Roy Lotz's Blog, page 12
November 9, 2022
Review: The Song Machine
The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory by John Seabrook
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I was quite young, somebody gave my brother and me a new toy for Christmas. It was a little plastic speaker, which played 60-second clips from popular songs from tiny memory cards called “HitClips.” Though primitive in retrospect, at the time it seemed like incredible technology—to us kids, at least—and I spent weeks driving my mother crazy by playing and re-playing the one-minute version of NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye...
November 4, 2022
Review: Alan Lomax’s American Patchwork
Alan Lomax was one of the few non-musicians—perhaps the only one—whose influence on American music rivals that of the greatest artists.
He spent the whole of his life studying, collecting, analyzing, and disseminating traditional music, especially that of his own country. Great artists like Muddy Waters might never have gotten their big break if not for Lomax. Other artists, like Bob Dylan, might never have been exposed to formative influences.
Rivers of song flowed through this man, who w...
Review: Alan Lomax’s American PatchworkReview:
Alan Lomax was one of the few non-musicians—perhaps the only one—whose influence on American music rivals that of the greatest artists.
He spent the whole of his life studying, collecting, analyzing, and disseminating traditional music, especially that of his own country. Great artists like Muddy Waters might never have gotten their big break if not for Lomax. Other artists, like Bob Dylan, might never have been exposed to formative influences.
Rivers of song flowed through this man, who w...
October 18, 2022
Review: Over the Edge of the World
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am a sucker for books like this—stories of survival and exploration—and this one must be among the best. It has everything: wild orgies, bloody battles, mutinies, shipwrecks, torture, disease, treasure—and all of this excitement is woven into a historically significant tale. Indeed, aside from being just a darn good story, Magellan’s voyage provides an insightful window in...
July 23, 2022
Review: Miles, the Autobiography
On a hot day a few summers ago, I took a trip to Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, with my dad. It is an enormous place, so even with the official map it took some time to find who we were looking for. Eventually we stopped the car and got out to front a large black slab, inscribed with two bars of music, so shiny that we could see our own reflections in it. This was the tomb of “Sir” Miles Davis (he was a member of the Knights of Malta), the man who had helped inspire my dad to devote himself to...
June 18, 2022
Review: Travel as a Political Act
Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Since Rick Steves has taken over my life lately—don’t ask—I decided to see how all his travelling has affected his politics. I was sort of afraid, given his background, that this book would be little more than a collection banalities and platitudes (“make friends with people from other cultures,” “don’t think your way is the only way,” and that sort of thing); but this book surprised me by being genuinely, well, political. Steves has...
February 24, 2022
Krakow and the Wieliczka Salt Mines
The plane—Ryanair, unfortunately—landed well after dark. My brother and I quickly extracted some złoty from an ATM and then got into a taxi. The driver was a friend of our Airbnb host. Quite polite and charming, he asked us about where we were from, and a halting conversation began.
“Man, it’s really cold,” I observed, lamely, during a lull.
“Yes,” he said in his thick accent. “In Poland, we have winter.”
Indeed, he was right: it was winter. In fact, this was the last weekend of Februar...
February 22, 2022
Review: The Dawn of Everything
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Social theory is largely a game of make-believe in which we pretend, just for the sake of argument, that there’s just one thing going on…
This is a difficult book to review. Not only is it long and extremely ambitious, it is also a beguiling mixture of strengths and weaknesses that are difficult to untangle. To begin with, this book is not, as its title promises, a history of humanity; and considering...
February 7, 2022
A Visit to Auschwitz
The train slowed as it approached its destination. Outside, I could see a bleak landscape of dead trees, soggy fields of gray, covered with a haze of fog. We were in Oświęcim, Poland, about an hour’s train ride from Krakow. It was a cold February day in 2020, and we had arrived to visit Auschwitz.
The walk from the station to the former concentration camp was brief. Beside the road, the remains of the old railroad tracks used to transport prisoners were preserved. After showing our tickets at...
January 17, 2022
Review: Get Back
One would think that, by the year 2021, we would have exhausted all the new material on the Beatles—probably the most thoroughly investigated band in history. I myself thought that, after listening repeatedly to every Beatles album, learning half their songs, performing some of them, and reading several books about them, I would have little left to learn. Yet this documentary shows that the Beatles are not done surprising us.
Here was the situation: It was 1969, and The Beatles were already u...
