Book Reviews Recent Reviews
The Best of LCD: The Art and Writing of WFMU
Princeton Architectural Press
If you’ve never heard New Jersey’s WFMU (91.1 FM on the dial, wfmu.org), first accept our condolences, then tune in and listen for a few weeks straight to atone for your sins and reprogram your brain. After you’ve done that you’ll no doubt agree with what it says on the back cover of this…
The Vice Photo Book
Vice
In its 13 years, Vice has risen from a smudgy newsprint zine to an incisive global media entity while—at least until its recent hookup with MTV—remaining a zine head and retaining unblemished cred. Much of this can be attributed to Vice’s unflinching, unblinking eye, a collective oculus comprising…
The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Yahowa 13 and the Source Family
Process
Though nowadays most folks spell “youth cult” M-A-N-S-O-N, that’s kind of a bummer, because helter skelter wasn’t the mandate of most cults of the late ’60s and early ’70s. In The Source, a firsthand account of one such sect’s social and spiritual journey, Isis Aquarian (nee Charlene Peters,…
In Search of the Blues
Basic Books
The first time I taught the class “Black Music and American Cultural History” at the University of Wisconsin, I waxed rhapsodic over the glories of Robert Johnson and mentioned, of course, the myth that he received his guitar prowess by making a deal with the devil at the crossroads. I then…
Song Man: A Melodic Adventure, or, My Single-Minded Approach to Songwriting
De Capo
In Englishman Will Hodgkinson’s first memoir, Guitar Man, he learned to play the guitar with the help of some of his country’s masters and the loving tolerance of his wife NJ. Now he’s graduated to songwriting, with an eye on recording at his friend Liam Watson’s Toe Rag studios (home to more…
