critics?

I left my hometown of Seattle and moved to San Francisco when I was 19.

Music critic Anne Powers.

Train a ride.

16. Coach, long, phone. powers. Sometime around that time around that time, I found a book,

and it was called Mystery Train by the writer Greil Marcus.

And I read it and something opened up.

It had become a key that unlocked a door.

It showed me that I could go to deep places

while focusing on the music I loved.

I was an undergraduate at San Francisco State at the time, and I so loved this book that I actually did a project.

I was looking at Elvis Presley and thinking about how his story was connected to the ancient tale of Dionysus,

the god of excess and transformation.

I wrote this paper, I think I got an A, whatever, but I actually put it in a manila

envelope with a mixtape I'd made of Elvis songs that I thought proved my theory.

Well, I was too embarrassed. I never sent it.

I did later meet Grill and over the years we've become great friends,

but I still haven't given him that envelope.

Some revelations are best kept to oneself.

That's MPR Music's critic and author and powers.

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