Customer Reviews

Playback: From The Victrola To Mp3, 100 Years Of Music, Machines, And Money

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I picked this up because the subject matter, sound recording, fascinates me. And Coleman's style is wonderfully readable and consistently interesting--believe me, any subject, no matter how interesting one may find it, can be make painfully tedious with bad writing (as I learned trying to read a recent biography of Michael O'Donoghue). However, as entertaining as this book is, I have to question its accuracy, with the howlers that turn up practically on every other page.

Famous DJ Murray "The K" Kaufman's name is misspelled as "Kaufmanns." Four simultaneous Top 10 hits from the "Saturday Night Fever" LP is said to be "equaling the Beatles' British Invasion coup" (in fact, the Beatles held the top five spots on Billboard's Hot 100 on April 4, 1964). And in his discussion of the RCA/CBS "Speed Wars," Coleman seems to have missed, ignored or chose not to explain the entire reason for the "big hole" in the middle of 45 rpm records: it was specifically designed to accommodate RCA's "quick-change" automatic turntable that was supposed, as they were marketed, to make the change from one side to the next virtually seamless and therefore, so they expected the consumer to believe, be a viable alternative to LPs. This seems a strange omission given that his claimed original intention was to detail the history of the turntable. He also manages to mangle the early history of magnetic tape recording in the U.S. (failing to mention John T. Mullen at all!). And these are only the most obvious boners!

Coleman's insights and speculations on the present and future of music transcription and consumption are interesting, to be sure, and, again, his writing is lively and appealing, but, given the questionability surrounding the facts as he presents them, I must therefore question his conclusions as well as the validity of this history as a whole.

But it is a fun read with a good beat and it's good to dance to, so I'll give it a sixty-three, (...)

I liked this book quite a lot.

It's a small but concise volume, and it offers the reader a good bit of information quite economically. It is also somewhat of a walk down memory lane for technology buffs and people who grew up listening to music in general..in whatever format. It is in some respects a natural history of heard media. Mr. Coleman erects a sturdy platform from which to observe the cluttered landscape of failed and outdated technologies.

His occassionally arch commentary on the actual music that some of these great technological leaps forward produced is amusing and produced more than one audible chuckle. I think that his background as a music reviewer serves him well in this respect. He clearly loves music, and has obviously found himself responding to these new technologies and sounds like all of the rest of us.

In particular, his chapter on the confluence of the Beatles genius and George Martin's technological savvy (Chap. 6- Dreaming in Stereo I think), and the epochal music that emerged from their propitious alliance is brilliant. Absolutely the most clear eyed analysis I've read.

Mark Coleman has certainly packed plenty of information into this little volume about the history of recorded music. The primary focus of "Playback: From The Victrola to Mp3 100 Years of Music, Machines and Money" is how the technology has evolved from the days when Thomas Edison presented the world with the phonograph. It is critical to understand that from the earliest days of recorded music there were always competing technologies. This continues to be the case today. Coleman does a great job of explaining why particular formats won the day and why others simply did not cut the mustard. He also discusses at length the resistance inventors encountered from the musicians who feared that these emerging technologies would cost them their livelihoods.

From the cylander to discs to the LP, from 45 rpm records to 8 track tapes, cassettes, CD's and MP3's, Coleman covers just about all of the formats that have emerged over the past 125 years. For a young person eager to learn all about what came before this is an excellent read. Likewise, for older folks like myself the book gets us up to speed on what is going on out there today. I found "Playback" to be very well-written book. However, I must admit that when I got to the chapter on hip-hop and mixes and club DJ's etc. I felt like I did the first time I walked into a CompUSA store many years ago.....like I was on another planet!!! All in all, "Playback: From The Victrola to Mp3 100 Years of Music, Machines and Money" is well worth your time and attention. Highly recommended!

I found Playback to be not only an excellent journey through both the nuts & bolts technical history of music reproduction but an enjoyable reflection on the music of the time(s). Mr. Coleman finds a comfortable blend of business, technology and musical genealogy that reinforce the clear picture he has constructed of the music industry. With many of the questions asked or implied, I think Playback accelerates our awareness of the astonishing rate through which we are directly affecting our society with technology.

I don't know much about Mark Coleman but my guess is that "Playback" is one of his first books, if not the first.
There's a lot of good information here but Mark has difficulty presenting it in a logical and coherent style. Rather than present the history of music reproduction in a chronological order, Mark seems to randomly jump around from decade-to-decade even within the same chapter!

There's also a lot of errors and mis-information to be found here. Some errors are obvious and should have been corrected thru a simple-proofreading. For example, Mark states that the iPod was introduced by a company called "MacIntosh". He also dismisses the new CD formats like SACD and DVD-audio even before they have yet had a chance to have their day.

There are much larger errors however. The entire book is written with a very myopic view of the recording industry. While I'm sure (in Mark's mind) he did a "ton of research" to write this book, 80% of his history is very New York City centric. Much attention is given to the record flipping DJs of New York City over the past few decades. This is understandable when you remember that the original purpose of this book was to provide a history of the turntable. Also Mark Coleman lives in New York City.

There is very little material concerning California and other parts of the country which (I dare say) have also contributed to the history of recorded music.

If you're interested in the influence of New York City on the recording industry and don't mind a book that randomly jumps around from decade-to-decade, then Playback is a pretty decent book. It's full of errors but still contains some interesting insight into the history of music reproduction.

Chris

Just heard this 'person' on NPR.. the factual basis in error.. he stated that before mechanical recording there was no product to sell.. (he also called P.T. Barnum "H.B. Barnum, which give you the range of this idiot...), don't further sloppy research by buying this.


Background of Music Publishing in the United States

Sheet music publishing was well established in the United States by the early 19th century. Much of the music was printed with engraved plates, although in the 1820s there was a fair amount of music published using the lithographic process. Lithography was not very common until the 1840's, when the development of chromolithography made illustrated title pages economically feasible. Engraved and lithographed music continued to be issued throughout the period of this project. It is interesting to note that many of the Confederate imprints in this collection were lithographed - a process that requires less equipment and materials. Metal was, of course, a commodity required for the war and would have been in very short supply for civilian use. A fine example of Confederate lithography is Edmond Newmann's Battery Wagner, lithographed by B. Duncan in Columbia, South Carolina in 1863 (left). The period after the Civil War saw a great increase in music publishing activity. The stereotype process allowed publishers to issue huge numbers of music for mass consumption. In his article, "Publishing and printing of music" in the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, D.W. Krummel suggests that this period could be called the "age of parlor music." Significant numbers of sheet music continued to be issued in the twentieth century, centering around the area of Manhattan known as "Tin pan alley." The sheer number of "hits" emanating from publishers such as Leo Feist, T.B. Harms, Irving Berlin, Shapiro & Bernstein, Von Tilzer and M. Witmark is remarkable. Sheet music became so popular that it was even issued as supplements to newspapers.