Books by John Corbett
Sun Ra & Ayé Aton: Space, Interiors and Exteriors 1972
by John Corbett
In 1972, the legendary musician, composer and mystic Sun Ra (1914-1993) was hard at work scripting and acting in the now classic documentary on his life and work, Space is the Place, as well as publishing his second book of poetry. The book of poems (now extremely rare) was designed and edited by Ra's manager, who asked one of Ra's band members in the Arkestra--the drummer and percussionist Ayé Aton--to contribute images to accompany Ra's poems. The final publication contained three photographs of Aton's indoor, space-themed murals. Published here for the first time, the full set of photographs forms an incredible and revelatory body of work, and is presented here alongside a cache of never-before-seen contemporaneous photographs taken on the set of Space Is the Place in Oakland, featuring Ra in full regalia, wearing outrageous Egyptian costumes borrowed from a local masonic temple. These spectacular photographs--unseen artifacts from a now remote time--offer us a special and often entertaining behind-the-scenes glimpse of a much-missed musical visionary.
Copies
No copies available.
A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation
by John Corbett
Improvisation rattles some listeners. Maybe they’re even suspicious of it. John Coltrane’s saxophonic flights of fancy, Jimi Hendrix’s feedback drenched guitar solos, Ravi Shankar’s sitar extrapolations—all these sounds seem like so much noodling or jamming, indulgent self-expression. “Just” improvising, as is sometimes said. For these music fans, it seems natural that music is meant to be composed. In the first book of its kind, John Corbett’s A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation provides a how-to manual for the most extreme example of spontaneous improvising: music with no pre-planned material at all. Drawing on over three decades of writing about, presenting, playing, teaching, and studying freely improvised music, Corbett offers an enriching set of tools that show any curious listener how to really listen, and he encourages them to enjoy the human impulse— found all around the world— to make up music on the spot.
Corbett equips his reader for a journey into a difficult musical landscape, where there is no steady beat, no pre-ordained format, no overarching melodic or harmonic framework, and where tones can ring with the sharpest of burrs. In “Fundamentals,” he explores key areas of interest, such as how the musicians interact, the malleability of time, overcoming impatience, and watching out for changes and transitions; he grounds these observations in concrete listening exercises, a veritable training regime for musical attentiveness. Then he takes readers deeper in “Advanced Techniques,” plumbing the philosophical conundrums at the heart of free improvisation, including topics such as the influence of the audience and the counterintuitive challenge of listening while asleep. Scattered throughout are helpful and accessible lists of essential resources—recordings, books, videos— and a registry of major practicing free improvisors from Noël Akchoté to John Zorn, particularly essential because this music is best experienced live.
The result is a concise, humorous, and inspiring guide, a unique book that will help transform one of the world’s most notoriously unapproachable artforms into a rewarding and enjoyable experience.
Copies
No copies available.
Pick Up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music
by John Corbett
Unless you lived through the 1970s, it seems impossible to understand it at all. Drug delirium, groovy fashion, religious cults, mega corporations, glitzy glam, hard rock, global unrest—from our 2018 perspective, the seventies are often remembered as a bizarre blur of bohemianism and disco. With Pick Up the Pieces, John Corbett transports us back in time to this thrillingly tumultuous era through a playful exploration of its music. Song by song, album by album, he draws our imaginations back into one of the wildest decades in history.
Rock. Disco. Pop. Soul. Jazz. Folk. Funk. The music scene of the 1970s was as varied as it was exhilarating, but the decade’s diversity of sound has never been captured in one book before now. Pick Up the Pieces gives a panoramic view of the era’s music and culture through seventy-eight essays that allow readers to dip in and out of the decade at random or immerse themselves completely in Corbett’s chronological journey.
An inviting mix of skilled music criticism and cultural observation, Pick Up the Pieces is also a coming-of-age story, tracking the author’s absorption in music as he grows from age seven to seventeen. Along with entertaining personal observations and stories, Corbett includes little-known insights into musicians from Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, James Brown, and Fleetwood Mac to the Residents, Devo, Gal Costa, and Julius Hemphill.
A master DJ on the page, Corbett takes us through the curated playlist that is Pick Up the Pieces with captivating melody of language and powerful enthusiasm for the era. This funny, energetic book will have readers longing nostalgically for a decade long past.
Copies
No copies available.
Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium
by John Corbett
From scouring flea markets and eBay to maxing out their credit cards, record collectors will do just about anything to score a long-sought-after album. In Vinyl Freak, music writer, curator, and collector John Corbett burrows deep inside the record fiend’s mind, documenting and reflecting on his decades-long love affair with vinyl. Discussing more than 200 rare and out-of-print LPs, Vinyl Freak is composed in part of Corbett's long-running DownBeat magazine column of the same name, which was devoted to records that had not appeared on CD. In other essays where he combines memoir and criticism, Corbett considers the current vinyl boom, explains why vinyl is his preferred medium, profiles collector subcultures, and recounts his adventures assembling the Alton Abraham Sun Ra Archive, an event so all-consuming that he claims it cured his record-collecting addiction. Perfect for vinyl newbies and veteran crate diggers alike, Vinyl Freak plumbs the motivations that drive Corbett and collectors everywhere.
Copies
No copies available.
Sun-Ra Traveling the Spaceways : the Astro Black and Other Solar Myths
by John Corbett, Anthony Elms, Terri Kapsalis
Sun Ra (1914–93)—self-proclaimed visionary extraterrestrial of the “Angel Race,” prophetic jazz band leader and composer, and lyrical proponent of Afro-futurism—was one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century music. Though many of his fans are familiar with the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of Sun Ra’s work, most remain blissfully unaware of how artists have continued to explore time and (outer) space through the invention and composition of his legacy.
