The Birth of Loud tells the story of Fender versus Les Paul, how they each got their starts and how they came to end up creating their now well known guitars. It was 42 chapters and a lot of drama and very interesting. I don’t know much about guitars so it was interesting to read about how they were creating them and what materials they were using and what kind of tones they were hoping to achieve out of them. It was also interesting to read that Gibson had denied the idea that was brought to them for one of the guitars! Also interesting was how Les Paul was give a Fender to try out – even though the two were kind of competitors and enemies.
Definitely a really interesting musical read. I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated. This book was released January 15, 2019 through Scribner.
About the Book
A riveting saga in the history of rock ‘n’ roll: the decades-long rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound—Leo Fender and Les Paul—and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.
In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into the primordial elements of rock ’n’ roll—and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul—whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought—to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.
While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman from rural Orange County, Paul was a brilliant but egomaniacal pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s—including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton—adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By the time Jimi Hendrix played “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock in 1969 on his Fender Stratocaster, it was clear that electric instruments—Fender or Gibson—had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.
U2 is rock-and-roll royalty. U2: The Definitive Biography is the first unauthorized biography of the band to document their career. The book contains previously unpublished photographs and interviews with the band’s friends and business associates. It also goes into the bands humanitarian work.
It’s a Question of Space is an astronaut, Clayton C. Anderson, who lived in space for 167 days answering questions sent to him via social media about what it’s like to be in space and be an astronaut. Growing up I always wanted to be an astronaut so I was drawn to this book to find out what it would really be like. There’s also a fun mention of Lance Bass in the book, so that is always a plus.
Mascot Nation focuses on the controversy over Native American Representation in Sports. To be honest I watch a decent amount of sports but have never really thought about how Native Americans are represented especially at the mascot level. I know that news picks up every now and then about wanting to change some of the mascots to something different, but change never really seems to happen. This book goes into more detail about that and how there are polls that seem to be skewed to say that Native Americans aren’t offended by it – and if they aren’t, why should anyone else be? But most of these polls taken can’t prove that only those voting were Native Americans.
I was really looking forward to reading How to Date Men When You Hate Men. Except that the book ended up being not at all what I was expecting and it ended up taking me forever to actually finish it. As someone who is using dating apps and is ‘over it’ and definitely in a state of ‘hating’ men… I thought I would be able to relate more to the book and was looking to laugh a little bit more with someone who is dealing with the same crap that I am. Except it doesn’t seem like the author is dealing with the same crap at all (yet all my friends using the apps seem to be) and she is actually going out with guys but then kind of seems to write off that it isn’t a date. *shrugs* The plus was in the end she didn’t reveal that she had found a guy that she was dating, that would have just been a stab in the heart if it was how it ended. There were a few things that hit home and made me laugh but for the most part I felt like this book missed the mark.
Girls Resist! is an activism handbook for girls who want to try and make some change in the world. One of the ways to fight back mentioned in the book was to see what kind of unconscious bias you have. I took the Career & Family test and was told “Your data suggests a moderate automatic association for Male with Career and Female with Family.” Some of the others I took did not give me the answers I “expected” to get. You can see your biases for yourself at implicit.harvard.edu!
