Let It Be (33 1/3)
by Colin Meloy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Colin MeloyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-08-10
ISBN: 0826416330
Number of pages: 118
Publisher: Continuum
Book Reviews of Let It Be (33 1/3)
Book Review: Surprisingly fresh
Summary: 5 Stars
I ordered this book because I am taking a class in Pop Music. Our instructor asked us to read one book from the 33 1/3 series and to prepare a short presentation on the book. I chose this book on The Replacements "Let It Be" album.
I expected the book to be a schematic on each of the album's tracks. I was happy that the book was small (just slightly over 100 pages), because I didn't feel ready to read a huge tome deconstructing one Replacements record. I was surprised to find that this book is written by Colin Meloy, lead singer of the Decemberists, a band that I had decided I liked around the same time that I had discovered the Replacements.
This book does not deconstruct each lyric of the album and explain any kind of broad sociological or musicological meaning. This book is more a short autobiography of Meloy himself, but he never strays from explaining the soundtrack of his life as he ages from middle school to high school. And the Replacements were always a big part of his adolescence to early adulthood. Meloy explains how the album affected his own life: how he came to discover the Replacements, how he took the album with him on bus trips with his basketball team, how he shut out the world during play practices and listened to "Androgynous" while others rehearsed, how he cried while feeling rejected by his classmates and listening to "Unsatisfied."
Meloy writes the book from the perspective of a listener, not a musician, journalist or amateur musicologist. His style makes this book appropriate for any reader, because all readers are also listeners.
I highly recommend this book to any music lover, whatever your tastes may be. Listeners from every niche of the music matrix can glean something from this. All listeners understand the power that music, or even one record, can have on a person's life. The point is not how many albums were sold, or how many singles went gold or platinum but rather what the music means to the listener. And Meloy understands this.
Summary of Let It Be (33 1/3)
One of the greatest moments of College Rock in the 1980s, Let It Be had a huge impact on the fans who fell under its spell. For Colin Meloy, growing up in Montana ? a state that?s strangely missing from the tour itineraries of almost every band ? the album was a lifeline and an inspiration. In this disarming memoir, Meloy lovingly recreates those feverish first years when rock music grips you and never lets go. EXCERPT The fact that the Replacements had to endure that sort of Midwestern environment while trying to keep up a hard-case punk-rock image really appealed to my predicament. That they had to live through 40 below winters and frozen pipes, while surrounded by what I perceived as being a wholesome cultural backwater, brought the Replacements closer to me, closer to Montana. They seemed like the kind of band that could be practicing in my garage, my basement, and still be crunching out the same indelible music.Music Books
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