The Music Book Podcast

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089 Caryn Rose on Patti Smith May 12, 2026

Show notes

On this episode, Marc talks with Caryn Rose, author of Why Patti Smith Matters, published by the University of Texas Press, and Three Chords and Blessed Noise: A Patti Smith Tour Chronicle, a chapbook released on her own Till Victory Press imprint. The former is part biography, part memoir of Smith fandom, and part critical analysis of Smith's work and life. The latter is a tour diary that Rose wrote when she went to four Smith concerts held in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Smith's debut album Horses in November of 2025.

Taken together, these books paint a portrait of Smith as a vital artist but also a devoted worker, someone who never stops putting time and energy into her art. Rose herself has been a writer for many decades, so she knows what it's like to treat creativity as a job, and it makes her insights about Smith particularly sharp.

As Rose writes in Why Patti Smith Matters, "This is not a biography and this is not a hagiography. This is a book about Patti Smith's work, because it is her work that matters, and because of that work and the value that she places on her labor within the creative process."

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Caryn Rose!

088 Richard Langston on the Clean May 05, 2026

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On this episode, Marc talks with Richard Langston, author of "The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul," published in April of 2026. It's an excellent oral history of the Clean, the band started by brothers David and Hamish Kilgour along with Peter Gutteridge, and then Robert Scott. Langston tells their story thoroughly through interviews with the band and the many New Zealand music figures who surrounded them as well as American bands who played with them, alongside quotes from reviews and interviews during the band's tenure and archival material like their journals and letters.

As Richard writes, "Once Hamish Kilgour and Robert Scott also agreed to tell the story, David and I discussed how to go about it, and we agreed on an oral history. We liked that format of storytelling as you can hear the unmediated voices of the different participants, giving it an immediacy and the richness of multiple voices talking about the same events."

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Richard Langston!

087 Steve Bowie on Cootie Williams Apr 21, 2026

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On this episode, Marc talks with Steve Bowie, author of "Concerto for Cootie: The Life and Times of Cootie Williams," released in October of 2025. It's an in-depth look at the saga of a revered trumpet player who was a vital member of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman's groups, as well as spending 20 years as a band leader of his own. He was a massively popular artist who consistently filled venues and won jazz awards, but he never had a crossover hit and subsequently his story has been somewhat lost to history. Bowie corrects that omission skillfully, telling the tale of a man who made great art for a living.

As Steve writes, "In Mr. Williams's seventy-four years on this earth, his story has a lot of territory to cover...Most of the available biographical information doesn't dive beyond the surface and consists of a handful of articles and chapters in anthology-style biographies...Willams's years as a leader and the time he spent under the baton of Mercer Ellington has received scant coverage.

You can buy "Concerto for Cootie" here.

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Steve Bowie!

086 Melvin Gibbs on How Black Music Took Over the World Apr 14, 2026

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On this episode, Marc talks with Melvin Gibbs, author of "How Black Music Took Over The World," published today, April 14, 2026. It's a unique look at what Gibbs considers "the science of Black Music," a combination of musical theory, analysis, history, and memoir. Gibbs has played in such diverse projects as Defunkt, Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, Rollins Band, and the Punk-Funk All Stars, as well as collaborating with Arto Lindsay, Bernie Worrell, Marc Ribot, Vernon Reid, and so many more. He brings all this experience and knowledge to his book, combing through history, telling stories of his work, and analyzing how black music works rhythmically, melodically, and culturally.

As he writes, "Even when culturally sensitive people analyze Black music, and they are able to properly situate it in its cultural context, they still have to wrestle with Western cultural hierarchies and tussle with the Western musical tool set. This book is my effort to reset that dynamic, to wrestle out of its straitjacket that confines analysis of Black music. I analyze the music on its own terms, using tools I've uncovered and methods I've either discovered or had passed on to me."

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Melvin Gibbs!

085 Peter J Woods and John Melillo on the Academics of Noise Apr 07, 2026

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On this episode, Marc talks to two authors, Peter J. Woods and John Melillo. Peter is an assistant professor in learning sciences at the University of Nottingham in England, and John is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona. They've both written academic books about noise: Woods' "Learning Through Noise" was published in early 2025, and Melillo's "The Poetics of Noise from Dada to Punk" was published in 2020.

In the former, Woods examines noise as a potential vehicle for education, because "noise music as a distinctive musical genre relies on the production of unique learning ecologies and vice versa." And Melilo's book looks at 20th century poetry through the lens of noise, "constructing a literary history of noise through poetic sound and performance...and tracing how poets figure noise in the disfiguration of poetic voice."

In our chat, Peter and John talk about how they approach something as abstract as noise through academic analysis, and how writing academic books is unique and challenging. Peter and John are both musicians themselves as well as show organizers, so they both bring more than just academic experience to the subject of noise.

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Peter J. Woods and John Melillo!

