All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 [Paperback]

Tony Fletcher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2009

A penetrating and entertaining exploration of New York’s music scene from Cubop through folk, punk, and hip-hop.

From Tony Fletcher, the acclaimed biographer of Keith Moon, comes an incisive history of New York’s seminal music scenes and their vast contributions to our culture. Fletcher paints a vibrant picture of mid-twentieth-century New York and the ways in which its indigenous art, theater, literature, and political movements converged to create such unique music.

With great attention to the colorful characters behind the sounds, from trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie to Tito Puente, Bob Dylan, and the Ramones, he takes us through bebop, the Latin music scene, the folk revival, glitter music, disco, punk, and hip-hop as they emerged from the neighborhood streets of Harlem, the East and West Village, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. All the while, Fletcher goes well beyond the history of the music to explain just what it was about these distinctive New York sounds that took the entire nation by storm. 33 photos

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the Brill Building to CBGB, from Washington Square Park to the Apollo Theater, New York has been the birthplace and center of an astonishing variety of musical trends. In his richly detailed study of 50 years of the city's most important music history, music journalist Fletcher vividly recreates the birth and evolution of jazz, folk, pop, punk and hip-hop as the strains of these musical styles emerged from the urban cacophony of New York. Drawing on interviews and archives of well-known stories, Fletcher nimbly explores the ways that various musical styles benefit from and grow out of their contact with their surrounding cultures. For example, the music scene of the Lower East Side was a direct product of the area's thriving movements in poetry, filmmaking, avant-garde music and experimental theater. Fletcher chronicles the beginnings of the folk movement in the sing-alongs in Washington Square Park and the opening of the Folklore Center on MacDougal Street in 1957, where musicians could hold hootenannies. Fletcher observes the folk scene on the wane as John Sebastian leaves Jim Kweskin's Jug Band and teams with Canadian Zal Yanovsky, formerly of the Mugwumps (which became the Mamas and the Papas), to form the rock band the Lovin' Spoonful, and provides one of the best brief histories of CBGB. Fletcher's terrific music history captures the teeming life of New York's thriving music scene. (Oct.)
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Review

“Fletcher’s commentary melds very different cultures to shows interrelationships and how new genres built upon the foundations of predecessors... Anyone interested in popular music and the rich cultural heritage of New York—indeed, of all of the U.S.—should read this book.” (Booklist )

“Like Alastair Cooke’s America, All Hopped Up is an unapologetically opinionated overview of zeitgeists that sparked their own theme music.... An indispensable reference book for college students and a survival guide for modern musicians.” (Chronogram )

“In All Hopped Up and Ready To Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77, Tony Fletcher has demonstrated extraordinary depth in his research and vibrancy in his writing. Not only was I fascinated by his stories of times and styles about which I knew little, but, in those areas in which I knew a lot, he has connected all the dots for me…oh, yeah, and it’s a damned good read.” (Mike Stoller )

“Thoroughly researched, engaging, and perceptive.” (Library Journal )

“In his richly detailed study of fifty years of the city’s most important musical history, music journalist Fletcher vividly recreates the birth and evolution of jazz, folk, pop, punk and hip-hop as the strains of these urban styles emerged from the urban cacophony of New York.” (Publishers Weekly )

“Fletcher tells the story well.... His gift is enthusiasm.” (The New York Times Book Review )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Original edition (October 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039333483X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393334838
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #759,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tony Fletcher has been writing about music since 1977 when, at the age of 13, he started a 6-page fanzine, Jamming, at school in London. Jamming grew to become a major music monthly, landing exclusive interviews with Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend and U2 and helping to introduce the likes of Scritti Politti, Aztec Camera and the Homosexuals to a wider audience (or not). The success of Jamming also propelled Fletcher into the world of freelance journalism and television work before the magazine folded in 1986 (having optimistically attempted to expand in the middle of a deep recession) and Fletcher discovered the joy of writing books.

