# 18 - The Original Blogger
With blogging all the rage these days (see the New York Times Magazine's cover story for September 26 -- you'll need to register, and possibly pay, to view it), I've been thinking about the concept of blogging before the internet. What presaged this form of commentary?
There were gossip columns and broadsides of course, soapbox preachers and diarists, but the column that came to mind (I'm sure there are others) is Greil Marcus's "Real Life Rock Top Ten," now on hiatus from the Minneapolis alterna-weekly City Pages.
Previously published in Salon, Artforum, and the Village Voice, the "Real Life Rock Top Ten" contains Marcus's gnostic pronouncements on the ephemera of life, most especially on the mass-mediated driftwood of popular culture and politics. His quick updates from the mind of one observant foreshadowed the kind of missives and reports that now dominate the "blogosphere." May the column live again soon.
04 October 2004