Let The Music Play: How R&B Fell In Love With 80s Synths

Gripped me from the opening and kept me reading late in to the night. The book clearly shows the author's love of the music, extensive research and attention to detail while exploring the music of the period.A must-read for any music lover or pop culture enthusiast exploring musical history.

As an extensive collector of books on popular music, I think this is one of the worst I've ever read. For a start, it's supposed to be about the role of synths in R'n'B, but after a third of the book doing this by focusing on a few stories of legendary artists discovering the nascent technology, it stops that approach for the remaining 2/3 since by the early 1980s EVERYONE has a synth, a sequencer, and midi, even if they use other instruments. The book also focuses on many, many, subpar R'n'B artists so that a young person today wanting to make a list of the best R'n'B would end up with endless secondrate albums. The early discussion of classic 1970s fusion and soul was not bad, but as we move through the '70s, the selections get worse and worse. There are a few passing references to Kraftwerk, yet their contribution to synths in R'n'B was ENORMOUS as they were the groundbreakers, so they deserved a few pages. R'n'B that was synth-based in the 1980s would have to include (but were ommitted in this book) such massive contributors as New Order, Human League, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Yazoo, Pet Shop Boys, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Gary Numan, even Buggles. Though focusing on funk mostly, I would recommend a much more faithful history in the book Funk by Rickey Vincent. Electrochoc by Laurent Garnier is a far better history of R'n'B and dance music, though somewhat more verging into house. Electro Shock! is also recommended as sticking to its objective of discussing the uses of synths in both dance and rock. All these books have a much stronger understanding in my view of the use to which technology was made in pop, including dance music, and will offer better recommendations into the best of the genre for any newbies, whereas the Vass book will offer you little more than gossipy stories about various artists, which might entertain but might also put you to sleep. Avoid!

Nothing wrong about the book itself; in fact, it is fantastic. But in the Kindle edition, the footnote links do not take you to the footnotes, and that is REALLY annoying.