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THE WICHITA LINEMAN

SEARCHING IN THE SUN FOR THE WORLD'S GREATEST UNFINISHED SONG

An affectionate homage to an indisputably great song, one that readers will listen to with new ears.

A lively biography of the song that Bob Dylan once called the greatest ever written.

Musical maven and GQ editor-in-chief Jones (David Bowie: A Life, 2017, etc.) is plainly smitten by Jimmy Webb’s unlikely story of a telephone repairman who rides a cherry picker into the sky in order to attend to malfunctioning wires, which the author calls “the first existential country song.” That may or may not be true, but it is unforgettable, one of the city-named story-songs that propelled Glen Campbell to fame and a natural successor to Webb and Campbell’s previous hit, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” Webb considered “Lineman” incomplete when he gave it to Campbell, and indeed it is light on lyrics, certainly as compared to his opus, “MacArthur Park.” Campbell ran with it, turning to the extraordinary talents of the session cohort called the Wrecking Crew, with bass player Carol Kaye doing beyond-the-call-of-duty work with her improvised introduction. One flaw that Jones uncovers: Webb had the hero of the song fixing the wrong kind of wire—a high-tension line can experience an overload but not a telephone line, leading him to remark ruefully, “it’s very hard to explain poetic license to a union member.” Still, poetic license aside, the song is instantly recognizable and consistently makes critics’ lists of the best pop songs of its era, if not of all time. Jones focuses ably on meaning and affect, more as they have to do with the lyrics than with the unusual chord pattern, which makes the song so distinctive; a little more attention to the structure of the music and how it evolved would have pleased the hearts of geeks. Even so, the author’s account satisfies, without a wasted word or the usual clichés of pop-culture writing and with plenty of quotations from the principals involved in making the song an enduring hit.

An affectionate homage to an indisputably great song, one that readers will listen to with new ears.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-571-35340-8

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019

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DYLAN GOES ELECTRIC!

NEWPORT, SEEGER, DYLAN, AND THE NIGHT THAT SPLIT THE SIXTIES

An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...

Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.

The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.

An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.

Pub Date: July 25, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

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

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