An overambitious and underwrought attempt to explain the context, obstacles, and achievements of every woman ever to have a career in pop music. British music journalist O'Brien (Annie Lennox, not reviewed, etc.) trots out a handful of unsurprising themes: Women historically have been expected to be decorative ``girl singers,'' not serious musicians; jealous or nervous men have limited the careers of female instrumentalists; women are often at the mercy of sexist record company packaging; black women encounter different obstacles than white women; Madonna is an admirable careerist. O'Brien supports these assertions by quoting from her interviews with dozens of women in the industry, including a few luminaries, such as Nina Simone, Alison Moyet, and Cyndi Lauper. Generally, though, the list of those she has spoken to over the years is weighted heavily toward the British and the obscure. And because she's aiming at encyclopedic definitiveness, it's impossible not to notice the arbitrariness of her biographical snippets and her scattershot forays into analysis. ``Like an inverted saint, [SinÇad O'Connor] has followed the edicts of her own faith to come up with a pure spirituality both piercingly original and tender,'' she offers pointlessly; and while elsewhere she discusses Prince's influence on women in pop, nowhere does she mention O'Connor's biggest hit, the Prince-penned ``Nothing Compares 2 U.'' One such omission would be a quibble, but the book is built on holes like these. O'Brien's most incisive chapter, on women in punk, illuminates the anarchic freedoms that punk allowed women, as well as the old gender prejudices that paradoxically underlay punk's would-be anarchy. Too often, however, this reads like a catchall for whatever stray reference material came to hand. Until a more astute overview comes along, She Bop—whose title comes from a song about masturbation—makes for an unsatisfying stopgap. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 9, 1996
ISBN: 0-14-025155-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A succinct, informative, and well-written history of attempts by Germans to kill or overthrow Hitler. Gill, an Anglo-German historian (A Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars, p. 192), focuses largely on the resistance network within the German ``establishment'': the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church, the Foreign Office, the Abwehr (German secret service), and, above all, the army. Focusing on the years 193844, he chronicles such key events as the coup d'Çtat planned by a group of officers at the time of the Munich crisis, a coup they would have implemented had Hitler gone to war instead of winning major concessions from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Such efforts culminated in the July 20, 1944, near-miss of a bomb assassination attempt against Hitler by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. It resulted in massive bloodletting against thousands of real and suspected conspirators, was widely denounced within the Third Reich, and was undervalued both abroad and in postwar West Germany, but a July 1944 New York Times editorial aptly called the bombing an ``honorable treason.'' In colorful prose, the author demonstrates how possible anti-Nazi uprisings and assassination attempts were repeatedly thwarted by the conspirators' dawdling and individual failures of nerve, by Allied (particularly British) indifference and mistrust of the conspirators, and by bad luck. He scants communist resistance, although he does delve into the White Rose and other German student groups. Unfortunately, Gill makes almost no mention of Germans who hid or otherwise aided Jews, political dissidents, or those threatened by the ``euthanasia'' campaign. Still, he skillfully uses German and English sources and provides a chart illustrating the resistance network and a ``Who's Who'' of anti-Hitler conspirators. Like the late Barbara Tuchman, Gill has deftly synthesized scholarly and more popular historical writing to produce an impressively accessible and interesting work. (Maps, 25 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-3514-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
A substantive, reasonably candid memoir from the founder of Detroit's legendary Motown Records, creator of the soundtrack of the '60s. Gordy opens in 1988, as he agonizes over the sale of his independent company to conglomerate giant MCA, but quickly flashes back to the period everyone wants to read about: Motown's Golden Age, 19601970, when Gordy and his crack team of songwriters, producers, and studio musicians (many of them affectionately portrayed here) created a series of brilliant pop records—from ``My Girl'' to ``Where Did Our Love Go'' to ``I Heard It Through the Grapevine''—that made artists like the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and the Jackson Five famous. Along the way, Motown's success completed the destruction of musical segregation that had begun with the rock and soul explosion of the early 1950s. `` `Pop' means popular,'' writes Gordy on the subject of categorizing art. ``I never gave a damn what else it was called.'' His solidly middle-class, high-achieving parents were remarkably patient with his long search for a career (he was 29 when he started Motown in 1959 with an $800 loan from the family credit union), and he warmly depicts them and his siblings, many of whom came to work at Motown. A fair amount of time is also devoted to his active love life; he had eight children with five different women, including one with Diana Ross, the supreme Supreme he calls ``my star...my leading lady.'' Knowledgeable music fans will spot some selective recall on Gordy's part—he glosses over widespread resentment of Ross in particular—but for the most part he is frank about tensions within Motown and convincing in his rebuttal of charges that the company exploited its artists financially. His descriptions of the famous ``assembly-line'' process by which Motown crafted hits the way Detroit's auto companies cranked out cars shows the producers/songwriters as the primary artistic force behind the music. Nothing really new here, but a vivid recreation of a great period and a seminal company in popular music. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1994
ISBN: 0-446-51523-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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