Joe Bonomo – författare

More than at any time in human history, our daily lives are scored and imprinted by music. We listen while bicycling, while taking walks, on the train to and from work, and at home on stereos or streaming. We’re immersed in music and music making virtually 24/7. Why is music such an essential part of the way we live, and how does it enrich and fasten itself to our very beings?Play This Book Loud tunes in to many voices, from mainstream bands to obscure artists, from Lydia Loveless singing her heart out and DJ Shadow/Cut Chemist endlessly crate digging, from the Detroit Cobras playing for a few dozen to Green Day filling stadiums, from Riot Grrrl punk to the traditional styles of Connie Francis, from the Stooges’ messiness and psychedelic rock to the careful orchestration of anonymous session players and 1960s commercial jingles.In this compelling and exuberant book, song by song, Joe Bonomo moves between zones of listening, turned on while wearing headphones or watching a band in a club. With the heart of a fan and a generous ear, he enthusiastically explores the reasons music, and those who devote themselves to it, matters so deeply. Play This Book Loud explores our urge for sonic existence.

It's June 2001. Keith Streng steers a cramped mini-van north along Lincoln Avenue in Chicago while Peter Zaremba, Bill Milhizer and Ken Fox sprawl in the back nursing hangovers and road weariness. They pull into the Apache, quaintly described as a "hooker hotel" by local folk, and drag their gear and merchandise into a decrepit room. Blood is splattered on the ceiling, roaches scurry on the walls and grainy porn blares on the television. Next door, two obese half-naked guys sit on a bed with an enormous bottle of cheap bourbon between them, staring idly at the TV.The Fleshtones are celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary, but there aren't any sold-out venues or golden gifts to cash in. A quarter century into it and the guys still crash on promoters' floors or share small beds in dingy hotels like the Apache."I don't want fame, I want notoriety," Peter Zaremba once said, and in the years since making that statement he has indeed become the charismatic leader of his own cult. The Fleshtones stand as the ultimate example of principle, pride and determination.A group of working-class guys testifying to a cause in the face of odds stacked so highly against them that they are destined to forever play in the shadows. "Sweat" is a bare-knuckled account of road-paving rock & roll played in the real world, where success measured over the long haul is redefined each and every hard-won morning.

In "Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found", author Joe Bonomo delves deeply into the accidental intersection between fading American Rockabilly and the ascending Beatlemania. By first taking a look at the critical years before his famed night in 1964 at West Germany's Star-Club, then the tumultuous years that follow, culminating in his years on the American Country charts in the late 60s/early 70s, Bonomo brings Jerry Lee Lewis to life in new and fascinating ways. By now it's an old story, as indelible as Juliet on the balcony or Paul Bunyan in the forest, bearing in this case the imagery of trashy southern culture, a sinning young man, and the myth of the commercial rise-and-fall. The story of Louisiana hellcat Jerry Lee Lewis and his 1958 wedding scandal - it was discovered that at 22 he'd married his 13-year old second cousin, Myra, before he was divorced from his second wife - took precedence long ago over the man himself and the music he makes. Because scandal is sexier than toiling in long shadows, the incident will forever taunt and haunt Lewis as he plays and performs, and after his death will likely be the lead in each of his obituaries.In "Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found" author Joe Bonomo deigns to let others focus on the scandal and delves more deeply into the accidental intersection between fading American Rockabilly and the ascending Beatlemaina. By first taking a look at the critical years before his famed night in 1964 at West Germany's Star-Club - what that meant not only for him but the entire live album-making world - then the tumultuous years that follow, culminating in his years on the American Country charts in the late 60s/early 70s, Bonomo brings Jerry Lee Lewis to life in new and fascinating ways. In spite of plummeting record sales and concert fees, a media savaging of his personal character, a change of record labels and management, and a considerable upturn in drug and alcohol abuse, Jerry Lee Lewis persevered. In between being betrayed and ignored, he would record one of the greatest rock & roll performances in history. This book examines and explains the almighty impact of the Father of Rock'n'Roll.

