David Byrne is a founding member of Talking Heads. He has won Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe awards. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has written books. Now he has written a book about music. I for one think he is qualified. 
How Music Works is David Byrne’s buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. Equal parts historian and anthropologist, raconteur and social scientist, Byrne draws on his own work over the years with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and his myriad collaborators – along with the journeys to Wagnerian opera houses, African villages, and anywhere music exists – to show that music-making is not just the act of a solitary composer in a studio, but rather a logical, populist, and beautiful result of cultural circumstance. A brainy irresistible adventure, How Music Works is an impassioned argument about music’s liberating, life-affirming power.
It seems to me, Byrne has written the book for music nerds who don’t play music, or get to tour, or get to record on a grand standard. He discusses everything from digital and analog recording to business and finance to public image. There’s a good chance I would be writing about this book regardless, but I would like to point out that it is a McSweeney’s book. Lacking a dust jacket like McSweeney’s are wont to do, it has a lovely white squishy cover with simple black lettering. The formatting is pleasing. Pictures are scattered on pages, the colors vibrant. The chapter and contents text is color coded. For real book lovers, it is very pleasing.
It’s great timing for this cool music book from McSweeney’s, fitting right in to our neat display!
Here are a couple other new books from the music section.
Is he Jumpin’ Jack flash? A Street Fighting Man? A Man of Wealth and Taste? All this, it turns out, and far more. By any definition, Mick Jaggeris a force of nature, a complete original – and undeniably one of the dominant cultural figures of our time. Swaggering, strutting, sometimes elusive, always spellbinding, he grabbed us by our collective throat a half century ago – unlike so many of his gifted peers – never let go.
For decades, Mick has jealously guarded his many shocking secrets – until now. As the Rolling Stones mark their 50th anniversary, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Christopher Anderson tears the mask from rock’s most complex and enigmatic icon in a no-holds-barred biography as impossible to ignore as Jagger himself
Based on interviews with friends, family members, fellow music legends, and industry insiders – as well as wives and legions of lovers – MICK sheds new light on a man whose very name defines an era and candidly reveals:
The Man Who Sold the World is a critical study of David Bowie’s most inventive and influential decade, from his first hit, “Space Oddity,” in 1969, to the release of the LP Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980. Viewing the artist through the lens of his music and his many guises, the acclaimed journalist Peter Doggett offers a detailed analysis – musical, lyrical, conceptual, social – of every song Bowie wrote and recorded during that period, as well as brilliant exploration of the development of a performer who profoundly affected popular music and the idea of stardom itself.
Dissecting close to 250 songs, Doggett traces the major themes that inspired and shaped Bowie’s career, from his flirtations with fascist imagery and infatuation with the occult to his pioneering creation of his alter-ego self in the character of Ziggy Stardust. What emerges is an illuminating account of how Bowie escaped his working-class London background to become a global phenomenon. The Man Who Sold the World lays bare the evolution of Bowie’s various personas and unrivaled career of innovation as a musician, singer, composer, lyricist, actor, and conceptual artist. It is a fan’s ultimate resource – the most rigorous and insightful assessment to date of Bowie’s artistic achievement during this crucial period.
by Simon
Comments are closed.