Love Goes to Buildings on Fire

In the years 1974-79, New York City was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy--crime in the streets was rampant. But the urban nightmare proved to be the perfect spawning ground for a host of musical styles that grew out of the frenetic environment. Punk, disco, hip hop, salsa, and avant-garde jazz--Will Hermes crossed paths with all of them. Here his breakneck narrative intersperses slices of the urban landscape as Adam Verner's well-matched voice hums like a transistor radio. Audio is the perfect format in which to conjure these upheavals in the time before skyrocketing rents sent creative types to Brooklyn and "Jersey." J.S.H. (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

Starred review from September 26, 2011
In the 1970s it seemed like the end of the world had occurred in New York City; crime was rampant, the government was broke, and the idealism that had fueled protests in Washington Square Park and spurred new musical styles was shattered. Although the 1970s appeared to be a musical wasteland (remember Debby Boone?), senior Rolling Stone critic Hermes reminds us forcefully and refreshingly in this breathtaking, panoramic portrait of five years (1973–1977) of that decade that music in New York City was alive, flourishing, and kicking out the jams. He colorfully recalls how Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash hot-wired street parties with collaged shards of vinyl LPs; how the New York Dolls stripped garage rock raw and wrapped it in drag, taking a cue from Warhol’s transvestite glamour queens; how Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith took a cue from Dylan and combined rock and poetry into new shapes; how Eddie Palmieri, Willie Colón, and the Fanta All-Stars were transforming Cuban music into multicultural salsa and making East Harlem and the South Bronx the global center of Spanish-language music; and how Philip Glass and Steve Reich were imagining a new sort of classical music, using jazz, rock, African, and Indian sources. Hermes’s fast-paced and affectionate overview provides intimate glimpses into the often forgotten but profound changes wrought in the 1970s New York music scene.