Music is History

[scooter]

I'm slowly working my way through Music is History by Questlove, the musician from The Roots - he's assisted by Ben Greenman as co-author, but the book is told in Questlove's voice as a survey through the history of the late 60s and into the 90s. Year by year, he examines the hit songs of the day and how they influenced or were influenced by the trends of the time.

Questlove's history is mostly that of the urban black man of the time, so some events are specific to that, which ends up making it an interesting take on some of the lesser-known, lesser-traveled events of the near past. And I'm definitely going to look for some of these songs which he cites as being of interest...many of these remained off all of the different charts, but were particularly innovative or significant based on non-radio-friendly reasons.