Don Breithaupt

There's some good info found in this book, but there is FAAAAAAARRRR too much information on the specific musicality and chording. There's a point where the author states something along the lines of, "if you are A Flock Of Seagulls fan, you're reading the wrong book."

I happen to like them, but that's not the point. A book like this should have the regular listener in mind. I love music, and it's interesting to understand some of the musical theory that Steely Dan brought to this album, but there's no need to go into the ridiculous, anal retentive detail the author goes into.

It's the equivalent of appreciating a sunset, then being given the advanced astronomy and physics behind the interplay between the star and the planet and the planet's atmosphere and the observer's eye, then the biology between eye and brain. Meanwhile, the observer is just digging the reds and the oranges.

As I said, there's some nuggets strewn within all the crap. But not sure it's worth the time or effort.… (més)

How I fell in love with pop music

I have a distinct physical memory of the plastic AM clock radio I got sometime before turning ten years old. I can close my eyes and see it perfectly: glowing amber incandescent illumination falling on the rolodex-style stacks of "digital" numbers, which would flip over nearly silently, just a little louder on the hour. For the next five years or so I kept it plugged in next to my bed, mostly on Denver's KHOW, listening before school (Charlie and Barney) and after.

I was intensely involved with the songs, on a pre-adolescent kid level. I had no understanding of how music was produced, packaged, or broadcast. Even the idea that these were recordings was lost on me at first -- I assumed it was all being performed live. I remember wondering vaguely if there was some revolving door at the station that would somehow rotate the singers in and out every 3 and half minutes.

Later, roughly in the transition from Junior High to High School, in a mini-Pleasantville transisiton, everything went from AM to FM, mono to stereo, top 40 to AOR. Suddenly music that was raceless became color-coded, and all of a sudden I started to get all the sexual double-entendre, or knew that I should pretend to. The old clock radio made way for the Radio Shack 8-track receiver with *two* speakers and the all-important FM band. But that's a different book.

This one covers my kid-pop period in fantastic detail and with a sympathetic eye, nice in light of the permanently ironic mode retro-70s fetishism typically takes. The authors don't deny the silliness of alot of this stuff, but they also don't miss a chance to commend especially great records. They are also excellent on the pre-"format" radio culture of the day, when this incredibly varied stew of sublime pop weirdness could co-exist on the AM dial.… (més)