084 Adele Bertei on the Women of No Wave Mar 31, 2026

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On this episode, Marc talks with Adele Bertei, author of "No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene," released today, March 31, 2026. It's an insightful and super-entertaining chronicle of Bertei's journey through New York music and art in the late 70s, including her time in Contortions and The Bloods as well as her solo career. It also delves deep into so many figures of the scene that Bertei worked and associated, particularly women such as Lydia Lunch, Nan Golden, Vivienne Dick, Patti Smith, and so many more.

As she writes, "I wrote this book to dig deeper. What truly set No Wave apart from other artistic movements of the 1970s and early '80s? The women. They didn't just participate. They set the tone – and they lit the fuse...resisting tired stereotypes and reinventing according to our individual artistic visions...dismantling art's male-dominated paradigms, we ignored the boundaries of gender and genre."

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Adele Bertei!

083 Kembrew McLeod on Blondie and the Downtown Pop Underground Mar 24, 2026

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On this episode, Marc talks with Kembrew McLeod, the author of two closely related books: "Parallel Lines," an entry on Blondie's 1978 album for the 33.3 series published in 2016, and "The Downtown Pop Underground: New York City and the Literary Punks, Renegade Artists, DIY Filmmakers, Mad Playwrights, and Rock 'N' Roll Glitter Queens Who Revolutionized Culture," published in 2018.

Both books cover all the amazing counterculture music and art made in the 60s and 70s in New York, and how it bubbled up into the mainstream. "Parallel Lines" of course focuses on Blondie, but also on the context within which the group operated, particularly as punk was crossing with disco. "The Downtown Pop Underground" extends to many other musicians as well as poets, playwrights, actors, venues, organizers, and much more.

As McLeod writes in Parallel Lines, "Blondie was part of a social network of artists, musicians, intellectuals, and freaks who remade popular culture...Parallel Lines was the multiplatinum punctuation point on a slow-building subcultural explosion, a fuse that was lit in the early 1960s by a handful of outsiders living in the margins of New York City. Today, we inhabit a world that was conjured into existence by these downtown denizens."

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Kembrew McLeod!

082 Ronen Givony on NYC Indie, 2004-2014 Mar 17, 2026

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On this episode, Marc talks with Ronen Givony, author of "Us v. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York (2004-2014)," published in March of 2026. It's a fascinating history of the indie and underground music scene in Brooklyn during a time when Givony ran the Wordless Music concert series, worked for Nonesuch records, and pursued many other music-related activities. Givony divides the book into chapters on individual bands, curators, venues, and publications that had a huge effect on music in New York – groups such as Oneida, Parts and Labor, Weyes Blood, and Vagabon, and spaces such as Glasslands, Silent Bard, and Death by Audio.

As he writes, "This is a book about a dozen or so individuals and bands with a curious claim to fame. A few of them achieved a degree of renown; a few would nearly make it big, only to self-destruct; as of this writing, though, none is a household name. Yet what they did was more decisive for the culture of New York than billionaire philanthropists whose names were carved in concert halls, more enduring than bands with fifty times their sales."

You can buy "Us v. Them" here.

We hope you enjoy Marc's chat with Ronen Givony!

081 Andy Beta on Alice Coltrane Mar 03, 2026

Show notes

On this episode, Marc talks to Andy Beta, author of "Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane," published in March of 2026. It's a thorough and insightful biography of the musician and her various lives as a prodigious young student, a seasoned jazz player, a wife and mother tightly bonded to her husband John Coltrane, and a swami who reached spiritual heights as a teacher and leader. Andy charts all of these versions of Coltrane while also providing close readings of her many amazing recordings.

As he writes, "Even five years ago, it seemed unlikely that Journey in Satchidananda and the music of Alice Coltrane could ever be acknowledged or accepted by a wider audience...Yet I'm reluctant to classify Alice Coltrane as an example of a beloved artist going from obscurity to belated discovery. The stars are always above us, but the conditions on Earth must be right in order to fully glimpse their splendor. In that sense, Alice's "Cosmic Music" was always there, waiting for that moment when a new generation would be ready to hear its message."

You can buy "Cosmic Music" here.

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Andy Beta!

080 Daniel Rachel on Nazi symbols in Rock'n'Roll Feb 17, 2026

Show notes

On this episode, Marc talks with Daniel Rachel, author of "This Ain't Rock'n'Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich," published in February of 2026. It's an enthralling and massively important look at many of the bands and artists who have flirted with, or even flat out adopted, Nazi iconography in their art, music, dress, performances, and more. Rachel lays out plainly and with thorough context the stories of these artists' use of Nazi symbols, in the process showing how rarely their decisions and motivations have been questioned.

As he writes, "The central question of this book concerns the extent to which artists have commented on their flirtation with the swastika and the Third Reich, and whether rock'n'roll – that is musicians, the media, and the record industry – has ever taken responsibility for it...the notable absence of significant archival documentation underscores rock'n'roll's failure to confront its past."

You can buy "This Ain't Rock'n'Roll" here.

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Daniel Rachel!

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