April 2023 MBR The Music Shelf

The Music Shelf

Only Wanna Be with You
Tim Sommer
University of South Carolina Press
718 Devine Street, Columbia, SC 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
Tantor Media
https://tantor.com
9781643362755, $26.99, HC, 296pp

https://www.amazon.com/Only-Wanna-Be-You-Blowfish/dp/1643362755

Synopsis: In 1985, Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower at the University of South Carolina and asked him to form a band. For the next eight years, Hootie & the Blowfish (completed with the addition of bassist Dean Felber and drummer Soni Sonefeld) played every frat house, roadhouse, and rock club in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, becoming one of the biggest independent acts in the region.

With the publication of "Only Wanna Be with You: The Inside Story of Hootie & the Blowfish", Tim Sommer (the ultimate insider who signed Hootie to Atlantic Records), pulls back the curtain on a band that defied record-industry odds to break into the mainstream by playing hacky sack music in the age of grunge.

Sommer chronicles the band's indie days; the chart-topping success (and near-cancelation) of their major-label debut, cracked rear view; the year of Hootie (1995) when the album reached no. 1, the "Only Wanna Be with You" music video collaboration with ESPN's SportsCenter became a sensation, and the band inspired a plotline on the TV show Friends; the lean years from the late 1990s through the early 2000s; Darius Rucker's history-making rise in country music; and one of the most remarkable comeback stories of the century. Of special note is the inclusion of extensive new interviews with the band members, some of their most famous fans, and stories from the recording studio, tour bus, and golf course.

Critique:, Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "Only Wanna Be with You: The Inside Story of Hootie & the Blowfish" is must be considered essential reading for the legions of Hootie fans and rock music buffs. While especially and unreservedly recommended for professional, community, and academic library American Music History collections. It should be noted personal reading lists that "Only Wanna Be with You" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $20.49) and as a complete and unabridged audio book (Tantor Audio, 9798212170031, $41.99, CD).

Editorial Note: Tim Sommer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Sommer), is a widely published music journalist, and has enjoyed stints as an Atlantic Records A&R representative and an MTV and VH1 news VJ and producer.

Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre
Anastasia Gordienko
University of Wisconsin Press
728 State Street, Suite 443, Madison, WI 53706-1418
www.uwpress.wisc.edu
9780299340100, $89.95, HC, 336pp

https://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Music-Russia-Unlikely-Genre/dp/0299340104

Synopsis: Russian chanson is a neologism for a musical genre covering a range of Russian songs, including city romance songs, author song performed by singer-songwriters, and blatnaya pesnya or "criminals' songs" that are based on the themes of the urban underclass and the criminal underworld. (Wikipedia)

The Russian shanson can be heard across the country today, on radio and television shows, at mass events like political rallies, and even at the Kremlin. Yet despite its ubiquity, it has attracted almost no scholarly attention.

With the publication of "Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre", Anastasia Gordienko (an Assistant Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona) provides the first full history of the shanson, from its tenuous ties to early modern criminals' and robbers' folk songs, through its immediate generic predecessors in the Soviet Union, to its current incarnation as the soundtrack for daily life in Russia.

It is difficult to firmly define the shanson or its family of song genres, but they all have some connection, whether explicit or implicit, to the criminal underworld or to groups or activities otherwise considered subversive. Traditionally produced by and popular among criminals and other marginalized groups, and often marked by characters and themes valorizing illegal activities, the songs have undergone censorship since the early nineteenth century. Technically legal only since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the shanson is today not only broadly popular but also legitimized by Vladimir Putin's open endorsement of the genre.

With careful research and incisive analysis, Professor Gordienko deftly details the shanson's history, development, and social meanings. Attempts by imperial rulers, and later by Soviet leaders, to repress the songs and the lifestyles they romanticized not only did little to discourage their popularity but occasionally helped the genre flourish. Criminals and liberal intelligentsia mingled in the Gulag system, for instance, and this contact introduced censored songs to an educated, disaffected populace that inscribed its own interpretations and became a major point of wider dissemination after the Gulag camps were closed.

Professor Gordienko also investigates the shanson as it exists in popular culture today: not divorced from its criminal undertones (or overtones) but celebrated for them. She argues that the shanson expresses fundamental themes of Russian culture, allowing for the articulation of anxieties, hopes, and dissatisfactions that are discouraged or explicitly forbidden otherwise.

Critique: A seminal work of simply outstanding scholarship, "Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre" will have a special value to readers with an interest in Russian popular culture and history as expressed in its underclass oriented music and musical heritage. Informatively enhanced for the reader with the inclusion of Illustrations, 'A Note on Translation and Transliteration', a two page Glossary, sixty-eight pages of Notes, a thirty page Bibliography, and a twenty-six page Index, "Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre" is a unique and highly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library Ethnomusicology collections and supplemental curriculum Russian Studies lists.

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