Interviews with Scholars of Music about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/arts-letters/music/
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 26 days 10 hours 56 minutes
Heather Augustyn, “Ska: An Oral History” (McFarland, 2010)
“Before reggae there was rock steady, and before that, ska,” writes Cedella Marley in the foreword to Heather Augustyn’s 2010 book Ska: An Oral History (McFarland, 2010). By way of interviews with dozens of ska musicians,
Kimbrew McLeod and Peter DiCola, “Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling” (Duke University Press, 2011)
One hallmark of important art, in any medium, is a thoughtful relation with artistic precursors. Every artist reckons with heroes and rivals, influences and nemeses, and the old work becomes a part of the new.
Jim Tuedio and Stan Spector, “The Grateful Dead in Concert: Essays on Live Improvisation” (McFarland, 2010)
In a career that spanned three decades the Grateful Dead are rock musicâs ultimate jam band. To jam, of course, is to improvise, to engage in âspontaneous, extemporaneous expression.â In The Grateful Dead in Concert: Essays on Live Improvisation ...
Eric C. Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
When I arrived at college in the early 1980s, drugs were cool, music was cool, and drug-music was especially cool. The coolest of the cool drug-music bands was The Velvet Underground. They were from the mean streets of New York City (The Doors were fro...
Sheree Homer, “Catch that Rockabilly Fever: Personal Stories of Life on the Road and in the Studio” (McFarland, 2010)
“On July 5, 1954, Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black forever changed musical history,” writes Sheree Homer in Catch that Rockabilly Fever: Personal Stories of Life on the Road and in the Studio (McFarland, 2010).
Peter Filichia, “Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season 1959-2009” (Applause, 2010)
Speaking to long time theater critic Peter Filichia, one is reminded of listening to an old-time sportwriter talk about baseball. The Broadway he describes is full of colorful personalities, anecdotes, dates, numbers, and trivia.
Joe Carducci, “Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That…” (Redoubt Press, 2007)
SST Records was a seminal label in Los Angeles’s independent music scene of the 1980’s. Founded in 1978 by Greg Ginn, SST released records by a slew of influential bands such as Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Saint Vitus, Husker Du,
Simon Morrison, “The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years” (Oxford UP, 2009)
In the Soviet Union, artists lived lives that were at once charmed and cursed. Though relatively poor, the USSR poured resources into the arts. The Party created a large, well-funded cultural elite of which only two things were expected. First,