Good books with a musical theme
We have a thread for movies & music, so I thought a thread for books & music might be interesting.
Recently finished a mystery by Don Bruns, titled "Bahama Burnout". It was very entertaining, especially with all the stuff thrown in about the music industry.
The Publisher's Weekly synopsis:
Bruns's laid-back fifth mystery to feature Mick Sever (after 2008's St. Bart's Breakdown) takes the music journalist to Nassau, to cover the resurgence of the legendary Highland Recording Studios, which burned down more than a year earlier and killed someone whose remains were never identified. Owners Jonah and Rita Britt have rebuilt, but the studio's now being targeted by a troublemaker. Rita blames a ghost, possibly that of the unidentified person who died in the fire, for destroying a guitar once owned by singer Sheryl Crow. Sever is also intrigued by the Cadillac a Bahamian matron is offering for sale that supposedly belonged to Elvis Presley. When the manager of Johnny Run, a once red-hot band recording its comeback attempt at Highland, is strangled while sitting in the Cadillac, Sever turns detective. Bruns's twisted, if at times hazy, tale of rock-and-roll revenge will keep readers guessing until the end.
I've gone back to the library and am now reading his first novel in the Mick Sever series, "Janaica Blue".
Recently finished a mystery by Don Bruns, titled "Bahama Burnout". It was very entertaining, especially with all the stuff thrown in about the music industry.
The Publisher's Weekly synopsis:
Bruns's laid-back fifth mystery to feature Mick Sever (after 2008's St. Bart's Breakdown) takes the music journalist to Nassau, to cover the resurgence of the legendary Highland Recording Studios, which burned down more than a year earlier and killed someone whose remains were never identified. Owners Jonah and Rita Britt have rebuilt, but the studio's now being targeted by a troublemaker. Rita blames a ghost, possibly that of the unidentified person who died in the fire, for destroying a guitar once owned by singer Sheryl Crow. Sever is also intrigued by the Cadillac a Bahamian matron is offering for sale that supposedly belonged to Elvis Presley. When the manager of Johnny Run, a once red-hot band recording its comeback attempt at Highland, is strangled while sitting in the Cadillac, Sever turns detective. Bruns's twisted, if at times hazy, tale of rock-and-roll revenge will keep readers guessing until the end.
I've gone back to the library and am now reading his first novel in the Mick Sever series, "Janaica Blue".
Comments
"Michael plays second violin in an up-and-coming Maggiore Quartet, lives on the north side of Hyde Park, takes early morning dips in the Serpentine, has a French girlfriend named Virginie. But his mind is constantly drawn to his first and only love, Julia, whom he knew in Vienna many years earlier. When he catches sight of Julia on a London bus, he cannot help but pursue her. Vikram Seth's new novel is a gently-paced, multi-layered work, proceeding in short sections which flit from Michael's ongoing search for Julia back to his childhood as a Rochdale butcher's son, his early training and breakdown in Vienna under the tyrannical Carl Kall, and the emotional history of his quartet; while Michael's discovery of a Beethoven trio rewritten as a string quintet acts as a motif for Michael's pursuit of the lost Julia: can Michael recapture the magic of the past, like Beethoven, who deafly transfigured what he so many years earlier had hearingly composed? Seth is quite brilliant at conveying the intense and complex interplay of chamber musicians, in rehearsal and performance (an odd, obsessed, introspective, separatist breed), and manages the near-impossible--to write in 1999 about Art and Love without embarrassment"
However, I once heard the cellist of the Amadeus Quartet on the radio saying that it wasnt at all realistic. But perhaps he didnt like the portrayal of professional chamber musicians as an odd, obsessed, introspective, separatist breed!
the catalog of cool - scullati
this is pop-culture oriented with his "analysis" as the vehicle.
In his film of Manns Death in Venice, Visconti made the hero, a writer in the story, into a composer, who looked very much like Mahler, and the soundtrack used the Adagietto from Mahlers 5th (perhaps overused as I remember it the film hardly ever shows up on todays dumbed-down TV.) The film may have done more to popularize Mahler in the 70s than anything else.
It spans two centuries and chronicles the existence of an accordion built by the first character in the book.
It is kind of desperate and the people portrayed remind of Grapes of Wrath, Tobacco Road, and the like.
He has an accompanying blog, too: The Rest Is Noise.
Ripped by Greg Kot is a recently non-fiction book. It's an account of how technology changed the music business/ how some musicians used technology to change the music business. Mostly centers on indie groups. Got it to review from Amazon, still working on the review.
The first novel by Bruns was "Jamaica Blue", and set in Jamaica. Yeah, big surprise there. I did learn a tidbit that I'd never known - Rastafarians are named after a guy in Africa named Tafari who was a king. The whole book had a lean towards the reggae genre. This next book I'm reading is covering the rap/hip-hop world.