The Music Book Podcast

On this episode, Marc talks with Kembrew McLeod, the author of two closely related books: "Parallel Lines," an entry on Blondie's 1978 album for the 33.3 series published in 2016, and "The Downtown Pop Underground: New York City and the Literary Punks, Renegade Artists, DIY Filmmakers, Mad Playwrights, and Rock 'N' Roll Glitter Queens Who Revolutionized Culture," published in 2018. 
Both books cover all the amazing counterculture music and art made in the 60s and 70s in New York, and how it bubbled up into the mainstream. "Parallel Lines" of course focuses on Blondie, but also on the context within which the group operated, particularly as punk was crossing with disco. "The Downtown Pop Underground" extends to many other musicians as well as poets, playwrights, actors, venues, organizers, and much more.
As McLeod writes in Parallel Lines, "Blondie was part of a social network of artists, musicians, intellectuals, and freaks who remade popular culture...Parallel Lines  was the multiplatinum punctuation point on a slow-building subcultural explosion, a fuse that was lit in the early 1960s by a handful of outsiders living in the margins of New York City. Today, we inhabit a world that was conjured into existence by these downtown denizens."
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Kembrew McLeod!

On this episode, Marc talks with Ronen Givony, author of "Us v. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York (2004-2014)," published in March of 2026. It's a fascinating history of the indie and underground music scene in Brooklyn during a time when Givony ran the Wordless Music concert series, worked for Nonesuch records, and pursued many other music-related activities. Givony divides the book into chapters on individual bands, curators, venues, and publications that had a huge effect on music in New York – groups such as Oneida, Parts and Labor, Weyes Blood, and Vagabon, and spaces such as Glasslands, Silent Bard, and Death by Audio.
As he writes, "This is a book about a dozen or so individuals and bands with a curious claim to fame. A few of them achieved a degree of renown; a few would nearly make it big, only to self-destruct; as of this writing, though, none is a household name. Yet what they did was more decisive for the culture of New York than billionaire philanthropists whose names were carved in concert halls, more enduring than bands with fifty times their sales."
You can buy "Us v. Them" here.
We hope you enjoy Marc's chat with Ronen Givony!

On this episode, Marc talks to Andy Beta, author of "Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane," published in March of 2026. It's a thorough and insightful biography of the musician and her various lives as a prodigious young student, a seasoned jazz player, a wife and mother tightly bonded to her husband John Coltrane, and a swami who reached spiritual heights as a teacher and leader. Andy charts all of these versions of Coltrane while also providing close readings of her many amazing recordings.
As he writes, "Even five years ago, it seemed unlikely that Journey in Satchidananda and the music of Alice Coltrane could ever be acknowledged or accepted by a wider audience...Yet I'm reluctant to classify Alice Coltrane as an example of a beloved artist going from obscurity to belated discovery. The stars are always above us, but the conditions on Earth must be right in order to fully glimpse their splendor. In that sense, Alice's "Cosmic Music" was always there, waiting for that moment when a new generation would be ready to hear its message."
You can buy "Cosmic Music" here.
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Andy Beta!

On this episode, Marc talks with Daniel Rachel, author of "This Ain't Rock'n'Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich," published in February of 2026. It's an enthralling and massively important look at many of the bands and artists who have flirted with, or even flat out adopted, Nazi iconography in their art, music, dress, performances, and more. Rachel lays out plainly and with thorough context the stories of these artists' use of Nazi symbols, in the process showing how rarely their decisions and motivations have been questioned. 
As he writes, "The central question of this book concerns the extent to which artists have commented on their flirtation with the swastika and the Third Reich, and whether rock'n'roll – that is musicians, the media, and the record industry – has ever taken responsibility for it...the notable absence of significant archival documentation underscores rock'n'roll's failure to confront its past."
You can buy "This Ain't Rock'n'Roll" here.
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Daniel Rachel!

On this episode, Marc talks with Howard Fishman, author of "To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse", published in May of 2023. It's part biography, part detective story, as Fishman combs through the facts and myths behind singer and guitarist Connie Converse, who made music in the 1950s that went unreleased in her time, and then vanished in the mid-70s at age fifty, never to be heard from again. Fishman meets her family members, friends, people who saw her play, and more, making the case for her music as important and unique, and painting a picture of a singularly creative person.
As Howard writes, "The more I listened to her music, the more my curiosity grew...In short order, I stopped writing my own music and became devoted only to Connie Converse – to learning more about her; to piecing together her life; to spreading the gospel of her particular brand of genius everywhere and everyhow I could; to, eventually, inserting myself into the life she left behind to the point that – at times – I felt that I'd become part of the plot."
You can buy "To Anyone Who Ever Asks" here.
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Howard Fishman!