Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever

2011 GIFT GUIDE

• Memoir Suite

  Rock & roll books from Austin to Beijing

  BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ

• Inseparable – The Memoirs of an American and the Story of Chinese Punk Rock

  Punk rock from Austin to Beijing

  BY MARC SAVLOV

• My Song

  Harry Belafonte earned his arrogance

  BY AUSTIN POWELL

• Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music

  Stephen Stills wrote CSNY's best song about Judy Collins for more than love

  BY MELANIE HAUPT

• The Book of Drugs

  Don't mention Soul Coughing to its frontman

  BY JAY TRACHTENBERG

• Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir

  Dave Mustaine takes no pleasure in all debauchery

  BY MICHAEL TOLAND

• Backstage Past

  Bill Graham wasn't the only promoter with a treasure chest of rock & roll anecdotes

  BY MARGARET MOSER

• Tom Waits On Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters

  Tom Waits – rumor, myth, or fact?

  BY DOUG FREEMAN

• Freak Out!: My Life With Frank Zappa

  Frank Zappa's secretary made excellent use of her notepad

  BY JIM CALIGIURI

• You Are Not Alone Michael: Through a Brother's Eyes

  Baby brother Michael needs defending

  BY CHASE HOFFBERGER

• My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep's Prodigy

  It took jail to get Prodigy to finally sit down and slang some hip-hop history

  BY CHASE HOFFBERGER

• > Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever

• Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation

  Essential collection of not-so-disposable DIY markers

  BY MARC SAVLOV

• Gig Posters Volume 2

  You'd tear posters out of a book? Starting here, maybe so.

  BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ

• 'Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell With Black Sabbath' and 'Trust Me: I'm Dr. Ozzy: Advice From Rock's Ultimate Survivor'

  Life advice from the Prince of Darkness and the Black Sabbath story told by the man behind the riffs

  BY RICHARD WHITTAKER

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever

"There's a pulse in New York," George Carlin once said, "even on the quietest street, on the quietest day. It's full of potential." That certainly rang true in the mid-1970s. Despite a bleak backdrop of high crime and crumbling infrastructure, New York birthed a fruitful musical renaissance that went on to transform popular culture several times over. Punk was born on the Lower East Side. Hip-hop emerged from street jams powered by illegally hot-wired streetlights in the South Bronx. DJ Nicky Siano cultivated the disco aesthetic at the Gallery, while Philip Glass became synonymous with minimalism. Jazz was reinvented in downtown lofts like Studio Rivbea, and salsa music exploded with sold-out shows at Yankee Stadium. Borrowing a phrase from Talking Heads, Rolling Stone senior critic Will Hermes deftly encapsulates how cheap rents in a decaying cultural epicenter led to the rapid-fire, cross-genre evolution of music between 1973 and 1977. This rapidly unspooling chronological approach imbues the narrative with energy and suspense even when you know what comes next. Occasionally hearkening back to anecdotes from his adolescence in Queens, Hermes documents the era with the longing of someone just a few subway stops away from the right place at the right time. By jumping from genre to genre, he incants the wide-open creative spirit of the time, marveling at the notion of Richard Hell, Steve Reich, Patti Smith, Kool Herc, and Hector Lavoe collectively honing their artistic identities within blocks of one another. Garbage strikes, blackouts, terror bombings, and serial killers are no match for the march of musical progress. An upscale menswear boutique now resides in the space once occupied by CBGB, its graffiti-covered walls covered by Plexiglas like a museum piece, but the influence of music pioneered in New York during the mid-1970s shows no sign of waning.