The Story of Music

This is a fair old undertaking, so it’s impressive that this book is not as long as one might think. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t manage to cram in a lot of interesting stuff. Shore is eloquent and learned in what he writes. There is an enormous breadth of material referenced by him in an assured display of knowledge of his trade. 

From my perspective, I found it enlightening in terms of the evolution seen by music. The enormous shifts within the early twentieth Century in particular in a way that things just made that little bit more sense afterwards. A bit like having looked at one’s location on a map and seeing it’s position in the context of everything else around. For anyone interested in music, this is a good shout. 

 

Try This At Home

I’ve not really listened to Frank Turner much. I’m aware of one or two of his more popular songs but I was going into this relatively blind, mainly as a curiosity from a songwriting angle (In the middle of my own music project at the moment so this was good background reading). Frank Turner is actually quite an accomplished writer. He makes a lot of sense in places and this honest account is quite biographical but also gives a lot of insight into his own songwriting techniques. I don’t really listen to lyrics but, with his work being lyric-centric, I did appreciate a lot of his, each chapter beginning with the lyrics to a particular song. 

For any music fan, this is a really decent read.