071 Joe Bonomo on Writing Essays About Music

On this episode, Marc talks with Joe Bonomo, author of "Play This Book Loud: Noisy Essays," published in May of 2025. It's a collection of pieces Bonomo wrote for various publications, primarily the website The Normal School, covering a wide range of music subjects and formats. Among the topics explored are the Cramps, the Who, the Stooges, the Jam, an exploration of the history of the song "Tobacco Road," a delving into a early 70s compilation sponsored by Dick Clark, and even a thorough examination of a 7-inch that 7-11 gave out to customers in the late 60s called "Dance the Slurp."Joe is the author of several other books including Sweat, a biography of the Fleshtones, an entry in the 33.3 series on AC/DC's Highway to Hell, and a previous collection of essays called Field Recordings from the Inside.You can buy Play This Book Loud here.We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Joe Bonomo!

On this episode, Marc talks to Sahan Jayasuriya, author of "Don't Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen," published in August of 2025. It's a thorough look at the band who began in the early 80s as one of the most vital and unique hardcore groups, but quickly evolved past that tag toward mixture of punk, metal, and proto-grunge that influenced many indie-rock bands of the 90s. Sahan tells the Die Kreuzen story through interviews with band members, people who worked with them and helped them, and many musicians who admired them both then and now.As he writes, "It's debatable whether Die Kreuzen could have ever happened at any other time or in any other place besides the American Midwest during the 1980s... In hindsight, Die Kreuzen’s eventual formation feels inevitable: four wildly talented individuals with shared influences who were seemingly made to play music together."You can buy Don't Say Please here.We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Sahan Jayasuriya!

On this episode, Marc talks to Ellen Koskoff, author of "Bittersweet Sounds of Passage: Balinese Gamelan Angklung Cremation Music," published in July of 2025. It's a fascinating look into a specific kind of gamelan music in Bali that is an essential part of cremation ceremonies, performed by village members who don't even consider themselves musicians. Koskoff learned to play this music herself by living in Bali and joining in with ensembles there, revealing a tradition that is unlike anything in Western culture. In the process, she captures the perspective of the people playing in these groups, who regard the music as essential to the dharma that sustains all things.As Ellen writes, "The history and meaning of gamelan angklung and its importance to contemporary Balinese cremations is hazy; written sources, recordings, and other forms of scholarship are almost nonexistent...yet, this music, most often performed by everyday villagers, is considered by all Balinese to be a necessary component of village life and death."You can buy Ellen's book here.We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Ellen Koskoff!

On this episode, Marc talks with Pat Blashill, author of "Someday All the Adults Will Die!: The Birth of Texas Punk," released in September of 2025. It's a narrated oral history of the early days of punk in Texas, exploring the many bands and figures who created a distinct strain of punk rock in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, including Big Boys, the Dicks, MDC, and Butthole Surfers. Pat weaves the voices of musicians, journalists, venue runners, fans, and more to paint a picture of a scene that used punk to break punk's rules.As Pat writes, "If punk gave many of us a way to understand the word, it also became a way for us to explain Texas and Texans to the rest of the planet. Punk didn't flourish in the Lone Star State in spite of local conditions but because of them."You can buy Pat's book here.We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Pat Blashill!

On this episode, Marc talks with Ian Thompson, author of "Synths, Sax, & Situationists: The French Musical Underground 1968-1978," published in August of 2025. It's a detailed history of a group of French rock bands who, inspired by the protests and civil unrest of May 1968 as well as psych rock and free jazz, broke with convention to create some of the most original music of the 70s. The best known of these groups were Gong, Magma, and Heldon, all of which Thompson covers in depth, but he also delves into bands who haven't gotten their due such as Lard Free and Moving Gelatin Plates, and ones who barely existed yet made a mark, such as Barricade and Cheval Fou. As Ian writes, "It slowly dawned on me that if other anglophones were to discover this essential music they would need a reference - in English. And so, for the last five years I’ve digested everything I could find on the topic and interviewed almost fifty musicians from the scene. Now, at long last, the result of my efforts rests in your hands."You can buy "Synths, Sax, & Situationists" here.We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Ian Thompson!

On this episode, Marc talks to J. Hoberman, author of "Everything is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde--Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop," released in May of 2025. It's a fascinating, real-time history of the art coursing through New York City in the 1960s, with vivid descriptions of plays, concerts, events, political movements, and all other types of creative moments. Hoberman, the legendary former film critic at the Village Voice, tells his tales in an excited rush of detail-drenched scenes, conjuring the adrenaline of a time when the past was broken and the future was unclear.As he writes, "[New York] was the site of demonstrations, insurrections, strikes, trials, sit-ins, be-ins, bombings, and, as a music, all manner of public theater – one giant happening on an epic urban stage...Although too young to have participated in most of the events I evoke, I am old enough to have experienced what might be termed the normalization of cultural craziness that characterized the 1960s."You can buy "Everything is Now" here.We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with J. Hoberman!

On this episode, Marc talks with Audrey Golden, author of "Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats," published on July 15, 2025. It's an innovative and thorough biography of the crucial UK band the Raincoats, told through an unconventional structure which divides their history not into eras, but "lives" - those of the band members, their supporters, and the people they inspired.As Audrey writes, "I consider this book–constructed from a Raincoats material archive built by Ana, as well as an archive of oral history and additional research materials collected by me–to be a layered feminist archive unto itself."You can buy Audrey's book here, and you can hear her talk about her previous book, "I Thought I Heard You Speak: Woman At Factory Records,” on our 14th episode here. We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Audrey Golden!

On this episode Marc talks with Jason Schneider, author of "That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of ‘Hey Joe’ and Popular Music’s History of Violence," published in June of 2025. It's a fascinating look at the way the song "Hey Joe" has weaved its way through music over the course of the past six decades, from its origin in the hands of a singer and guitarist named Billy Roberts, through its height of fame when covered by Jimi Hendrix, through numerous different covers, interpretations, and re-imaginings. As Jason writes, "Great art, even in the form of a three-and-a-half- minute song, exists because of its ability to withstand attempts at dissection. “Hey Joe” is still being performed and recorded today because its expression of raw human emotion remains undiminished."You can buy "That Gun in Your Hand" here.We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Jason Schneider!

On this episode, Marc talks with Brian Anderson, author of "Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection," published in June of 2025. It's a detailed and compelling tale of how the Grateful Dead, over the first decade of their existence, continually created and expanded their own sound system into a gigantic tower of speakers known as the Wall of Sound. Scores of techs, roadies, and other fascinating figures worked on this monstrous array of gear, which delivered clear, almost mystical sound throughout the venues to which the Dead hauled it.As Brian writes, "Our world has been radically shaped by the Dead, regardless of one's own relationship with the band. And their fabled PA of the early 70s is perhaps the most striking example of that outsized influence."You can buy "Wall of Sound" here.We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Brian Anderson!

On this episode, Marc talks with Dean Van Nguyen, author of "Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur," published in May of 2025. It's a fascinating look at the socially-conscious life of rapper 2Pac, developed while growing up around radical black activism, particularly that of his mother Afeni Shakur of the Black Panther Party. This includes a thrilling opening section which serves as a kind of miniature history of the African-American left in the 60s, 70s, and beyond. As Dean writes, "Words for My Comrades is the story of how Tupac Shakur came to exemplify radicalism and revolution...How did a man who made music to dance to find himself elevated to a status that's commonly the realm of civil rights leaders and guerrilla warfare commanders?"You can buy "Words for My Comrades" here, and we hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Dean Van Nguyen!