William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ’n’ Roll (University of Texas Press), by Casey Rae
William S. Burroughs looked like someone’s cranky uncle-come-to-dinner in his snap-brim hat, jacket and tie. And yet, stranger and more subversive than any long-haired rock star or nose-ringed punk, he exerted an influence on music that has seldom been properly acknowledged. David Bowie and Brian Eno cited Burroughs back in the ’70s, but it’s usually forgotten that the Beat writer’s sonic cut-and-paste anticipated sampling by decades.
Casey Rae explores the byways by which the provocative author of Junkie and Naked Lunch stirred the imagination of Bob Dylan in the early ’60s (but who knew of his similar effect on Paul McCartney?) and became a touchstone of true alternative by the time Kurt Cobain discovered him. Along the way, Throbbing Gristle, heavily indebted to Burroughs, invented the abrasive cacophony of industrial music.
Rae’s account is almost as fascinating as its subject, and reaches many points across a multi-dimensional reality from which Burroughs’ ideas came and where they led. Occasionally, Rae misses the end point. Burroughs foresaw the internet, anticipating the viral spread of “small units of sound and image,” which we can see, as Rae writes, in message boards “where hordes of young, mostly male raconteurs engage in ceaseless rage attacks against tolerance and reason.” The author fails to ask: Is that a good thing?
Flamenco Nation: The Construction of Spanish National Identity (University of Wisconsin Press), by Sandie Holguín
The music and dance of flamenco became an image of Spain, iconic for encapsulating a set of ideas about the country. But its status has not gone uncontested. Like blues and other American vernacular music, flamenco originated among the poor and dispossessed and was said to embody doubtful social values. Castigated by some members of the elite, it was enjoyed and studied by others still as a source of distinctly Spanish culture. In Flamenco Nation, Holguín presents a dense, interpretive narrative of flamenco’s cultural history in a readable, even enjoyable form. Not unlike blues, flamenco was rooted in despised minorities—Moors, Sephardic Jews and Gypsies, and also absorbed influences from African slaves seen in Spanish ports. The genre persisted despite opposition. The Franco regime at first tried to push it aside, but later claimed it for its value to tourism.
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Leonard Bernstein and the Language of Jazz (University of Illinois Press), by Katherine Baber
Jazz was always a facet of Leonard Bernstein’s work as a composer. Katherine Baber argues that it was Bernstein’s most persistent theme, a motif that helped him find his voice as a composer as well as the source for his most popular musicals (On the Town, West Side Story). In Leonard Bernstein and the Language of Jazz, Baber locates his jazz inclinations in the identification with African American culture prevalent among a postwar Jewish intelligentsia that also included Norman Mailer and William Styron. Bernstein was never exactly a hipster in the way of Allen Ginsberg or Dizzy Gillespie, but was in dialogue with the idea of hip throughout his life. The emotional tone and melodicism derived from jazz enabled him to compose in a style that insisted on relating to popular culture as opposed to the sterility of many contemporaries (who were content to write for a non-existent audience).
Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon (Da Capo), by C.M. Kushins
Warren Zevon was as integral to the ’70s Los Angeles scene as Jackson Browne and The Eagles, yet his songs stood apart. As C.M. Kushins remarks in his splendidly written biography, Zevon belongs to a dark stream of observation flowing from Raymond Chandler and other noir-era writers. Nothing’s Bad Luck traces its subject’s destructive habits and enormous creativity to his Jewish mobster father. Well-read and classically trained, Zevon wrote songs permeated by “wiseass intellectualism.” Although he seemed to emerge fully formed out of nowhere with albums such as Warren Zevon (1976) and Excitable Boy (1978), Kushins details a long prelude that began a decade earlier. The man behind “Werewolves of London” was no novice.
Shadows of the Night: How One Man Survived the Trauma of Adoption, the Snares of the Music Business, and Found His Birthmother and Seven Sisters (Zen Archer), by D.L. Byron
D.L. Byron had his brush with stardom when a song he wrote, “Shadows of the Night,” became a hit (and Grammy-winner) for Pat Benatar. He briefly enjoyed a major label contract and hung around the industry for years. Like many musicians drawn to rock in those days, he considered himself an outsider and carried scars from childhood into his 20s. The long subtitle of his memoir (How One Man…) is like the trailer that shows you how the movie will end. As he tells it, Byron managed to pass through the usual lines of cocaine and damaged egos that cling like lint to the music industry with integrity intact. What’s interesting about Shadows of the Night is its paranormal inclinations and awareness of a web of connections some would call coincidence.
Where You Goin’ with that Gun in Your Hand?: The True Crime Blotter of Rock ’n’ Roll (Backbeat), by Keith Elliot Greenberg
They called Jerry Lee Lewis “the Killer.” Neither Lewis nor his Sun labelmate Johnny Cash did time, they killed no one as far as we know, but some fans assumed they did. Many rock stars have projected a dangerous aura and several did get into serious trouble. TV producer Keith Elliot Greenberg tells their story in Where You Goin’ with that Gun in Your Hand? His “snapshot from the underside of rock ’n’ roll” includes the famous, the infamous and the obscure. Greenberg revisits the theory that Brian Jones was murdered (but not by his bandmates) and explores the sad climax of gun-happy Phil Spector’s career. He also ventures into Norway’s black metal creeps and the dual murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Where You Goin’ with that Gun in Your Hand? is a bloody entertaining read.
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