Ten philosophical essays on issues in jazz scholarship from jazz-historian and children's author Collier (author of controversial biographies of Armstrong, Ellington, and Goodman, among other works). Collier discusses the rise of jazz in America; the importance of the soloist; jazz rhythm; jazz as art versus jazz as popular music; the contributions of blacks, whites, and Creoles to the birth of jazz; jazz scholarship; and local jazz. He does much to debunk common myths about jazz: that it was created solely by black musicians; that improvisation was always central to performance; and that ``swing,'' or the performer's unique sense of rhythm, is something that can be felt but not analyzed. Collier is unafraid to take on the establishment, attacking many jazz writers as presenting ``the same dreary mish-mash of half-truths, guesswork, and ancient myths, many of them long since refuted.'' He sometimes makes mountains out of the small factual inaccuracies he finds in popular jazz writing, and, while he urges critics to live up to higher standards of academic scholarship, he attacks the academy for ``homogenizing'' the music as well as for driving away its original popular audience. A jazz musician himself, Collier's at his best when describing how a musician approaches the task of improvising: ``The jazz musician at work is embedded in a world of sound that is saying things to him. He is like a naturalist who is able to instantly decipher the sounds coming to him....'' Bound to blow fresh winds through the jazz academy—and to please those interested in watching the feathers fly.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-19-507943-4
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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