Falling in love at first sight with New York, Fletcher moved across the Atlantic in 1988, living in various roach-infested apartments on the East Side of Manhattan while contributing regularly to New York Newsday, New York Press, Spin, and Details - back when print media was still considered cutting edge - and bringing his love of music into a stint as resident DJ for Communion, an acclaimed weekly alternative music night at the Limelight club. He continued freelancing as a television journalist and producer, mainly for the cult classic Rapido and its various offspring, and found himself with an expense account for the first (and last) time in his life when hired as a major record company A&R consultant during the music industry's lucrative swan song period of the mid-nineties.

But his main love has always been the written word. He has contributed to countless magazines and newspapers on several continents, some of which even paid him on time, and is the author of several books. These include the best-selling biography on Keith Moon ("Dear Boy" in the UK, just "Moon" in the States), the first ever biography of R.E.M. (updated and expanded into something of a director's cut, as "Remarks Remade"), a song-by-song chronology of The Clash, a biography of the highly influential Liverpool band Echo and The Bunnymen, plus a novel of New York nightlife, "Hedonism," which would come with a Parental Advisory sticker except that, thankfully, publishers don't believe in such things.

In 2005, Fletcher left the funk and soul of brownstone Brooklyn, where he'd been living since 1996, for the relative peace and quiet of New York State's beautiful Catskills. There, tucked into a mountainside between Woodstock and Phoenicia, he resides with his wife, two sons, Rickenbacker, Hammond B-3, cat, and various wildlife. Ironically for such a bucolic existence, his most recently published book is entitled "All Hopped Up and Ready To Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77," which was published by W. W. Norton in October 2009 to a significantly positive reception.

Since the year 2000, Fletcher has been posting regularly at his web site, www.ijamming.net, where he muses upon his love of running, skiing, writing, wine, women - and, of course, song. More recently, he has shown up on http://twitter.com/TonyFletcher. In the year 2010, he completed a memoir of his schooldays, entitled Boy About Town, and began work on a major biography of The Smiths, for publication by William Heinemann (UK) and Crown (USA) in 2012.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great History of New York Music, November 21, 2009

By 

William Olmstead (Banning, Ca.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 (Paperback)

A great overview of New York musical history from the Twenties to the Seventies. It covers jazz, folk, doo wop, rock, punk, etc. My only complaint of this great book is that it is more about the music business than the individual artists. There is however information about the artists but I could have used more. That said, this is an excellent read..

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Hopped Up and Ready to Read, February 17, 2010

By 

Daniel Tandarich "Yellowjacket" (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 (Paperback)

There are a lot of "golden ages" when it comes to the various music scenes in NYC. Many of us did not have the privilege of standing stage-side when the likes of the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, DJ Kool Herc, Dizzy Gillespie, the Stillettos, or Blondie first took an audience under their spell. With a reading of All Hopped Up and Ready to Go, one no longer needs to feel that they missed out. Tony Fletcher goes right to the source on the many different music scenes and he speaks with individuals who were on the front lines of many a music battle as well as the more underground players. Mr. Fletcher weaves one musical storyline into another as the tales of these musicians bleed over into the lives of the next takers of the rhythmic baton. For this reader, the early disco houses and the burgeoning rap scene gave tons of knowledge. And I can never get enough of the punk scene centered around CBGBs and Max's Kansas City. You can tell the author loves his subject and that makes it all the more fascinating for us. Highly recommended!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read, not your typical music book, December 1, 2009

By 

Mark Lerner - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 (Paperback)

A real treat for any music fan or musician. The book has an unusual approach, revealing the roots of various NYC musical scenes by focusing on key players. The subtitle is telling: "Music from the Streets of New York." It's not an exhaustive history of Afro-Cuban jazz, the folk revival, punk, or disco. Rather it shows you how those genres (and others) were formed in and by the city. It sketches a lot of fascinating connections between musicians and industry folks, and once a genre has really taken hold and a few groups have had hits, the book moves on, because that's when the story becomes less of a local phenomenon and more of an international one (and in most cases, a familar story).

I looked forward to the chapters on Brill Building pop, Greenwich village folk, and punk; I was pleasantly surprised to find out how much the other chapters, particularly the early ones, captured my interest. Fletcher doesn't fall prey to the hyperbole that I find brings down a lot of music writing, but he writes with enthusiasm and wit. I was moved to check out some of the acts that I wasn't familiar with.