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Dorian Lynskey "33 Revolutions Per Minute" (Faber & Faber)
For anyone interested in music and its function in the political and social realm, here's a useful compendium on Western protest songs in the 20th century. For the most part, the information is very readable, despite each chapter being packed to the gills with references to specific people, places, events, and music.
Lynskey has taken an almost unmanageable amount of music history and pared it down to the most important protest music from each definable chunk of the last hundred years. Although the book is divided into chapters by song title, it could just as well have been organized by historical event; each chapter's title song is discussed within the context of the movement or event that was its impetus, the surrounding political and social climate, and other songs that spring from the same source. I appreciate that the author also offers a couple of appendices at the end with additional lists and information, recognizing that his previous 500 pages are in no way exhaustive.
Towards the end, the book feels like it loses the wide-angle perspective it has taken for most chapters and begins to descend into a few rounds of opportunistic Bush-bashing (as opposed to simply writing about anti-Bush and anti-war music); then again, any kind of recent history - music or otherwise - is difficult to write objectively. I think he could have done better here.
This is a great book for musicians and music lovers to have around the house for reference or to pick up and read a chapter at a time between other reads.
For anyone interested in music and its function in the political and social realm, here's a useful compendium on Western protest songs in the 20th century. For the most part, the information is very readable, despite each chapter being packed to the gills with references to specific people, places, events, and music.
Lynskey has taken an almost unmanageable amount of music history and pared it down to the most important protest music from each definable chunk of the last hundred years. Although the book is divided into chapters by song title, it could just as well have been organized by historical event; each chapter's title song is discussed within the context of the movement or event that was its impetus, the surrounding political and social climate, and other songs that spring from the same source. I appreciate that the author also offers a couple of appendices at the end with additional lists and information, recognizing that his previous 500 pages are in no way exhaustive.
Towards the end, the book feels like it loses the wide-angle perspective it has taken for most chapters and begins to descend into a few rounds of opportunistic Bush-bashing (as opposed to simply writing about anti-Bush and anti-war music); then again, any kind of recent history - music or otherwise - is difficult to write objectively. I think he could have done better here.
This is a great book for musicians and music lovers to have around the house for reference or to pick up and read a chapter at a time between other reads.
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