The Music Book Podcast

On this episode, Marc talks with Caryn Rose, author of Why Patti Smith Matters, published by the University of Texas Press, and Three Chords and Blessed Noise: A Patti Smith Tour Chronicle, a chapbook released on her own Till Victory Press imprint. The former is part biography, part memoir of Smith fandom, and part critical analysis of Smith's work and life. The latter is a tour diary that Rose wrote when she went to four Smith concerts held in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Smith's debut album Horses in November of 2025.
Taken together, these books paint a portrait of Smith as a vital artist but also a devoted worker, someone who never stops putting time and energy into her art. Rose herself has been a writer for many decades, so she knows what it's like to treat creativity as a job, and it makes her insights about Smith particularly sharp.
As Rose writes in Why Patti Smith Matters, "This is not a biography and this is not a hagiography. This is a book about Patti Smith's work, because it is her work that matters, and because of that work and the value that she places on her labor within the creative process."
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Caryn Rose!

On this episode, Marc talks with Richard Langston, author of "The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul," published in April of 2026. It's an excellent oral history of the Clean, the band started by brothers David and Hamish Kilgour along with Peter Gutteridge, and then Robert Scott. Langston tells their story thoroughly through interviews with the band and the many New Zealand music figures who surrounded them as well as American bands who played with them, alongside quotes from reviews and interviews during the band's tenure and archival material like their journals and letters.
As Richard writes, "Once Hamish Kilgour and Robert Scott also agreed to tell the story, David and I discussed how to go about it, and we agreed on an oral history. We liked that format of storytelling as you can hear the unmediated voices of the different participants, giving it an immediacy and the richness of multiple voices talking about the same events."
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Richard Langston!

On this episode, Marc talks with Steve Bowie, author of "Concerto for Cootie: The Life and Times of Cootie Williams," released in October of 2025. It's an in-depth look at the saga of a revered trumpet player who was a vital member of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman's groups, as well as spending 20 years as a band leader of his own. He was a massively popular artist who consistently filled venues and won jazz awards, but he never had a crossover hit and subsequently his story has been somewhat lost to history. Bowie corrects that omission skillfully, telling the tale of a man who made great art for a living.
As Steve writes, "In Mr. Williams's seventy-four years on this earth, his story has a lot of territory to cover...Most of the available biographical information doesn't dive beyond the surface and consists of a handful of articles and chapters in anthology-style biographies...Willams's years as a leader and the time he spent under the baton of Mercer Ellington has received scant coverage.
You can buy "Concerto for Cootie" here.
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Steve Bowie!

On this episode, Marc talks with Melvin Gibbs, author of "How Black Music Took Over The World," published today, April 14, 2026. It's a unique look at what Gibbs considers "the science of Black Music," a combination of musical theory, analysis, history, and memoir.  Gibbs has played in such diverse projects as Defunkt, Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, Rollins Band, and the Punk-Funk All Stars, as well as collaborating with Arto Lindsay, Bernie Worrell, Marc Ribot, Vernon Reid, and so many more. He brings all this experience and knowledge to his book, combing through history, telling stories of his work, and analyzing how black music works rhythmically, melodically, and culturally. 
As he writes, "Even when culturally sensitive people analyze Black music, and they are able to properly situate it in its cultural context, they still have to wrestle with Western cultural hierarchies and tussle with the Western musical tool set. This book is my effort to reset that dynamic, to wrestle out of its straitjacket that confines analysis of Black music. I analyze the music on its own terms, using tools I've uncovered and methods I've either discovered or had passed on to me."
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Melvin Gibbs!

On this episode, Marc talks to two authors, Peter J. Woods and John Melillo. Peter is an assistant professor in learning sciences at the University of Nottingham in England, and John is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona. They've both written academic books about noise: Woods' "Learning Through Noise" was published in early 2025, and Melillo's "The Poetics of Noise from Dada to Punk" was published in 2020.
In the former, Woods examines noise as a potential vehicle for education, because "noise music as a distinctive musical genre relies on the production of unique learning ecologies and vice versa." And Melilo's book looks at 20th century poetry through the lens of noise, "constructing a literary history of noise through poetic sound and performance...and tracing how poets figure noise in the disfiguration of poetic voice."
In our chat, Peter and John talk about how they approach something as abstract as noise through academic analysis, and how writing academic books is unique and challenging. Peter and John are both musicians themselves as well as show organizers, so they both bring more than just academic experience to the subject of noise.
We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Peter J. Woods and John Melillo!