Illinois Press Book Blog

The March 31, 2009, edition of the New York Daily News includes a review of John Broven’s new book Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ‘n’ Roll Pioneers.

“A fascinating new book about the early independent labels of rock ‘n’ roll underscores again the central role that radio played in turning rock ‘n’ roll into the musical language of modern American popular culture. Record Makers and Breakers … is a rich and engaging history of those early years, largely told through the words of the smart guys, hustlers and Runyonesque characters who shaped them.”

And, the May 2009 issue of Downbeat says:

“Broven … keeps the text moving right along, his fill-in facts and explanations welcome, his segues from interviewees’ words to his own smooth and easy.  The author clearly loves the music and holds the achievements of the record people in high regard, but he stays level-headed and avoids overpraising his heroes.”

NPR’s Morning Edition program on March 25, 2009, included a segment on the recently deceased University of Illinois Press author Archie Green.

Green moved comfortably through the halls of Congress and the halls of ivy, but he preferred life on scaffolding or in a welder’s shed or machine shop. Work was where his heart was — doing it and convincing others to document what they did.

As we’ve announced previously, we are one of three university presses sharing a Mellon Foundation grant to fund a new series called Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World. Our partners in collaboration are the University Press of Mississippi and the University of Wisconsin Press, with the American Folklore Society.

For reasons having nothing to do with foolishness or federal taxes, the deadline for receipt of grant proposals for first books in the series has been extended from April 1 to April 15.

You can learn more about FSMW and the submission guidelines at the series homepage, on its Facebook page, or on its Squidoo page. By popular demand, we remain Twitter-free.

Jacob Weisberg wrote a column in Slate this week titled “Book End: How the Kindle will change the world.” I continue to think about how my family would incorporate a Kindle.  First, my wife who reads the most in our family (3-5 books a week, 15-20 monthly magazine subscriptions) always says, “I sit in front of a computer all day. The last thing I want to do when I get home is look at a computer screen.” She’ll be hard to convince. Plus, most of the books that she reads are checked out for free from our local public library. It will be difficult to find $30-50 a week to download new titles (Kindle users, feel free to step in and explain what I might be missing in rental possibilities and the current pricing structure).

Also, we’re a one computer family. Our microwave is used more as a timer for the current user’s screen time than it is to cook food. I can’t see passing one Kindle around among the five of us and I can’t see purchasing 5 Kindles.

I’m sure that there is some middle ground, I just can’t visualize it yet in our household.

E-book pirates, that is.  NPR’s All Things Considered reports on e-book piracy and publishers’ efforts to use digital rights management (or “DRM” if you’re hip) to protect their titles against digital piracy.  Usually this means restricting use of the e-book to only the device you used to download the file — so, just like the salad bar at your favorite family steakhouse: No Sharing.  If you want to borrow someone else’s e-book and it has DRM, you’ll have to borrow their entire Kindle or laptop or whatever.

Naturally, this situation does present some drawbacks:

DRM could become a problem if the Kindle goes bust — then all those people who bought Kindle eBooks with DRM will have no way to read them because no other device can open the files.

Anyone still have their old Betamax tapes and HD DVD discs?

The April 2009 issue of Reason magazine contains a favorable review of the new book Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power.

[A] captivating and vividly detailed new biography. . . . With Black Maverick, T.R.M. Howard’s achievements have finally received the attention they deserve.

This past weekend Champaign Centennial High School won the class 3A state boys basketball championship over Oswego.  Centennial’s semi-final opponent helped pave the way with a ”fashion don’t.”

Inside Higher Ed reports today that the University of Michigan Press is changing to a digital monograph model.

Within two years, press officials expect well over 50 of the 60-plus monographs that the press publishes each year — currently in book form — to be released only in digital editions. Readers will still be able to use print-on-demand systems to produce versions that can be held in their hands, but the press will consider the digital monograph the norm. Many university presses are experimenting with digital publishing, but the Michigan announcement may be the most dramatic to date by a major university press.

