Not as much fun as Almost Famous, but fans of LP–era rock will enjoy Carlin’s knowledgeable deep dive.
The author of biographies of McCartney, Simon, and Springsteen delivers a fast-paced, overstuffed history of the storied record label.
In 1958, Warner Bros. Records began as a kind of joke, with records by pseudonymous artists and titles like But You’ve Never Heard Gershwin With Bongos. Jack Warner’s only rule was that “the company made money—and that nothing they released sounded anything like rock ’n’ roll.” Never mind that Elvis was the king of the charts. When Frank Sinatra took up with Reprise Records—whose name, writes Carlin hinted not just at the musical reprise but also at reprisal, “which appealed to Sinatra’s desire to exact revenge on Capitol Records”—the rule held until Mo Ostin and a handful of A&R men and producers seized the reins. Though Ostin’s guiding principle was “Let’s stop trying to make hit records,” everyone involved was won over by the success of a slate of 1960s acts, including the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, and Jimi Hendrix, for whom Ostin “offered a fifty-thousand-dollar contract for three albums, a pretty rich deal for an untested artist.” Pressing records became like minting money. In February 1973 alone, writes the author, “Of the sixteen albums Warner Bros. Records uncorked that month, ten of them had climbed onto Billboard’s best-selling album charts by April.” The good times continued long past the hippie heyday up until the era of MTV and video-friendly artists like Madonna. Alas, Ostin’s hands-off attitude, willingness to share the spoils, and demand for independence increasingly fell athwart of corporate executives as the record business conglomerated, with one particularly obnoxious corporate exec gloating, “We’re coming after all the cowboys.” Ostin and his cowboys rode off into a sunset that grows ever darker as the record business declines, but Carlin captures their glory days without sentimentality or untoward nostalgia.
Not as much fun as Almost Famous, but fans of LP–era rock will enjoy Carlin’s knowledgeable deep dive.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-30156-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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