Product Description

In Extended Play, one of the country's most innovative music writers conducts a wide-ranging tour through the outer limits of contemporary music. Over the course of more than twenty-five portraits, interviews, and essays, John Corbett engages artists from lands as distant as Sweden, Siberia, and Saturn. With a special emphasis on African American and European improvisers, the book explores the famous and the little known, from John Cage and George Clinton to Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra. Employing approaches as diverse as the music he celebrates, Corbett illuminates the sound and theory of funk and rap, blues and jazz, contemporary classical, free improvisation, rock, and reggae.
Using cultural critique and textual theory, Corbett addresses a broad spectrum of issues, such as the status of recorded music in postmodern culture, the politics of self-censorship, experimentation, and alternativism in the music industry, and the use of metaphors of space and madness in the work of African American musicians. He follows these more theoretically oriented essays with a series of extensive profiles and in-depth interviews that offer contrasting and complementary perspectives on some of the world’s most creative musicians and their work. Included here are more than twenty original photographs as well as a meticulously annotated discography. The result is one of the most thoughtful, and most entertaining, investigations of contemporary music available today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2442897 in Books
• Published on: 1994-12
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 360 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Corbett's musical tastes run the experimental gamut bordered by such contemporary iconoclasts as the late sound poet John Cage, Fluxus and extra-terrestrial funk ringmaster George Clinton. The late Sun Ra and such unacknowledged living geniuses of "free" music as Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton and Peter Brotzmann receive their due as well. In this collection of theoretical essays, artist profiles and interviews, Corbett exhibits a thorough knowledge of experimental music and its makers but doesn't always seem to decide for whom he's writing--the musical layman, to whom many of his subjects mean nothing, or the academic musician. The theoretical essays that open the book are dense with endnotes and insider jargon. The artist profiles and interviews are characterized by a looser, friendlier variety of authority. Corbett's profile of Pinetop Perkins chronicles the piano great's career with such blues legends as Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker while his 1992 interview with John Cage is as provocative in its structure as the acclaimed composer's work. Extended Play offers rare, caring glimpses of gifted musicians few music fans know, but should. A "Guide to Further Listening" provides a brief discography for each of the book's subjects.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Using obscure and familiar figures from around the world as touchstones for portraits, interviews, and essays, Corbett roams an incredible breadth of musical territory: blues and jazz, contemporary classical, funk and rap, free improvisation, rock, and reggae. His true talent becomes clear as he exits surface terrain to guide the reader through a labyrinth of philosophical and intellectual thought amid the musical landscape. His interview techniques (particularly with Cage), breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding, and use of words in a way that imparts wisdom and provokes deep thought all shine. This work shows Corbett to be an important writer of our time; recommended for serious musicians and all others who enjoy the "outside."-Cynthia Ann Cordes, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The reasons for Corbett's increasing prominence among music writers become crystal-clear in his debut collection of articles. Although he writes authoritatively, he never loses a fan's sense of awe. He describes the impact of a wide variety of players, including P-Funk architect George Clinton, dub reggae maestro Lee ("Scratch") Perry, Dutch free-improv drummer Han Bennink, and Siberian overtone singer Sainkho Namtchylak. His profiles of such legendary musicians as Sun Ra (especially) are insightful, and several of his interview transcriptions--including one derived from a game Corbett invented for John Cage to randomly choose his own questions--are historically valuable. And in the theoretical chapters of the book's first part, Corbett often uses seemingly innocuous pop archetypes--such as the backup singer--to comment on the political and social forces that shape modern culture. For all listeners. Aaron Cohen

Customer Reviews

imaginative scintillations
"The sententious critic puts me to sleep. I would prefer a critic of imaginative scintillations. He would not be sovereign, nor dressed in red. He would bear the lightning flashes of possible storms." --Michel Foucault

Corbett seems to operate according to Foucault's injunction, and bears quite a few lightning flashes, due to his playful imagination and the imagination of the cutting edge artists he covers. "Extended Play" puts Cage and Clinton in the title, but actually focuses on free jazz/improvisation, not composition or funk. Corbett presents marvelous interviews with European free improvisers, including saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brotzmann, guitarist Derek Bailey, and drummer Han Bennink, as well as Americans Sun Ra (composer and bandleader),and Anthony Braxton (composer and reed player). He profiles fellow Chicagoans Hal Russell, Fred Anderson, Von Freeman, and Edward Wilkerson Jr. (the latter three all tenor players), English bassist and bandleader Barry Guy, and Sainkho Namtchylak, the only female Siberian Tuva singer in the ranks of European free improv. He does interview John Cage, which I found uninteresting, and George Clinton, which is tremendous.

Whether despite or because of his poststructuralist leanings (I'm with Evan Parker, who, according to Corbett, "...knows I'm a Continental-philosophy kinda guy, which is something he's certain that he isn't."), Corbett takes a stance clearly on the side of "optimism concerning the possibility of resistance," resistance in the realm of popular music against the capitalist status quo.

Presently overseeing the Unheard Music series for Atavistic Records in Chicago -- free jazz/improv tapes buried in the vaults until now -- John Corbett is doing his part to keep ALL the signifiers free!

Ushering in a new era of popular culture criticism?
Like Greil Marcus and Robert Palmer, Corbett looks at (popular?) culture as both a product of and a determinant of culture at large. As a postmodernist, he delves into genres that are largely devoid of quality criticism as few are up to the task. Actually he's probably more of a Nat Hantoff or Frank Kofsky of our time in that he's quick to support what may commonly be refered to as music that tries its listeners patience and willingness to explore. I used this book as a reference for my thesis and have recommended it to several people.