Reviews for The companion to The mechanical muse: the piano, pianism and piano music, c. 1760-1850

The average rating for The companion to The mechanical muse: the piano, pianism and piano music, c. 1760-1850 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-05-15 00:00:00 Matthew Moore My version of this paperback (1990) covers the thirty years from 1955 through 1984 -- any Top 40 single by any act that never charted again. It's indispensable for the "what happened to THEM?" factor, and seeing what kind of music charts at any particular time. I wish a little more attention had been paid to musicology -- key changes, for example. But it does offer fascinating glimpses of what is now pretty much a sealed era of popular music. Very readable, but the index only works for acts whose name you already know, or for songs that went to nos. 1 or 2 only. The photographs -- culled largely from publicity stills and 45 r.p.m. record covers -- are great fun.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-05-25 00:00:00 Howell Clark This is less than 1% of what I learned from this book . Do you know that : The disgraced Bill Cosby had a song that rose to # 4 ; and that David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame sang ' Don't give up on us' which climbed to #1 Or that Jimi Hendrix had only one song that reached the Billboard top 40 , the criteria for this list . I thought Pipeline and Wipe Our' were both the work of The Ventures ; neither was ? Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye was Steam's sole contribution . Believe it or not , Debbie Boone's You Light up My Life spent more time at # 1 than any song by Elvis or The Beatles ! I consider myself an aficionado of music of the 60s and early 70s , but this book was a revelation to me . I ran out of post-a-notes marking music trivia that makes a difference to the serious student of rock . It took me an hour to find a well-used paperback edition , but I devoured it in a day . If you knew all these things you deserve a job in the trivia wing of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame !