A few weeks ago, I posted about How Women Made Music and NPL’s upcoming Women Made Music event on March 5 (free - but reserve your tickets now!). This kind of sent me down a musical rabbit hole and suddenly I was wanting to read about all kinds of music. These are some of my favorite musical finds.

First let me just say that I love Questlove. I’ve read several of his books. He nerds out about things the same way that I do. I thought Matt Pinfield was my favorite musical mind, but I think Questlove might have him beat. Growing up, I was never the biggest fan of hip hop. I lived in a small, rural town in nowhere Indiana. This was not music I could identify with. But now - a few years (decades, whatever) later, I’ve been revisiting my musical past. I found a Biggie playlist on Spotify that I haven’t been able to let go of yet. So this book ties in nicely. I remember living through the East Coast/West Coast-ness of the 90’s but I was still waiting with baited breath to see how it would turn out. Some much info here, plus a playlist at the back for those of us who aren’t complete until we’ve heard the tunes. Excellent read. Highly recommend.

I have to admit that I almost didn’t check this out because I do NOT like the song this lyric came from*. But once I got over it (because we shouldn’t judge books by covers or titles), I really enjoyed this one. The author has studied the brain for a long time and he’s a musician, so he is the perfect person to study how those two things go together. There were some great chapters about how to use music to reduce anxiety or help with pain management. To be fair, these ideas are not meant to completely subplant medicine. But they can definitely help to mitigate issues without adding more meds. I was afraid this book would be too technical and dry, but I found it fascinating and couldn’t put it down. 

I’m totally gonna date myself when I say that I grew up with Van Halen. They were always just a band on the radio. I was young enough, though, that I didn’t know about all the drama with the lead singer change. If you are looking for that, this is not the book for you. Alex only alludes to the trouble. This is more the story about two brothers who were great musicians and created some internationally popular songs. This was a better read than I expected and I polished it off in about a day. If you are/were any type of Van Halen fan, be sure to jump into this one. (See what I did there?)

I love reading about music - and probably always will. NPL has a large selection of music books - us being Music City and all. Come find your favorite today. Let me leave you with my favorite quote from Questlove: “But I remain a person who is obsessed with music and the miracles it can bring about when it works the right way, or the right kind of wrong way.”

Happy music-ing…
:) Amanda

* "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen