Outside the Jukebox

May 28, 2018
This entertaining memoir by music impresario Bradlee tells of his rise from jobless musician drowning in student loan debt to successful entrepreneur. Bradlee grew up in rural New Jersey, finished high school in the bottom half of his class with especially poor grades in science, and realized that “to get accepted to any decent college... I would have to apply with a declared major in music.” He ended up at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford then moved to New York City, where, for a decade, he performed and taught piano. By 2008, he was making ends meet but “artistically, I was suffering.” Deciding to shift gears and work toward a traditional college degree in, of all things, science, Bradlee applied and was accepted to Hunter College. On a whim, he recorded himself playing piano and posted the video on YouTube, and the next phase of his life began. In 2009, he released “Hello My Ragtime ’80s” featuring a mix of ragtime-style piano interpretations of 1980s pop hits; in 2012, he added “A Motown Tribute to Nickelback”; and in 2013, he rose to fame with his music collective, Postmodern Jukebox, a rotating group of musicians who perform jazz, ragtime, and doo-wop covers of contemporary hits. Their YouTube channel currently has over 3.4 million subscribers. Throughout, Bradlee regularly shifts from memoir to something of a self-help tone (“You have to think of yourself as the thing you want to be long before other people think of you as that”). Anyone eager to know more about the man behind the music will want to pick this up.

June 15, 2018

In this modern-day Horatio Alger tale, Postmodern Jukebox founder Bradlee takes readers on a whirlwind journey from his days as a rebellious teenager in rural New Jersey to his worldwide celebrity, creating Internet videos, touring with various iterations of his bands, and in general having a blast. In short, snappy chapters full of personal anecdotes and sprinkled with advice for musicians, the author pulls few punches as he chronicles the grueling life of the starving artist in inauspicious venues such as downtown Hartford, CT. He describes in vivid detail his introduction to YouTube and savvy use of Reddit and other sites to launch both his own brand and the careers of a variety of offbeat performers, all of whom appear to have enough talent but need promotion in this digital age. VERDICT Bradlee's amazement at his overnight success is palpable, and his story will resonate with a wide range of readers, who should forgive a bit too much name-dropping. Practical, encouraging suggestions are a bonus, especially for young artists as they try to make their way in the world.--Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

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