Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation.
For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". Highly recommended-anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.Īn extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. Byrne touches on all kinds of music from all ages and every part of the world. It’s also an exploration of the radical transformation-or surprising durability-of music from the beginning of the age of mechanical reproduction through the era of iTunes and MP3s. But this book is not just, or even primarily, a rock memoir. Always an intensely thoughtful experimenter, here he lets us in on the thinking behind the experiments. He devotes a chapter to the circumstances that made the gritty CBGB nightclub an ideal scene for adventurous artists like Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Tom Verlaine and Television. Steering clear of the conflicts leading to the band’s breakup, Byrne walks through the history, album by album, to illustrate how his views about performance and recording changed with the onset of fame and (small) fortune. From the former Talking Heads frontman, a supremely intelligent, superbly written dissection of music as an art form and way of life.ĭrawing on a lifetime of music-making as an amateur, professional, performer, producer, band member and solo artist, Byrne ( Bicycle Diaries, 2009) tackles the question implicit in his title from multiple angles: How does music work on the ear, brain and body? How do words relate to music in a song? How does live performance relate to recorded performance? What effect has technology had on music, and music on technology? Fans of the Talking Heads should find plenty to love about this book.
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