By Thom Dunn, Boing Boing | Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music is a new book from writer and musician Franz Nicolay that turns the spotlight on the unsung heroes of rock & roll: the backing band. Specifically, the people who have made careers for themselves as supporting musicians, often for a multitude of different bandleaders.
Basically, the middle-class laborers who produce the goods that make rockstardom possible.
Nicolay himself may be considered one of these “band people,” having performed as a regular member (but never frontperson) of acclaimed acts, including the Hold Steady, Guignol, and the World / Inferno Friendship Society; he has over 100 recording credits to his name, according to Discogs. But rather than focus on his own personal journey-which was already chronicled somewhat in his earlier book, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar-Nicolay uses Band People as an opportunity to speak with other Band People, combining their interviews with academic excerpts from other texts about the working relationships between collaborators in the performing arts.
But those other texts from which Nicolay draws are largely based on jazz music, which has a longer history and much different rules from the world of rock & roll. Nicolay acknowledges this difference but smartly uses these excerpts to create a sense of juxtaposition-and to remind the reader that, well, rock & roll is a weird sort of industry. . . .
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Go here to read more about this book and its contents:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/band-people-the-artistry-and-economics-of-supporting-musicians/