They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but the cover of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever includes a quote on the back cover that sums up my experience of reading it: "By simply putting things in chronological order, Will Hermes shows just how astonishing New York City's music was in the 1970s" (Luc Sante). Combined with the informative subtitle, this recommendation tells you what's good and bad about the book.
On the plus side, Hermes covers all of the various types of music that were vital in NYC from 1973 to 1977: rock, salsa, disco, rap, jazz, and classical. The down side is encapsulated in the word "simply" in the quote from Luc Sante: Hermes doesn't provide much insight into the musical innovations that were happening, nor into any cross-pollination between the styles. He pretty much records the facts in chronological order, and counts on us to say, "isn't it amazing that all of this was happening at the same time?"
I also think the subtitle is hyperbolic. While it's certainly true that a lot of classic music came out of this place and time (from Born to Run to Saturday Night Fever to Einstein on the Beach), I think only the first stirrings of rap/hip-hop qualify as "changing music forever." And one last skeptical question: couldn't you make similar arguments for, say, San Francisco in the 1960s or Memphis in the 1950s?
My favorite parts of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire turned out to be the personal recollections of the author, who was an outer-borough teenager at the time. His memories were vivid interludes between the sometimes gossipy descriptions of Phillip Glass meeting Lou Reed and the famous people who attended the Talking Heads' first headlining gig.
No comments:
Post a Comment