Includes lectures, essays, diaries and other writings, including "How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)" and "Juilliard Lecture."

     The "If We Make It Through November expanded edition" augments the original book with twice as much content. This version includes both a lengthy "manifesto" about the nature of Donald Trump's appeal and a prequel chapter chronicling the curious day when Rabin and his long-lost brother were reunited under a scalding sun, setting the stage for their unlikely but glorious Gathering adventure. Rabin's best book to date chronicles a surreal week the veteran pop culture writer spent covering, in rapid succession, the Republican National Convention where Donald Trump was nominated for President, possibly setting into motion a series of events leading to mankind's end, and the 17th annual Gathering of the Juggalos, Insane Clown Posse's notorious yearly festival of arts and culture. Rabin's companion throughout this crazy adventure, Raoul Duke to his Dr. Gonzo, is the author's long-lost half brother Vincent, a street-fighting welder from the mean streets of Saint Louis with a roughneck past filled with knife fights, horrific violence and almost unimaginable darkness. 7 Days in Ohio is a hilarious and surprisingly moving exploration of a unique moment in American life. It's also a story of brotherhood and family, about two very different men who find common ground in their shared affection for Insane Clown Posse. In the tradition of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and Rabin's previous memoirs comes the book Donald Trump doesn't want you to read (in part because he hates literacy) and the most soulful, moving and even tear-jerking text about men who pretend to be wicked clowns ever written. Praise for Nathan Rabin: "Smart and funny"-Mindy Kaling, The New Yorker "Brilliant"-John Green The Big Rewind: "I'm not as interested in anything as much as Nathan Rabin is interested in everything."-- Chuck Klosterman “With his uncanny grasp of cultural zeitgeist, Rabin could unseat Chuck Klosterman as the slacker generation’s vital critical voice.” —Heeb Magazine "Nathan Rabin's life reads like a fanboy's collision with Dostoyevsky. Hilarious, sad, truthful memoir is compulsively readable."-- Roger Ebert "[Rabin] has packed [The Big Rewind], like a cannon, full of caustic wit and bruised feelings. The result is a lo-fi, sometimes crude book that is nonetheless more effective (and affecting) than it has any right to be."-- The New York Times My World Of Flops: "Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops is like watching a genius nurse a score of frightened, wounded baby birds back to life--a superhuman level of care and compassion lavished on That Which Never Had A Right To Exist. Truly brilliant." —Patton Oswalt You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me "An extremely funny and engaging book about how fandom provides people with surrogate families and a way to escape day-to-day banality." (Rolling Stone (four-star review) "I Love This Book"-Harris Wittels

    From early pioneers like Suicide and Richard Hell, to forgotten treasures like Red Transistor and Bush Tetras, and descendants like ESG and Sonic Youth, No Wave charts all the cracks and crevices of a surprisingly diverse movement.Flashing through the New York underground in the late 1970s, No Wave was the ultimate anti-movement. Its bands consisted of artists and poets untrained in music, looking to explode rock and disappear before the smoke cleared. No Wave tells the fascinating story of this radical, anarchic and hugely influential musical movement.Best known for short songs and even shorter life-spans, No Wave bands fused disparate styles to fashion abrasive, rhythmic songs that were completely original and utterly compelling. The primary perpetrators – Lydia Lunch’s howling Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance’s skeletal Contortions, the dark-noise groups Mars and DNA – all drew on primitivism, performance art, and the avant-garde.The book also delves into No Wave cinema, where pioneers like Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, and Beth and Scott B. translated the aggression and innovation of No Wave music to the screen. Musicians often starred in these films, and figures like Jim Jarmsuch and Steve Buscemi first cut their teeth in this vibrant scene.Illustrated with rare and previously unseen concert photos, record covers, and other ephemera of the times, and featuring exclusive interviews with key protagonists from the scene, No Wave is the definitive guide to a genre whose sounds and ideas still vibrate through alternative culture today.

    Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea.The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the author's experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker.Thinking in Jazz overflows with musical examples from the 1920s to the present, including original transcriptions (keyed to commercial recordings) of collective improvisations by Miles Davis's and John Coltrane's groups. These transcriptions provide additional insight into the structure and creativity of jazz improvisation and represent a remarkable resource for jazz musicians as well as students and educators.Berliner explores the alternative ways—aural, visual, kinetic, verbal, emotional, theoretical, associative—in which these performers conceptualize their music and describes the delicate interplay of soloist and ensemble in collective improvisation. Berliner's skillful integration of data concerning musical development, the rigorous practice and thought artists devote to jazz outside of performance, and the complexities of composing in the moment leads to a new understanding of jazz improvisation as a language, an aesthetic, and a tradition. This unprecedented journey to the heart of the jazz tradition will fascinate and enlighten musicians, musicologists, and jazz fans alike.

    Designed for practioners and students of electronic art, it provides a guided tour through the world of electronics, encouraging artists to get to know the inner workings of basic electronic devices so they can creatively use them for their own ends."Handmade" "Electronic Music" introduces the basic of practical circuitry while instructing the student in basic electronic principles, always from the practical point of view of an artist. It teaches a style of intuitive and sensual experimentation that has been lost in this day of prefabricated electronic musical instruments whose inner workings are not open to experimentation. It encourages artists to transcend their fear of electronic technology to launch themselves into the pleasure of working creatively with all kinds of analog circuitry.

    In documenting the singer's decline during the period of his greatest exposure, Stephen Calt challenges the values of blues enthusiasts and calls into question widely accepted beliefs about the blues genre, its history and its exponents.

    Through the introduction of MTV and the alternative rock revolution, it's been many things. Rude. Brilliant. Soulful. Snotty. Angry. Delirious. In the past two decades, genres have spawned like mad, from goth, indie rock, and gangsta rap to emo and the garage rock revival. This twentieth-anniversary tribute celebrates the passion and fury of the music, with original essays, quotes, and photographs by contributors who are as hopelessly obsessed with it as you are. SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music features: Alan Light on Beastie Boys, Ann Powers on U2, Charles Aaron on R.E.M., Dave Eggers on The Smiths + Morrissey, Marc Spitz on Goth, Simon Reynolds on Depeche Mode + Synth-pop, Dave Itzkoff on ’80s Teen Movies, Chuck Klosterman on Weezer, Will Hermes on Radiohead, Neil Strauss on Nine Inch Nails + Industrial, Sacha Jenkins on Public Enemy, Andy Greenwald on Emo, RJ Smith on Gangsta Rap, Jon Dolan on The White Stripes, Chris Norris on Nirvana, Doug Brod on Oasis + Britpop, Jim DeRogatis on Smashing Pumpkins, Laura Sinagra on Courtney Love, Ta-Nehisi Coates on Tupac

    It has been out of print since at least 1977 and was never published outside the USA.

    Rythm Oil—you don't have to know how to spell "rhythm" to have it in your body and soul—is a potion sold on Beale Street in Memphis. The home of Sun Records, B. B. King, Elvis Presley, Howlin' Wolf, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Memphis is also the home of fantastic stories and broke-down dreams. As Booth makes his way from Memphis to the Mississippi Delta to the depths of the Georgia woods exploring the sounds, the music, and the culture of the American South, "he has produced some of the most gracefully written, thoughtful, and thought-stirring musings on the characters—the famous and the forgotten, the infamous and the unknown—who command the kingdom or drift through the shadowland of the South's rich-chorded patrimony" (Nick Tosches, Los Angeles Times).

    Our 'understanding' of old music allows us only a glimpse of the spirit in which it is rooted. We see that music always reflects the spiritual and intellectual climate of its time. Its content can never surpass the human power of expression, and any gain on one side must be compensated by a corresponding loss on the other." In these essays, Nikolaus Harnoncourt summarizes his views arising from years devoted to the performance of early music. The problem of interpreting historical music is particularly critical in our age, when modern music has little appeal for the listening public. The vacuum left by the absence of a truly living contemporary music is therefore filled by older music. But for performers and audiences to understand music of earlier times, they must learn to comprehend the languages and messages of the past.

    He references his own contributions to the canon of popular music, and he provides fascinating insider portraits of the industry and its protagonists. But above all, he questions our ideas of music and our attitude to sound, introducing us throughout this provocative and superbly written book to his current work, The17.

