Acoustic Sounds

Features: Book Reviews

April 10th, 2023

The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Production icon Rick Rubin On Finding The Way

By: JoE Silva

One of there most successful and well-regarded producers in the music business delivers a Zen-like curveball of a memoir that reflects on decades of witnessing creativity.

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February 9th, 2023

In Your Mind: The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono

An interview with the author

By: Evan Toth

Oh, Yoko! A more polarizing figure in music history is hard to find, but soldiering on in the face of criticism is part of what Yoko Ono has always done and continues to do - without apology or excuse - even as she enters her 90th year. Not only has Yoko persevered after witnessing the death of her husband at the hands of a madman over 40 years ago, but since that fateful day she has lived a second life and continued to create meaningful art while cultivating a... Read More

January 31st, 2023

The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969-73

book review and interview with Allan Kozinn

By: JoE Silva

Veteran journalist Allan Kozinn and documentarian Adrian Sinclair set out to climb "Mount McCartney" over three massive volumes that place the ex-Beatles solo career under a new microscope.

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November 29th, 2022

"Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer“

Albert Glinsky's Moog bio patches together the life of the inspired creator and his industry-defining brand

By: JoE Silva

Before black turns to picture; before you see anything at all onscreen, the first thing you get to experience when you settle in to watch “Apocalypse Now,” is the sound of a Moog synthesizer mimicking the rhythmic chop of a helicopter blade. As director Francis Ford Coppola recounts in the forward to Albert Glinsky’s weighty tome on the life of electronics pioneer Bob Moog, “The Moog gave us the ability to roll sound effects and music into one.”Switched On: Bob Moog... Read More

October 1st, 2022

John Lennon Once Put A Shitty Pressing Of His Music on Trial-- And Won!

Years before the Mofi scandal, Jay Bergen's "Lennon, the Mobster, & the Lawyer" tells how the former Beatle used the good ol' shoot-out to show a federal judge how a shitty pressing hurt his reputation as an artist.

By: Joshua Smith

The year was 1976, long before "hot stampers" were even a thing. John Lennon presided over a good old-fashioned record pressing shoot-out-- in federal court, no less. The pressings played in the Southern District of New York's federal courthouse had songs familiar to lovers of Lennon's ROCK 'N' ROLL album, his beautiful homage to early rock and roll, but the two albums' quality couldn't have been farther apart. The first... Read More