Status
Available
Collection
Publication
Faber & Faber (2012), Edition: Main, 864 pages
Description
A history of protest music embodied in 33 songs since the 1930s.
Media reviews
“I began this book intending to write a history of a still vital form of music,” Lynskey writes. “I finished it wondering if I had instead composed a eulogy.” As eulogies go, however, this is a lively and sprawling one, beginning with a chapter on “Strange Fruit,” written in 1939, and
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ending with largely ignored attacks on George W. Bush’s military policy. Show Less
The cruel truth about “33 Revolutions Per Minute” — despite Mr. Lynskey’s lovely writing — is that it is not quite art. It is mostly torpid and colorless, a copiously annotated list rather than a cohesive narrative or an extended argument. He tends to dump his glittery insights at the
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beginnings and endings of chapters, and stuff the blah centers with potted historical background. This is a common enough problem in nonfiction books that seek to blend criticism with history, but that doesn’t mean it’s forgivable. Plenty of writers get it right. Show Less
". . . the best thing about Lynskey's book is that it will send you back – or for the first time – to an array of extraordinary songs, from Nina Simone's nerve-tingling "Mississippi Goddam" to the full-on assault of Crass's Falklands-inspired and Thatcher-directed "How Does It Feel to Be the
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Mother of a Thousand Dead"." Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member 06nwingert
33 Revolutions per Minute is a play on the 33, a small record that spun 33 times per minute, and uses minutes as a metaphor for years. The book is divided into segments, which represent different decades and within each segment/decade, there are a few four-page analyses on each signer and song
Mr. Lynsky does a good job at telling the history of the artist and song, as well as an analysis of the song.The analysis answers the questions "What was the political climate like" and "What did the song do to change that climate?"
I was impressed at the depth of the book, and learned a lot about each song, artist and decade.
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that defined the anti-war, anti-goverment mentality of that decade. Mr. Lynsky does a good job at telling the history of the artist and song, as well as an analysis of the song.The analysis answers the questions "What was the political climate like" and "What did the song do to change that climate?"
I was impressed at the depth of the book, and learned a lot about each song, artist and decade.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Sullywriter
An ambitious, sweeping, endlessly fascinating chronicle of protest songs from Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" to Green Day's "American Idiot." Lynskey covers afrobeat, blues, country, folk, hip hop, jazz, rap, and reggae in this superb work of music history. Lynskey is frequently prone to
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digressions but even they are always interesting. Show Less
LibraryThing member nmele
This book is subtitled "A History of Protest Songs from Billie Holiday to Green Day" and Lynskey pretty much achieves that goal in a bit more than 500 pages. Perhaps not totally comprehensive--there's nothing in here about protest songs in, for example, Europe--but amazingly comprehensive when it
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comes to songwriters, singers and bands who've had some wider or lasting impact on music, society and the English speaking world. He covers Jamaican music, and while I wish he had said more about some Jamaican artists, that is a very informative and comprehensive chapter--it sent me to my collection of reggae recordings to listen again to Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and, of course, Bob Marley. Lynskey is an astute judge of the songs, or at least of the songs I know well, and enthusiastic enough that he not only led me to listen to music I already knew again, but to seek out songs and artists I had not given much of a listen in the past. In the end, what better evaluation of a book about popular music is there? Show Less
LibraryThing member sublunarie
This may be the first time I've ever had a love/hate relationship with a non-fiction book.
It's safe to say that for nearly the first half of this 600+ page exploration of protest through song, I was enraptured. As a historian and a music-lover, I was in awe of the way Lynskey folded global
Something happened to the narrative of the book once it hit the mid 1970s, and it wasn't an improvement. Suddenly the chapters seemed disjointed and started feeling more like short essays on ideas and songs stitched together to create the larger chapters. The historical narrative, in itself simply a 100-level glossing of political events, was overtaking the musical narrative. The chapter on U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)" has little to do with the title song, and instead describes U2's entire catalog and how it relates to the history of the years in which they were written. Chapter 20 on Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" is a neutered history of political hip-hop in the early 1980s and spends most of it's time forgetting to talk about "The Message".
