Where Dead Voices Gather

Amazon.com

Nick Tosches's new book is aptly titled. On the surface a biography of obscure Southern minstrel singer and blackface comedian Emmett Miller (1900-62), his passionate text at its core is another installment in Tosches's lifelong inquiry into the nature of American popular music. It's a place, in his view, "where dead voices gather" as artists chaotically and indiscriminately pluck tunes out of sources ranging from English ballads to slave spirituals and fashion lyrics from half-remembered commercial releases heard once on the radio or archetypal stories told so often that no one knows who first gave them voice. Miller was a "yodeling blues singer" who performed in blackface, adhering to the minstrelsy tradition that was in its death throes by the time he had his brief moment of fame in the 1920s. Tosches, who first heard a Miller recording in 1974, characterizes him as "one of the strangest and most stunning stylists ever to record ... the last mutant mongrel emanation of old and dead and dying styles, the first mutant mongrel emanation of a style far more reckless and free than the cool of scat." As this sentence suggests, Tosches's prose has calmed down hardly at all since his first book, Country, was published in 1977; you either love his freeform approach or it drives you nuts. Admirers will relish his marvelously dense and detailed portrait of pop music's crazy-quilt complexity, enriched by Tosches's encyclopedic knowledge of American culture. And he boldly stares the race question in the face, though not everyone will be convinced by his assertion that "it is the shared umbilicus of fantasy that sustains and unites ... the polar temperaments of minstrelsy and rap." This is another genre-smashing work from a writer as eccentric, provoking, and wholly original as the music he loves. --Wendy Smith

Book Description

Customer Reviews:

Erm...Nick, ya might want to take a research methods course.......2006-07-18

Fact-wise, terrific: Tosches piles 'em on, as usual. He's a unique, gifted writer, even if one doubts certain of his conclusions, as one does in this book.

However, he's too disingenuous by half or more when it comes to his difficulties in regards "finding" Emmett Miller: after dissing academic critics and their lofty takes on the matter at hand, he segues into his difficulty in locating whether in fact "Emmett Miller" existed under that name at all, after pages of discussion about how he agonized over pinning down the man's existence (actually a cohort located the pertinent records); one can't help but wonder how, since the approximate locale (Macon GA) was a given, Tosches didn't do what any academic researcher would have done immediately: in lieu of a birth certificate, immediately check the census records, and the school records. He could have easily found the info 20 years ago, at the start of his search, if he had've used bona fide methods of academic research. Instead, he heaps on the melodrama. Bosh! Tosches comes up as rather a tosspot, given his criticism of the academics.

A serious flaw at the outset of even a good book causes one to wonder about other of the author's conclusions, and methods in reaching them.

thank you .......2004-12-22

finding stuff on emmett miller is very hard
i bought The Minstrel Man from Georgia and fell in love with his voice right away and emotion behind it thank you for providing info behind the voice and the man, i am far from a racist and anybody who claims emmett was a racist is covering up their own problems.
this book is perfect for anybody who likes roots and blues and early country wish there were pictures though

Nick - Good . Really !!!!!.......2004-01-29

I went on a bit of a Nick Tosches binge , reading this book , THE DEVIL & SONNY LISTON , and TRINITIES , in one week's time . The two non-fiction books , I read them in , basically , anyway , the same day !!!!!!!!!
As has been said elsewhere , Nick doe tend to have his ----- um , schtick . We hear how bad he is , how he dislikes hippies and the Summer Of Love , once again !
Really , I DO like Nick , and , in fact , I have a Yahoo! group dedicated to him , and his generational cohort , Richard Meltzer -
Merrie Dick And Nickster Society . Url:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/merriericknnickstersociety

Or , just go to Yahoo! groups and enter " Nick Tosches " and " Richard Meltzer " .
Ya know , in this book , Nick calls John Hammond , etc. , " minstrels " ( In the blackface sense . ) Fair enough , but , since he's spent the whole book telling us how minstels - not just Emmett Miller , but , in general - weren't all that bad , were , in fact , often fairly good - Isn't he , then , making " minstrel " not an insult , thus making it not so much an instant put-down to cll Hammond , etc. , that he , preumably-like , intended ? Ah well . Just me . Hah hah . Perhaps , invoking Christianity just as Nick does , I will be forgiven for such perverseness/bitchiness !!!