The remarkable illustrations and essays of Traveling the Spaceways confront the visual manifestation of Sun Ra’s philosophy and demonstrate how graphics and design were essential to his message of self-determination. The influence of Sun Ra’s openness to new technologies and experimentation, his sense of personal identity as a construct rather than a given, and his playful attitude towards history and mythmaking are all evidenced by the remarkable writers and artists who have contributed to this volume, including Pedro Bell, My Barbarian, Dave Muller, and Charlemagne Palestine. A refreshing reconsideration of the impact of Sun Ra’s life on American history and visual culture, Traveling the Spaceways is an unforgettable look at the Ra persona in the context of contemporary art.
Copies
No copies available.
Microgroove: Forays into Other Music
by John Corbett
Microgroove continues John Corbett's exploration of diverse musics, with essays, interviews, and musician profiles that focus on jazz, improvised music, contemporary classical, rock, folk, blues, post-punk, and cartoon music. Corbett's approach to writing is as polymorphous as the music, ranging from oral history and journalistic portraiture to deeply engaged cultural critique. Corbett advocates for the relevance of "little" music, which despite its smaller audience is of enormous cultural significance. He writes on musicians as varied as Sun Ra, PJ Harvey, Koko Taylor, Steve Lacy, and Helmut Lachenmann. Among other topics, he discusses recording formats; the relationship between music and visual art, dance, and poetry; and, with Terri Kapsalis, the role of female orgasm sounds in contemporary popular music. Above all, Corbett privileges the importance of improvisation; he insists on the need to pay close attention to “other” music and celebrates its ability to open up pathways to new ideas, fresh modes of expression, and unforeseen ways of knowing.
Copies
No copies available.
Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago
by John Corbett, Jessica Moss, Jim Dempsey, Richard A. Born
Accompanying an exhibition at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, this book is the definitive introduction to Chicago’s first artistic movement, the Monster Roster.
The volume includes an overview of the artists involved, such as Leon Golub, June Leaf, Seymour Rosofsky, and Nancy Spero; an introduction to the historical context surrounding the group’s emergence in the 1950s; and a discussion of Monster Roster prints. In addition, key texts can be found reprinted here, such as Jean Dubuffet’s 1951 lecture “Anticultural Positions” and Franz Schulze’s 1972 essay “Chicago: The Setting and the Group.” Containing full-color reproductions of many Monster Roster works, ephemera, and historical photographs, as well as a detailed chronology and exhibition history, Monster Roster is a long-awaited history of one of the most essential Midwestern contributions to American art.
Copies
No copies available.
notes (8 pieces)
by John Corbett, Wadada Leo Smith
Wadada Leo Smith's 1973 publication, notes (8 pieces), is reprinted on the occasion of his Renaissance Society exhibition, Ankhrasmation: the Language Scores, (Oct 11-29, 2015). The book features Smith's original texts accompanied by three more recent essays: "Sounds," published in Abitare in July 2013; "The Creative Inspirational Moment," originally published in NYC Jazz Record in December 2011; and "Notes: My Thoughts in 2015," written for this publication. John Corbett, co-curator of the Renaissance Society exhibition, writes a new afterword. This edition of 1000 is published by Corbett vs. Dempsey and the Renaissance Society.
Copies
No copies available.
Sadie Benning: Shared Eye
by John Corbett, Christine Mehring, Elena Filipovic, Solveig Øvstebo
This richly illustrated volume offers an in-depth look into artist Sadie Benning’s exhibition Shared Eye, presented at the Renaissance Society and the Kunsthalle Basel.
The forty mixed-media panels in Shared Eye defy easy categorization: they include collage, painting, photography, and sculpture. The seriality of the installation also nods to the artist’s history with the moving image. Throughout the 1990s, Benning created an extraordinary body of experimental video work, improvising with materials at hand and a toy camera. More than two decades later, in Shared Eye we see the handmade aesthetic, grainy imagery, and durational logic of Benning’s early videos take on different forms to correspond to our current moment.
The catalog documents the exhibition in full color, and it features an interview between the artist and Julie Ault, essays by John Corbett and Christine Mehring, and an introduction by the Renaissance Society’s executive director, Solveig Øvstebø, and Elena Filipovic, director of Kunsthalle Basel. These texts provide illuminating framework for the exhibition and key insights into how Benning pushes the limits of abstraction in response to our present political climate.
Copies
No copies available.
Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein
by John Corbett
In Extended Play, one of the country's most innovative music writers conducts a wide-ranging tour through the outer limits of contemporary music. Over the course of more than twenty-five portraits, interviews, and essays, John Corbett engages artists from lands as distant as Sweden, Siberia, and Saturn. With a special emphasis on African American and European improvisers, the book explores the famous and the little known, from John Cage and George Clinton to Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra. Employing approaches as diverse as the music he celebrates, Corbett illuminates the sound and theory of funk and rap, blues and jazz, contemporary classical, free improvisation, rock, and reggae.
Using cultural critique and textual theory, Corbett addresses a broad spectrum of issues, such as the status of recorded music in postmodern culture, the politics of self-censorship, experimentation, and alternativism in the music industry, and the use of metaphors of space and madness in the work of African American musicians. He follows these more theoretically oriented essays with a series of extensive profiles and in-depth interviews that offer contrasting and complementary perspectives on some of the world’s most creative musicians and their work. Included here are more than twenty original photographs as well as a meticulously annotated discography. The result is one of the most thoughtful, and most entertaining, investigations of contemporary music available today.
Copies
No copies available.