By the time the book reaches the end of the 80s, into the 1990s and beyond, Lynskey becomes more interested in showing parallels and differences of then-vs-now protest songs than talking about the songs in question. (Excepting Chapter 27 on Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" which is a late book stand out.) Chapter 28 on Huggy Bear's "Her Jazz" says only about the song that it began as a 'zine article before becoming overshadowed by the history of Bikini Kill (much like in real life). In perhaps the most bizarre chapter, the story of Rage Against the Machine's "Sleep Now in the Fire" says absolutely nothing about the title song other than the fact it existed. It then interweaves the history or Radiohead as if there was some sort of connection between the two. Unsurprisingly, Lynskey dramatically fails at the attempt.
Chapter 32 (Steve Earle's "John Walker's Blues") spends more time talking about the Dixie Chicks than its supposed subject, and perhaps most disappointingly, the final chapter on Green Day's "American Idiot" spends three and a half pages discussing Green Day before peetering out in a weak history of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.
In the epilogue, Lynskey talks about the feeling he has had writing the book, that the era of the protest song may be over, buried under armchair internet activism and the flux music industry. This, perhaps, is his excuse the for floundering second half of his book, but it's not one I am ready to accept. For an author to so expertly move between and along with the racial history of the 60s and the war protests of Billy Bragg and Woody Guthrie, Lynskey has no excuse for being unable to transition into the new history or music and protest in the 2000s. Excepting, of course, for either laziness or his not-so-hidden anachronistic views of how protest songs should be.
It's safe to say that for nearly the first half of this 600+ page exploration of protest through song, I was enraptured. As a historian and a music-lover, I was in awe of the way Lynskey folded global
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historical events in with the chapter title songs. The first chapter, on Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" as well as the chapter on James Brown's "Say It Loud-I'm Black and Proud" are excellent examples of where the combination is done so almost flawlessly. By the time I had reached Part III of the book - a trio of chapters written about lesser-known songs and history (from an American point-of-view) from Chile, Nigeria, and Jamaica I had already begun thinking about a way to create a history class based around this idea. It seemed that introducing history via music and the protest song was a perfect way of illustrating historical ideas and ideals.Something happened to the narrative of the book once it hit the mid 1970s, and it wasn't an improvement. Suddenly the chapters seemed disjointed and started feeling more like short essays on ideas and songs stitched together to create the larger chapters. The historical narrative, in itself simply a 100-level glossing of political events, was overtaking the musical narrative. The chapter on U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)" has little to do with the title song, and instead describes U2's entire catalog and how it relates to the history of the years in which they were written. Chapter 20 on Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" is a neutered history of political hip-hop in the early 1980s and spends most of it's time forgetting to talk about "The Message".
By the time the book reaches the end of the 80s, into the 1990s and beyond, Lynskey becomes more interested in showing parallels and differences of then-vs-now protest songs than talking about the songs in question. (Excepting Chapter 27 on Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" which is a late book stand out.) Chapter 28 on Huggy Bear's "Her Jazz" says only about the song that it began as a 'zine article before becoming overshadowed by the history of Bikini Kill (much like in real life). In perhaps the most bizarre chapter, the story of Rage Against the Machine's "Sleep Now in the Fire" says absolutely nothing about the title song other than the fact it existed. It then interweaves the history or Radiohead as if there was some sort of connection between the two. Unsurprisingly, Lynskey dramatically fails at the attempt.
Chapter 32 (Steve Earle's "John Walker's Blues") spends more time talking about the Dixie Chicks than its supposed subject, and perhaps most disappointingly, the final chapter on Green Day's "American Idiot" spends three and a half pages discussing Green Day before peetering out in a weak history of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.
In the epilogue, Lynskey talks about the feeling he has had writing the book, that the era of the protest song may be over, buried under armchair internet activism and the flux music industry. This, perhaps, is his excuse the for floundering second half of his book, but it's not one I am ready to accept. For an author to so expertly move between and along with the racial history of the 60s and the war protests of Billy Bragg and Woody Guthrie, Lynskey has no excuse for being unable to transition into the new history or music and protest in the 2000s. Excepting, of course, for either laziness or his not-so-hidden anachronistic views of how protest songs should be.
Show Less
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2010
Physical description
864 p.; 7.87 inches
ISBN
0571241352 / 9780571241354