I love music books and annoy my wife with how many I consume per month. (She wants me to read fiction. Pish-posh.) The ones that play with format and provide multiple viewpoints are my favorites. I became a music journalist after spending my teenage years in a ska band; that alone taught me that music is complex, ever-evolving, and the technical is intrinsically tied to the personal. I approached my book with the same acknowledgment of diverse opinions and fierce emotional connection. I have devoted my life to loving and playing ska, and it seemed to be the only genre lacking a defender. The defender turned out to be me.
I wrote
In Defense of Ska: The Ska Now More Than Ever Edition
I think music is magic. Sometimes, it feels like reading about music deflates its inherent mystery. When I finished Dilla Time, it was like I had taken mushrooms and could see beat patterns with my mindās eye. Although a good portion of Dilla Time is biographical, the parts I love are the chapters explaining how rhythm works, and Charnas dives deep into this topic.
The biography portion strengthens those sections because Dilla fundamentally changed the rhythm of pop music. I read this book, and my understanding of rhythm completely changedāand I am a drummer! Plus, the mixed-media, multi-formatted content is such a delight. He even includes graphs. Who doesnāt enjoy a nice graph?
It's Dilla Time. Finally. Dilla Time is the story of the invention of a new kind of time, a new kind of sound, by the most influential music producer of the last twenty-five years, someone you may never have heard of: J. Dilla. He's revered by rappers and producers from Kanye West to Kendrick Lamar, and he worked with the likes of Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson-but Dilla himself never rose to mainstream fame, despite revolutionizing the way music sounds before his untimely death at the age of thirty-two.
In Dilla Time, Dan Charnas chronicles the life of J. Dilla,ā¦
I could easily recommend five Hanif Abdurraqib books. Still, I chose this one because his writing in this book is profoundly personal and emotional, revealing how his connection to their music helped him understand his identity and place in the world.
I found myself relating to his thought processes and relationship with music, especially because music helps me express all my hard-to-put-to-word feelings. Abdurraqib relays his love for Tribe with such poetic grace. I was already a fan of Tribe before reading the book. Now, I get choked up when I listen to some of their songs. Music is transformative.
A New York Times Best Seller 2019 National Book Award Longlist, Nonfiction 2019 Kirkus Book Prize Finalist, Nonfiction A February IndieNext Pick Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by Buzzfeed, Nylon, The A. V. Club, CBC Books, and The Rumpus, and a Winter's Most Anticipated Book by Vanity Fair and The Week Starred Reviews: Kirkus and Booklist "Warm, immediate and intensely personal."-New York Times
How does one pay homage to A Tribe Called Quest? The seminal rap group brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces such as The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. Seventeenā¦
In the bigoted milieu of 1945, six days after the official end of World War II, Bess Myerson, the daughter of poor Russian immigrants living in the Bronx, remarkably rises to become Miss America, the first āand to date onlyā Jewish woman to do so. At stake is a $5,000ā¦
I could tell you entire life stories based on what albums I was listening to when they happened, and thatās just what Marc Wasserman is doing with this bookāand heās chosen a damn fine album, the English Beatās Special Beat Service. Sure, he discusses the bandās cultural impact, but itās also about how Marc fell in love with the album and the band during a difficult time.
I love how the book weaves Marcās story with well-researched details. Maybe one day Iāll write a book about Quasiās Featuring Birds album, covering the period in my 20s when I was broke, destitute, and searching for meaning while delivering pizzas in Las Vegas.
Part Gen X memoir, and part English Beat oral history, the book takes a detailed look at the making of, response to, and influence their third album āSpecial Beat Serviceā had on young American fans like marc as well as musicians like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, Elvis Costello, and Pete Townshend of the Who. āSoul Salvationā includes a foreword by Jay Boberg, the president of I.R.S. Records who worked to break the band in America during 1982-83 and features extensively researched interviews, insights and anecdotes from band members, record company executives, music critics andā¦
I canāt see myself writing a detailed chronicle of a specific location and period without pulling my hair out. But Will Hermes did precisely that (well, not the hair-pulling-out part) by relating five crucial years in New York. It initially reads weird, maybe even slow, because he writes short intersecting snippets of music history.
Once I got deeper into it, I fell in love. I already knew much of the history he touched on regarding stuff like punk, Bruce Springsteen, and salsa, but those fun factoids arenāt the point of Hermesās book. Instead, itās about how multiple scenes coexisted and informed one another. Iām well versed in the NY music scene now andābonus!āNew York itself.
Punk rock and hip-hop. Disco and salsa. The loft jazz scene and the downtown composers known as Minimalists. In the mid-1970s, New York City was a laboratory where all the major styles of modern music were reinventedāall at once, from one block to the next, by musicians who knew, admired, and borrowed from one another. Crime was everywhere, the government was broke, and the cityās infrastructure was collapsing. But rent was cheap, and the possibilities for musical exploration were limitless.
Love Goes to Buildings on Fire is the first book to tell the full story of the eraās music scenesā¦
2024 Gold Winner, Benjamin Franklin Awards, Health & Fitness Category
2024 International Book Awards, Winner, Autobiography/Memoir Category and Health: Women's Health Category
A memoir of triumph in the face of a terrifying diagnosis, Up the Down Escalator recounts Dr. Lisa Doggett's startling shift from doctor to patient, as she learnsā¦
I grew up at the best moment to fall in love with BritpopāPulp is the best of them, by the way. But I digress. As an American, I knew little about the culture that birthed Britpop; I just consumed it without context. Daniel Rachelās oral history on Cool Brittania explains this entire culture where a bunch of ā90s British rock bands were influenced by ā60s British rock bands.
This cultural blip was also tied to soccer, Trainspotting, the work of Nick Hornby, and ālad culture.ā Oh, and I even learned what lad culture was! It was a straightforward read but packed with a ton of info that helped me appreciate British pop culture even more than I already (superficially) did.
The nineties was the decade when British culture reclaimed its position at the artistic centre of the world. Not since the 'Swinging Sixties' had art, comedy, fashion, film, football, literature and music interwoven into a blooming of national self-confidence. It was the decade of Lad Culture and Girl Power; of Blur vs Oasis. When fashion runways shone with British talent, Young British Artists became household names, football was 'coming home' and British film went worldwide. From Old Labour's defeat in 1992 through to New Labour's historic landslide in 1997, Don't Look Back In Anger chronicles the Cool Britannia age whenā¦
This book isnāt just a book about ska music; itās a defense. It asks why ska has been unfairly maligned in culture and encourages readers to reconsider their opinions on the genreāno matter how well they think they understand it.
It is a fun journey that reads unlike any other music book. Itās told through scattered, nonlinear essays. Some are opinion pieces, some are journalistic snippets on important (and sometimes, not-so-important) ska history, and some are little slices of memoir cut from the authorās life as a ska fan and former (unsuccessful) ska musician. Interwoven throughout are a myriad of viewpoints, all making the case for skaās value as an essential musical genre.
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilsonās postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one byā¦
Radical Friend highlights the remarkable life of Amy Kirby Post, a nineteenth-century abolitionist and women's rights activist who created deep friendships across the color line to promote social justice. Her relationships with Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, William C. Nell, and other Black activists from the 1840s to theā¦