Song For a New Day

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In the near future, before the government placed restrictions on gatherings due to terrorism and disease (The Before), Luce Cannon was a rising star in the music scene. Her song “Blood and Diamonds” put her on the map and increased her following.
And then everything got shut down. Public performance became illegal. Everything stopped (sound familiar?). But in the wake of this, Luce Cannon and others form a resistance, performing shows in secret venues, staying two steps ahead of the law, seeking the connection that only performing can bring.
Meanwhile…Rosemary works for a company called Stage Holo Live, who put on virtual shows—replicating the experience of concert-going through virtual reality. She is a neophyte in the music scene, but her job becomes to find these underground artists and sign them to the monolith that is SHL.
But the goal of commodifying music conflicts with the point of artistic performance, as Rosemary infiltrates the scene and runs into Luce Cannon, whose popularity has only grown in the days since the shutdown.
Two things:
1. This book is amazing. Loved it.

2. It is even more amazing when you realize that this came out a full year before Covid-19! The copyright date is 2019. Scary prophetic, with a few differences.
Luce’s journey through the underground of the After and Rosemary’s journey into this new world highlight everything that is wonderful about performing and sharing that experience live, and what is lost when that connection to the audience is gone. There is nothing like getting up in front of a crowd, and there is truly nothing like being able to say you were there when something amazing happened.
Maybe the point of performance is to challenge the audience to hear your music in a different, un-sanitized way…in a different order, in a different setting, having a shared experience with the crowd: an event that can bind you together and remembered years later. To listen to songs that you might normally skip over, forcing you to really listen to them…Everybody likes “Stairway to Heaven” but what do you think about “Black Dog?”

Great book. Loved it.







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