Microgroove: Forays into Other Music

John Corbett

Published by Duke University Press 2015

Microgroove

Forays into Other Music

John Corbett

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822375531

Overview
Contents

About this book

Microgroove continues John Corbett's exploration of diverse musics, with essays, interviews, and musician profiles that focus on jazz, improvised music, contemporary classical, rock, folk, blues, post-punk, and cartoon music, as well as painting, design, dance, and poetry.

Author / Editor information

John Corbett is a music critic, record producer, and curator. He is the author of Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein, also published by Duke University Press. His writing has appeared in Downbeat, The Wire, the Chicago Reader, and numerous other publications. He is the co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery in Chicago.

Reviews

"Corbett has just published a terrific new anthology of his writing called Microgroove, the long-delayed follow-up to his 1994 book Extended Play. . . . There's a lot of great stuff in the new book—which went through multiple iterations over the years, scrapped and revisited several times—but in his introduction to a piece called 'Twenty-Seven Enthusiasms: A Spontaneous Listening Session,' Corbett expresses a major part of what makes his work so special. 'Show-and-tell was always my favorite part of school,' he writes, eventually explaining that 'you accumulate things not to own them, but to share them.' It's what he's done as a writer, a music presenter, and, in recent years, a gallerist, at Corbett vs. Dempsey."

-- Peter Margasak Chicago Reader

"One of the more interesting features of Microgroove is the inclusion of multiple pieces on some of the artists. This allows Corbett to consider them from different angles or over time, providing a fuller picture of their art in the process. That, combined with the eclectic scope of Corbett’s interests, makes of Microgroove a rich, multifaceted survey of some of the more challenging artists of the last two decades."

-- Daniel Barbiero Avant Music News

"The far-ranging scope of the 53 essays and interviews collected in these nearly 500 pages, dating from 1993 to just last year, reminds us that even within music’s commercially neglected fringes complex gradations of sub-genre exist, separating the hardcore avant-garde devotee from one who thinks they’re down because they own a copy of Space Is the Place. ... But first and foremost [Corbett] is a devotee of challenging and outré sounds, and his essays are most compelling when he dives headfirst into his chronicles with a fan’s enthusiasm and verve. ...These pieces beautifully balance serious musical scholarship and critical analysis with the kind of collar-grabbing, “give-this-a-listen” excitement that draws us all to music in the first place."

-- Matt R. Lohr JazzTimes

"Corbett, like the best kind of record store crate digger, pinpoints the association between acknowledged innovators and the achievements of lesser-known figures. . .. [T]he book’s key achievement is how Corbett’s psychiatrist-like probing questions elicit the most definitive and/or instructive statements about their art from certain musicians."

-- Ken Waxman MusicWorks

"John Corbett is a smart guy who really, really loves music, and his intelligence and enthusiasm come through in every one of the essays and articles in this volume of his collected writings.... Anyone interested in what was happening on the cutting edge of music during the years these articles appeared needs to read this anthology of John Corbett’s writing."

-- Ed Hazell ARSC Journal

"[E]ssential ... a must for fans of out music."

-- Andrew Lambert Bomb

"John Corbett's singular critical voice is wildly alive in his latest book, a compendium of previous writings, sober reﬂections, clever visuals, idiosyncratic interviews, and post-genre insights into the thriving ecology of knowledge that is the contemporary music scene. At once this is a book that takes its place alongside other distinctive voices in the pell-mell topography of recent musical criticism, from Greg Tate and Lester Bangs to Nat Hentoff and Nate Chinen, and the work of an itinerant witness bearing testimony marked by a vast respect and love for improvised musicking and musical diversity.... Microgroove is an eloquent, readable, playful testimony to the otherness of music as an allegory for creative freedom and as a generative social practice that refuses limitations."

-- Daniel T. Fischlin Journal of Popular Music Studies

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Preface: Tympanum of the Other Frog Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
One. On the Road, Into the Cul- de- Sac Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
Two. Exigeneses of Creative Music Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Three. Ululations and Other Vocal Stimulants Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Four. The Horn Section Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Five. Track Marks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	295
Six. Melodic Line and Tone Color Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341
Seven. The Texture of Refusal Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	377
Afterword: A Concise History of Music Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	417
Grooving On: Selected Listening Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	423
Credits Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	443
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	447

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 496
Illustrations
- Other: 60 illustrations

eBook

Published: September 3, 2015
ISBN: 9780822375531