This week we’ve published three new books across our 33 1/3 series: Various Artists’ Red Hot + Blue, Einstürzende Neubauten’s Kollaps (33 1/3 Europe) and the Soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever (33 1/3 Oceania). Like the rest of the books in the series, each one is a deep dive into a cherished album written from a unique, personal perspective.
Various Artists’ Red Hot + Blue
“An ingenious literary mixtape. I was transported back in time to the apex of the AIDS pandemic, a period that was both terrifying and hopeful. Garrison’s haunting meditation on the songs themselves, the artists involved, and, crucially, the complex life story of Cole Porter, is an invaluable work of cultural and musical history. I loved it.” – Bill Hayes, author of Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me
The book is the portrait of an album, a pandemic, and a young gay man’s coming of age in the era of both.
Red Hot + Blue returns us to the early 1990s to reveal how the love songs of the past can be revived to speak to new audiences in times of need. Blending memoir and cultural history, John S. Garrison reflects on his own life story through the lens of Cole Porter’s life and music to illuminate the emotional landscape we all navigate in the search for love.
Want to find out more? In this post, the author discusses why it made sense to choose Cole Porter as the focus of the groundbreaking album.
Einstürzende Neubauten’s Kollaps
Perhaps the best musical encapsulation of the Cold War as experienced in the walled city of West-Berlin, Kollaps is a product of its time while remaining as vital, exhilarating and surprising as the day it was released.
The book explores the contexts, themes and influences that shaped Kollaps. It describes the early days of Einstürzende Neubauten in West-Berlin, their infamous live performances and guerilla style recording tactics, and the scrap metal banging, piercing guitar noise and evocative lyricism that went on to inspire generations of fans. Most significantly, it explores the desire and deep sense of belonging that is expressed by what Nick Cave called the ‘incredibly mournful, haunting’ nature of this music. The beginning of a 40-year career, this first burst of energy remains their purest statement.
Want to know how to listen to Kollaps? Check out this post from the authors.
Soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever is simultaneously one of the biggest-selling albums of all time and one of the most reviled. How can a record create such a polarizing reaction?
Australian writer Clinton Walker attempts to answer that question and finds that, among other things, a certain seemingly unlikely Australianness is part of the reason.
Fever was a supernova for disco, for the Bee Gees, for the domineering Robert Stigwood, producer of the film and its true auteur, and for the entire record business. This book traces all the interdependent convolutions that fed into the film and its music – not least the Australian roots that Stigwood and Gibb brothers shared, which gave them an Otherness and almost gormless, shape-shifting self-determination – and it finds that sometimes great art can be made by a committee … that sometimes, five songs are enough to change the world.
