Book / Magazine News

Mickey Hart & Bill Kreutzmann Discuss Forty Years Of Collaboration In DRUM! Magazine

Source: JCM Media
March 3, 2011

San Jose, Calif., The editors of DRUM! Magazine are a patient bunch. After all, they've tried for the past two decades to secure a cover story on Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, the former drummers for The Grateful Dead. But while Hart always seemed game to talk about drums and drumming, and was over the years featured in many DRUM! articles, Kreutzmann proved far more elusive about granting a dual interview. Until today. The March 2011 issue of DRUM! Magazine ...

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Books - Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins by Bob Blumenthal

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
February 24, 2011

Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins by Bob Blumenthal My rating: 4 of 5 stars The great saxophonist Sonny Rollins has been an iconic figure in jazz for nearly sixty years but has never been the subject of a proper biography. This book does not fill that void either but is a very worthy volume regardless, featuring the amazing photography of John Abbott who captured Rollins in public performance and private moments for the past several decades. Abbott's photography ...

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Herb Snitzer: Glorious Days and Nights

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
February 15, 2011

I don't think of Herb Snitzer as a photographer, although that's exactly what he is. Herb to me is a sculptor, someone who uses his hands to preserve the souls of his jazz subjects. His images offer textured revelations and make me feel as though I've just run my own hands slowly across his subjects' faces. All of his photos seize fleeting moments that provide a window into who these musicians were as people and how they felt about life ...

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A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers

Source: Suzanne Cloud
February 11, 2011

By Suzanne Cloud Let there be no doubt that Will Friedwald loves singers and the context from within which they sing—the songs of the great American songbook. In A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, Friedwald, a respected jazz writer with seven previous books on music and popular culture, has written an encyclopedically structured book of some of the best singers America has produced—but with an exciting twist. He's rearranged all of the clinical (read boring) stuff ...

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Iverson on Sandke and Race in Jazz

Source: Jazz Loft Project by Sam Stephenson
February 1, 2011

Recently my friend who shares a Hall Overton jones, Ethan Iverson, posted two long blog entries about race and jazz, based on Randy Sandke's recent book.

I'll let Ethan's pieces speak for themselves. The discussion is important. I admire Ethan's willingness to stick his neck out. I don't know Sandke—I've enjoyed his trumpet work on a number of records—and I haven't read his book. So I'll make only a couple of comments here:

1) I wouldn't mind taking a stab ...

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Effortlessness is the Enemy of Cloud-Based Music.

Source: HypeBot
February 1, 2011

If you like, just skip ahead and read my latest MTT essay here. Early in January, I did a rather extensive review of Thumbplay Music. In it, I suggested features that were missing from the cloud-based music service. Soon thereafter, I was in a book store and I started flipping through The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely. One chapter called The IKEA Effect caught my eye and I started reading it. In short, the chapter is about how effort ...

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DRUM! Magazine Editors Need Rest: Request Members To Interview Jason Bittner Of Shadows Fall In Real Time

Source: JCM Media
January 31, 2011

San Jose, Calif.,—The editorial staff at Enter Music Publishing, publishers of hip, drum/percussion magazines worldwide and online, are, well, just a bit tired of having to do all the work. So they've devised a way to shift some of their percussive editorial practice to members of their rapidly growing online drumming community. So, during the week of February 1-7, 2011, drummers from around the world will have the unique opportunity to interview Jason Bittner of Shadows Fall on DRUMmagazine.com's “Forum ...

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10 Things Musicians Can Learn from Douglas Rushkoff's Program or Be Programmed

Source: We All Make Music
January 29, 2011

[Editor's Note: The following guest post is by Marc Weidenbaum.] In an age of digital downloads, virtual instruments, and social-media fandom, everybody, musicians especially, must learn how technology is controlled. People who fail to do that run the risk of leaving themselves open to manipulation—i.e., to being controlled. That anxiety-stoking thesis is central to a new book by Douglas Rushkoff, who besides being a prolific author and longtime observer of digital life, has played keyboards in the experimental industrial band ...

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