    In Sound Unbound, Rhythm Science author Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid asks artists to describe their work and compositional strategies in their own words. These are reports from the front lines on the role of sound and digital media in an information-based society. The topics are as diverse as the contributors: composer Steve Reich offers a memoir of his life with technology, from tape loops to video opera; Miller himself considers sampling and civilization; novelist Jonathan Lethem writes about appropriation and plagiarism; science fiction writer Bruce Sterling looks at dead media; Ron Eglash examines racial signifiers in electrical engineering; media activist Naeem Mohaiemen explores the influence of Islam on hip hop; rapper Chuck D contributes "Three Pieces"; musician Brian Eno explores the sound and history of bells; Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno interview composer-conductor Pierre Boulez; and much more. "Press 'play, '" Miller writes, "and this anthology says 'here goes.'"The groundbreaking music that accompanies the book features Nam Jun Paik, the Dada Movement, John Cage, Sonic Youth, and many other examples of avant-garde music. Most of this content comes from the archives of Sub Rosa, a legendary record label that has been the benchmark for archival sounds since the beginnings of electronic music. To receive these free music files, readers may send an email to the address listed in the book.ContributorsDavid Allenby, Pierre Boulez, Catherine Corman, Chuck D, Erik Davis, Scott De Lahunta, Manuel DeLanda, Cory Doctorow, Eveline Domnitch, Frances Dyson, Ron Eglash, Brian Eno, Dmitry Gelfand, Dick Hebdige, Lee Hirsch, Vijay Iyer, Ken Jordan, Douglas Kahn, Daphne Keller, Beryl Korot, Jaron Lanier, Joseph Lanza, Jonathan Lethem, Carlo McCormick, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Moby, Naeem Mohaiemen, Alondra Nelson, Keith and Mendi Obadike, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pauline Oliveros, Philippe Parreno, Ibrahim Quaraishi, Steve Reich, Simon Reynolds, Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud, Nadine Robinson, Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), Alex Steinweiss, Bruce Sterling, Lucy Walker, Saul Williams, Jeff E. Winner

    Everyone's wearing black. And on-stage a tenor is blowing his heart out, a searching, jagged saxophone journey played out against a moody, walking bass and the swish of a drummer's brushes. To a great many listeners--from African American aficionados of the period to a whole new group of fans today--this is the very embodiment of jazz. It is also quintessential hard bop. In this, the first thorough study of the subject, jazz expert and enthusiast David H. Rosenthal vividly examines the roots, traditions, explorations and permutations, personalities and recordings of a climactic period in jazz history. Beginning with hard bop's origins as an amalgam of bebop and R&B, Rosenthal narrates the growth of a movement that embraced the heavy beat and bluesy phrasing of such popular artists as Horace Silver and Cannonball Adderley; the stark, astringent, tormented music of saxophonists Jackie McLean and Tina Brooks; the gentler, more lyrical contributions of trumpeter Art Farmer, pianists Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan, composers Benny Golson and Gigi Gryce; and such consciously experimental and truly one-of-a-kind players and composers as Andrew Hill, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Charles Mingus. Hard bop welcomed all influences--whether Gospel, the blues, Latin rhythms, or Debussy and Ravel--into its astonishingly creative, hard-swinging orbit. Although its emphasis on expression and downright badness over technical virtuosity was unappreciated by critics, hard bop was the music of black neighborhoods and the last jazz movement to attract the most talented young black musicians. Fortunately, records were there to catch it all. The years between 1955 and 1965 are unrivaled in jazz history for the number of milestones on vinyl. Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, Charles Mingus's Mingus Ah Um, Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Corners, Horace Silver's Further Explorations--Rosenthal gives a perceptive cut-by-cut analysis of these and other jazz masterpieces, supplying an essential discography as well. For knowledgeable jazz-lovers and novices alike, Hard Bop is a lively, multi-dimensional, much-needed examination of the artists, the milieus, and above all the sounds of one of America's great musical epochs.

    George E. Lewis, who joined the collective as a teenager in 1971, establishes the full importance and vitality of the AACM with this communal history, written with a symphonic sweep that draws on a cross-generational chorus of voices and a rich collection of rare images.Moving from Chicago to New York to Paris, and from founding member Steve McCall’s kitchen table to Carnegie Hall, A Power Stronger Than Itself uncovers a vibrant, multicultural universe and brings to light a major piece of the history of avant-garde music and art.

    In this single, from n+1 (Issue 12), Kent Russell gives a remarkable (and very funny) report on the festival and a sympathetic account of the situation of the white poor in the US.