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A review by storiesofsilva
Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years In New York That Changed Music Forever by Will Hermes
4.0
This is a really great, fascinating, complete overview of the 1973-1977 New York music scene. Going into this book, I thought it would only give a cursory description of the more well-known venues and artists, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did Hermes cover almost every genre of music present in New York at the time year-by-year, but he also detailed important cultural and political changes of the time. (For example, he would go from describing a concert at CBGB's to street artists working on their masterpiece and even to the New York Mayoral elections.)
I would offer two caveats:
1) you should probably be somewhat familiar with the music mentioned in the book, because when Hermes mentions that a young Thurston Moore attended several shows that he talks about, you should probably realize that this was a major inspiration to Sonic Youth
2) be ready for a pretty fast-changing narrative. Hermes tries to keep everything in chronological order, which means a lot of jumping back and forth between music scenes, artists, dates, etc.
I recommend listening to Spotify playlists of all the material mentioned in the book to complete your experience reading "Love Goes to Buildings On Fire".
I would offer two caveats:
1) you should probably be somewhat familiar with the music mentioned in the book, because when Hermes mentions that a young Thurston Moore attended several shows that he talks about, you should probably realize that this was a major inspiration to Sonic Youth
2) be ready for a pretty fast-changing narrative. Hermes tries to keep everything in chronological order, which means a lot of jumping back and forth between music scenes, artists, dates, etc.
I recommend listening to Spotify playlists of all the material mentioned in the book to complete your experience reading "Love Goes to Buildings On Fire".