Stranded gave us 20 rock critics (some dedicated, some dropping in from across the hall) expounding on what one album they’d take to a desert island, and why. The book stuck to twentieth-century American music of, before or alongside the “rock and roll” found in the title. It’s reprinted this time around from the last edition’s uncorrected film, meaning editor Greil Marcus still digs something called the “Sleater-Kinny Band.” Twenty-eight years later Phil Freeman facilitates, for Marooned, 20 more, usually younger, rock (and otherwise) critics, same m.o. So, what’s the biggest quake shake after 28? Metal makes this world spin—three Marooned writers praise it and two others were supposed to. The 20-count for each volume allows rough past/present parallels: Lester Bangs on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks = Scott Seward on Divine Styler’s Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light (a spiritual crisis and a slavish dedication to the album sound as salve, although Seward indicts only himself, not humanity). Langdon Winner on Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica = Anthony Miccio on Dio’s Anthology (frankly confessing that one doesn’t want reminders, on a desert island, of what one’s missing). Dave Marsh on Onan’s Greatest Hits and/or Ed Ward on the “5” Royales’ Dedicated To You = Ian Christe on Iron Maiden’s Killers (throw away the rule book to construct, in Marsh’s case, a fake album of real masturbation odes, or in Ward’s, a work of short fiction—although Christe doesn’t bother with plausibility, and evinces an astounding indifference to masturbation). Still, nothing in Marooned synchs to Nick Tosches’ “Prologue: The Sea’s Endless, Awful Rhythm & Me Without Even a Dirty Picture.” That piece cost Stranded its first publisher by way of eight words (“Fuck me til blood runs down my leg”) and essays the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers in that same sense that The Iliad essayed kids fighting in a cat-crap saturated sandbox.

Da Capo Press, $16.95