Our distinguished American music list ranges from Aaron Copland to Bill Monroe, Marian Anderson to Marian McPartland, with Elvis, Louis Prima, Hazel Dickens, and John Cage rounding out the ranks. Our publicity manager used to work in the music business, so brings a keen personal interest to his work on behalf of the list.

If Michael could choose his workspace, I expect that he’d relocate to Mr. Blackmore’s basement so long as he could continue pitching our books uninterrupted. Brock Read’s evocative description of a college radio reunion is a must-read for anyone who appreciates the vintage of vinyl.

To this day, my father speaks in hushed tones of rare visits to Mr. Blackmore’s legendary basement, which was lined, floor to ceiling, with a collection of more than 50,000 jazz LP’s that he eventually bequeathed to the university. (For many years, the room also held one of several miniature transmitters, dispersed throughout Hamilton, that amplified WRCU’s signal.)

“You’d ask him, ‘What was Count Basie doing in 1947?’” said Robert J. Fraiman Jr., an alumnus who spoke at the dedication, “and he’d disappear into the basement and come back seven or eight minutes later with an armful of records.”

As a historian, I’m not supposed to believe that history repeats itself, but sometimes it’s tempting.

As anyone who reads the newspaper knows, comparisons of the current “economic crisis” and the Great Depression abound. The similarities extend to the cultural realm. Art suffers during hard times: endowments plummet, donations stall, fewer people travel, museums lay off staff and freeze hiring.

In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration created federal relief projects for artists, writers, actors, and musicians. Community art centers created by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project offered free art classes, lectures, and traveling exhibitions.  Children’s classes were filled to overflowing. Community art centers aimed to do away with the aura of elitism surrounding art museums, to make art accessible to “the common people.”

Today, museums are making similar efforts. The New York Times recently reported that museums are experimenting with innovative ways to make themselves more relevant to a broader audience, and to play a larger role in education. (”Wish You Were Here,” Carol Vogel; “When the Gallery is a Classroom,” Dorothy Spears, March 19, 2009.)

History isn’t exactly repeating itself though. There is telltale evidence of twenty-first century issues. The Oakland Museum in California recently invited visitors to come to the museum using environmentally friendly transportation and wearing sustainable materials like recycled curtains and used clothing. The attraction was an exhibition of mid-20th century fashion, music, art and architecture accompanied by the artwork of 500 local high school students.  The museum hopes that by moving “away from the authoritarian voice of a museum” and giving the museum space over to young people and contemporary issues, they will attract new audiences. The MoMA invited 150 people to “put the ‘oM’ in MoMA” with a Saturday morning yoga class. The Hammer Museum at UCLA organized a “bike night,” with valet parking and a free film showing.

Rather than creating arts programs, the Obama administration plans to increase funding for arts education, and museum participation is crucial for success. The High Museum in Atlanta developed an after-school program for elementary students that ends with an exhibit of their artwork. The Miami Art Museum participates in the Brick by Brick project; local artists, designers and educators work with forty students each year to redesign their neighborhoods using laptops, cameras, and video equipment. They learn that “their neighborhoods are not irredeemable, that they can improve.” The Cleveland Museum of Art is building its Lifelong Learning Center to enable visitors to curate virtual exhibits. In 2008, the museum’s distance learning program reached more than 28,000 students. Philips Collection staff created curriculum models for local teachers to participate in a traveling exhibition of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series.

Despite these efforts, critics in the 1930s and today maintain that the arts are a non-essential frill. Although it was dropped, one senator proposed an amendment to the economic recovery package that grouped museums with golf courses and casinos as nonessential and therefore ineligible for assistance. Then and now, museums look to “the common man” for sustenance. Let’s hope their efforts outlast the economic crisis.

*****

Victoria Grieve is an assistant professor of history at Utah State University, where she is also curator of twentieth-century West Coast American Art at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. Her new book, The Federal Art Project and the Creation of Middlebrow Culture, will be published on April 6, 2009.