02-08-2022, 11:17 AM
This guy recently wrote a long article in The New Yorker about being a half Black kid with an African father who became enamored of Punk, and it was pretty good, so I thought I'd read this.
Basically he writes about how genre is a slippery concept, and he kind of zips around different areas of the seven genres, which are rock, r&b, country, punk, hip-hop, dance, and pop. So in the rock chapter, he writes about early 70's hard rock, prog, hair metal, singer-songwriters, and the rise of alternative rock in the era of Nirvana (and how that sort of became the new definition of rock, with the older one redefined as Classic Rock).
He's an entertaining writer and there was a lot of interesting stuff in there, along with some music I thought I'd check out. The punk chapter was too long for me, because it covered a lot of the same ground as his New Yorker article. I was also a bit bored by the hip-hop chapter since I don't much care for it. The rest of it was pretty good. Suprisingly, the chapter on Dance was really interesting, especially on the rise of electronic music and its relation to disco.
I'd recommend it.
Basically he writes about how genre is a slippery concept, and he kind of zips around different areas of the seven genres, which are rock, r&b, country, punk, hip-hop, dance, and pop. So in the rock chapter, he writes about early 70's hard rock, prog, hair metal, singer-songwriters, and the rise of alternative rock in the era of Nirvana (and how that sort of became the new definition of rock, with the older one redefined as Classic Rock).
He's an entertaining writer and there was a lot of interesting stuff in there, along with some music I thought I'd check out. The punk chapter was too long for me, because it covered a lot of the same ground as his New Yorker article. I was also a bit bored by the hip-hop chapter since I don't much care for it. The rest of it was pretty good. Suprisingly, the chapter on Dance was really interesting, especially on the rise of electronic music and its relation to disco.
I'd recommend it.
the hands that guide me are invisible