This is a brilliant study of the creation, impact, and legacy of one of rock's great albums, and a hymn to the nature of teenage fandom. Released in 1979, AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" was the infamous last album recorded with singer Bon Scott, who died of alcohol poisoning in London in February of 1980. Officially chalked up to "Death by Misadventure," Scott's demise has forever secured the album's reputation as a partying primer and a bible for lethal behavior, branding the album with the fun chaos of alcoholic excess and its flip side, early death. The best songs on "Highway To Hell" achieve Sonic Platonism, translating rock & roll's transcendent ideals in stomping, dual-guitar and eighth-note bass riffing, a Paleolithic drum bed, and insanely, recklessly odd but fun vocals. Joe Bonomo strikes a three - chord essay on the power of adolescence, the durability of rock & roll fandom, and the transformative properties of memory. Why does "Highway To Hell" matter to anyone beyond non-ironic teenagers?Blending interviews, analysis, and memoir with a fan's perspective, "Highway To Hell" dramatizes and celebrates a timeless album that one critic said makes 'disaster sound like the best fun in the world.' 'A growing Alexandria of rock criticism' - "Los Angeles Times", 2008. 'Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just aren't enough - "Rolling Stone". 'A brilliant series...each one a word of real love' - "NME"(UK).

Legendary New Yorker writer and editor Roger Angell is considered to be among the greatest baseball writers. He brings a fan’s love, a fiction writer’s eye, and an essayist’s sensibility to the game. No other baseball writer has a through line quite like Angell’s: born in 1920, he was an avid fan of the game by the Depression era, when he watched Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig hit home runs at Yankee Stadium. He began writing about baseball in 1962 and continued through the decades, blogging about baseball’s postseasons until his death in 2022.No Place I Would Rather Be tells the story of Angell’s contribution to sportswriting, including his early short stories, pieces for the New Yorker, autobiographical essays, seven books, and the common threads that run through them. His work reflects rapidly changing mores as well as evolving forces on and off the field, reacting to a half century of cultural turmoil, shifts in trends and professional attitudes of ballplayers and executives, and a complex, discerning, and diverse audience. Baseball is both change and constancy, and Roger Angell is the preeminent essayist of that paradox. His writing encompasses fondness for the past, a sober reckoning of the present, and hope for the future of the game.

Legendary New Yorker writer and editor Roger Angell is considered to be among the greatest baseball writers. He brings a fan’s love, a fiction writer’s eye, and an essayist’s sensibility to the game. No other baseball writer has a through line quite like Angell’s: born in 1920, he was an avid fan of the game by the Depression era, when he watched Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig hit home runs at Yankee Stadium. He began writing about baseball in 1962 and continued through the decades, blogging about baseball’s postseasons until his death in 2022.No Place I Would Rather Be tells the story of Angell’s contribution to sportswriting, including his early short stories, pieces for the New Yorker, autobiographical essays, seven books, and the common threads that run through them. His work reflects rapidly changing mores as well as evolving forces on and off the field, reacting to a half century of cultural turmoil, shifts in trends and professional attitudes of ballplayers and executives, and a complex, discerning, and diverse audience. Baseball is both change and constancy, and Roger Angell is the preeminent essayist of that paradox. His writing encompasses fondness for the past, a sober reckoning of the present, and hope for the future of the game.

Greil Marcus once said to an interviewer, "There is an infinite amount of meaning about anything, and I free associate." For more than four decades, Marcus has explored the connections among figures, sounds, and events in culture, relating unrelated points of departure, mapping alternate histories and surprising correspondences. He is a unique and influential voice in American letters.Marcus was born in 1945 in San Francisco. In 1968 he published his first piece, a review of Magic Bus: The Who on Tour, in Rolling Stone, where he became the magazine’s first records editor. Renowned for his ongoing "Real Life Top Ten" column, Marcus has been a writer for a number of magazines and websites and is the author or editor of over fifteen books. His critique is egalitarian: no figure, object, or event is too high, low, celebrated, or obscure for an inquiry into the ways in which our lives can open outward, often unexpectedly.In Conversations with Greil Marcus, Marcus discuses in lively, wide-ranging interviews his books and columns as well as his critical methodology and broad approach to his material, signaled by a generosity of spirit leavened with aggressive critical standards.