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I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (NOVEMBER 2022 EDITION)
I’m really starting to think the pulmonary embolism I had in July has messed my brain up. I know my reading speed has slowed down a lot in the last ten years, but even so, it seems like I’m lucky to even have one book report a month nowadays. Or it may just me that the last few months were taken up with epic doorstops. Like this one here:
33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day by Dorian Lynskey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked this up in an indie bookshop in Hong Kong that specializes in the kinds of books the govt doesn’t especially want us to read. This may or may not be one of them – it’s a history of protest music (and the protest movements that inspired them) in Western pop summed up in 33 songs. Music journalist Dorian Lynskey starts with Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and ends with Green Day’s “American Idiot”, and covers a lot of ground in between – most of it in the US and UK, although he does cover some international artists like Victor Jara, Fela Kuti and Max Romeo & The Upsetters. A lot of the usual suspects are here: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Gil Scott-Heron, Plastic Ono Band, CSNY, the Clash, Dead Kennedys, Crass, the Special AKA, U2, Billy Bragg, Public Enemy, Steve Earle, Rage Against the Machine etc. There’s also a few surprises (REM, Stevie Wonder, Carl Bean, disco in general, etc).
Interestingly – and perhaps usefully – each chapter isn’t so much about the song itself as the context in which it was created. In that sense, the songs serve more as a writing prompt to explore the various protest movements of the 20th Century and the music world’s response to them. This does mean each chapter spends maybe a third of its space talking about the actual song. On the other hand, this enables Lynskey to expand the scope to mention other songs and artists, some of whom arguably deserve their own chapter. It also gives him room to explore the broader theme of whether pop protest songs (and musician activism in general) ultimately make a difference in political movements, and do they still matter in an era where most people nowadays adhere to the “keep your politics out of my music” ethos?
Like with any good music book, there’s a lot to argue about here, from Lynskey’s song choices and criteria for what counts as a protest song (vs a song with social commentary), to his conclusion that by the 2000s, protest music was a dead genre – not because no one was making protest songs, but because no one seemed to take them seriously anymore. (To be fair, the book was published in 2011 and Lynskey has since revised his assessment in the wake of #BLM, Trump and Brexit, etc ). Also, by his own admission, he can only cover so much ground, so there’s quite a few gaps here, particularly when it comes to feminism and the equal rights movement – Riot Grrrl gets a chapter (via Huggy Bear’s “Her Jazz”), but apart from Holliday and Nina Simone (who represent the civil rights era), most women music artists are mentioned as asides. Anyway, it’s a fascinating slice of music history and protest movements and a great way to start arguments in radio stations at 1:30 in the morning. The playlist in the extensive appendix section is also most welcome.
View all my reviews
Too much revolution,
This is dF
33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day by Dorian LynskeyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked this up in an indie bookshop in Hong Kong that specializes in the kinds of books the govt doesn’t especially want us to read. This may or may not be one of them – it’s a history of protest music (and the protest movements that inspired them) in Western pop summed up in 33 songs. Music journalist Dorian Lynskey starts with Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and ends with Green Day’s “American Idiot”, and covers a lot of ground in between – most of it in the US and UK, although he does cover some international artists like Victor Jara, Fela Kuti and Max Romeo & The Upsetters. A lot of the usual suspects are here: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Gil Scott-Heron, Plastic Ono Band, CSNY, the Clash, Dead Kennedys, Crass, the Special AKA, U2, Billy Bragg, Public Enemy, Steve Earle, Rage Against the Machine etc. There’s also a few surprises (REM, Stevie Wonder, Carl Bean, disco in general, etc).
Interestingly – and perhaps usefully – each chapter isn’t so much about the song itself as the context in which it was created. In that sense, the songs serve more as a writing prompt to explore the various protest movements of the 20th Century and the music world’s response to them. This does mean each chapter spends maybe a third of its space talking about the actual song. On the other hand, this enables Lynskey to expand the scope to mention other songs and artists, some of whom arguably deserve their own chapter. It also gives him room to explore the broader theme of whether pop protest songs (and musician activism in general) ultimately make a difference in political movements, and do they still matter in an era where most people nowadays adhere to the “keep your politics out of my music” ethos?
Like with any good music book, there’s a lot to argue about here, from Lynskey’s song choices and criteria for what counts as a protest song (vs a song with social commentary), to his conclusion that by the 2000s, protest music was a dead genre – not because no one was making protest songs, but because no one seemed to take them seriously anymore. (To be fair, the book was published in 2011 and Lynskey has since revised his assessment in the wake of #BLM, Trump and Brexit, etc ). Also, by his own admission, he can only cover so much ground, so there’s quite a few gaps here, particularly when it comes to feminism and the equal rights movement – Riot Grrrl gets a chapter (via Huggy Bear’s “Her Jazz”), but apart from Holliday and Nina Simone (who represent the civil rights era), most women music artists are mentioned as asides. Anyway, it’s a fascinating slice of music history and protest movements and a great way to start arguments in radio stations at 1:30 in the morning. The playlist in the extensive appendix section is also most welcome.
View all my reviews
Too much revolution,
This is dF