Arts
Visit QueenofPeaches.com for complete show notes! Today I’m welcoming back to the show my first repeat guest--who also happens to be the human I’m sheltering in place with--the writer, musician, and scholar Brian Cremins. Brian’s joining me today for a recorded version of an ongoing conversation we’ve been having basically since we first met a little over a decade ago, all about our favorite books about music. Because we’re both writers and both musicians, it turns out we have a lot of thoughts about the intersection of those two disciplines! We both chose a small stack of books that are important to us individually, though of course there’s a lot of overlap between our lists, and of course there were dozens of other books that came to mind during the course of this conversation. In talking about those books, we also discuss the way music critics listen to music versus the way musicians listen to music; how descriptive language can mystify what a musician is actually doing in a way that might not be helpful; how the best books can feel more like traveling companions rather than destination points; and spending time imagining what certain albums sounded like in the days before everything was instantly available to us online. Plus, Brian finally goes on the record with his comparison between the Hall and Oates song “I Can’t Go for That” and Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place.”