Lenny Kaye

Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll by Lenny Kaye tells the history of rock using ten specific "moments" as a structuring device. This is both a fun book for those of us who remember the vast majority of these moments as well as a rich history for those always looking for more insight.

Told as an insider of the industry and someone involved in, or at least with the proverbial backstage pass to, many of these moments we get anecdotes and asides mixed in with the more straightforward telling of music history. There is no "the" history of rock, but as a history of rock this volume adds plenty of information and a lot of energy to collection of histories that tell the story.

I don't think one needs to be particularly well-versed in rock history to enjoy the book though it will likely be more appealing to those who are familiar with more than just the artists who topped the charts. Names and strands of various genres are tossed off regularly, some with contextualization and some not. Usually those not are also not integral to understanding the overall story, so they can be noted as one reads on then, if curious, looked up later to learn more about them.

Again, these are important moments that, as the title says, transformed the music. Most did produce chart toppers but that is not really the reason for inclusion. It is how each changed the course of the genre and also how much each influenced future artists. In that regard these moments are transformative. I imagine one could argue for an additional inclusion or two, and if one wants to be arrogantly narrow can argue that the transformations a couple of these moments caused weren't "important" enough. But all in all this is an excellent selection and all are told with the same sense of excitement and energy that permeated those times and places.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mehr)

The title is borrowed from Russ Columbo signature ballad "You Call It Madness, I Call It Love".

And who is Russ Columbo. He was one of the crooners, the first balladeers to exploit the power of the microphone to put their softly phrased declarations of love directly in the listener's ear, as if the two, listener and crooner, are dancing cheek to cheek. Multiply that intimacy a few million times, with radio, with records, and you have the first intimate mass media experience.

High fidelity amplification meant each word in a song could shaped perfectly and sung at murmur. It wasn't historonic belting, it was croooooning, smooth, velvety and low. You might confuse it with a clarinet.

This book is a historical novelization of the rise of the crooner in the late '20s and early '30s, focusing on vivid characterizations of Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, and -- especially -- Russ Columbo. Columbo had the darkest, most sensual style of three, and he was murdered in his early thirties. (Cosby and Vallee transitioned fully to films)

The book is written by Lenny Kaye -- musicologist, guitarist for seminal punk poetress Patti Smith and compiler of the influential Nuggets compilation of forgotten regional garage bands of the sixties. His writing style is idiosyncratic, leaning heavily on onomonopaies and jazzbo hipster slang, but he really hits his stride describing the performances of these men, the closeness of their voices and the warm tones of the backing orchestras that I found it easy to inhabit the space he protrays. His prose begs to be read aloud, which I did from time to time.

It's a fasinating transport to a time that we've forgotten about.… (mehr)