Lively, entertaining look at American show business.......2003-10-21

A wonderful examination not only of the life and career of an obscure minstrel-show performer, but a wildly entertaining exegesis on the whole of American show business, especially the routes in which ideas are passed down from generation to generation, transmuting all along the way. You'll never think of minstrelsy quite the same way again. If you read this book carefully and well, you will realize that blackface performances were more than just public displays of hate, as the current popular thinking would have it. It could not have been the dominant form of entertainment for the better part of a century if it were nothing more than an avenue for racist expression. Minstrelsy, in fact, became the first area of entrance for blacks into mainstream popular entertainment. But, as I mentioned before, the book is about a lot more than that---more than this review can contain. If you are interested in music, show business, language, history, ANYTHING---buy and savor this fine piece of work.

Almost Perfect...........2002-09-27

.... But not. When he's writing about Emmett Miller and the history of minstrelsy, he's brilliant. Not only did he do a ton of original research on Miller and minstrelsy and early American music (blues, jazz and country, before any of those three were genres; even the categories are foreign to us today), but he can tie it into modern musical ideas like no one else. He makes these shadows come alive for a minute, which is amazing; you can almost smell Miller in the room. And his exploration of these roots pulls together many previously ungathered threads.

However, he goes off the deep end, as usual for Tosches. Too many Ezra Pound discursions, for starters. If you're trying to impress us with your deep knowledge of foreign languages, you'd best not quote extensively from that old fraud, who "translated" buttloads of poetry from languages he couldn't read (with "help"); this taints Tosches with the suspicion of similar overreaching. It's great that he has read up on Greek word roots, but these links are too tenuous; it's a little bit of showing off and doesn't really illuminate anything. If he wants to write another book carrying his musical history ideas back from English ballads to ancient Greece, go for it, but here it just looks like dressing-up time. Stick to the blues.

And though Tosches is a great critic of the pop music of his time, like all of his contemporaries in that game (Meltzer, Marcus, ad infinitum) he's every bit as stuck in a particular rut as those he would criticize. He's quoting Iggy Pop and Patti Smith again, folks.

But while those complaints are serious, they don't detract from the fundamental brilliance of the story. It's a terrific, if languid, detective story, as well as an opening into a new world of understanding popular music. Tosches is the only "rock" critic ever who could have written it, which is a pity. I don't see how you can understand where our music came from without this book. Read it.

Where Dead Voices Gather
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Where Dead Voices Gather
Nick TOSCHES
Manufacturer: Little Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VAUKOA

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Where Dead Voices Gather
Nick Tosches
Manufacturer: Jonathan Cape
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OOSFOU

Book Description

In his collective portrait of the common people, Roche offers a rich and fascinating description of their lives--their housing, food, dress, financial dealings, literature, domestic life, and leisure time. Roche's highly readable style and use of contemporary quotations enliven the reader's view of eighteenth-century Paris and Parisians.

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This guide has been completely updated with all of the latest technological advances to provide an exciting, alternative approach to teaching first-year television production to high school students. A combination of class instruction and independent video action projects based on the concept of thematic mapping prepares students for a year-end video competition. The projects borrow knowledge from other academic subject areas to teach media and visual literacy, broadcast history, video production skills, and multimedia animation. Available in both teacher and student editions.

Teaching TV Production in a Digital World: Integrating Media Literacy Student Workbook Second Edition

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Teaching TV Production in a Digital World: Integrating Media Literacy Student Workbook Second Edition
Robert F. Kenny
Manufacturer: Libraries Unlimited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1591582040

Book Description

Teaching TV Production in a Digital World: Integrating Media Literacy

Average customer rating:

Missed some info
Great classroom resource

Teaching TV Production in a Digital World: Integrating Media Literacy
Robert Kenny
Manufacturer: Libraries Unlimited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Television | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 156308726X

Book Description

A unique alternative to standard TV production courses, with this fresh and effective approach students plan, shoot, act, edit, and produce their own television segments. The lessons supplement the coursework presented in Teaching TV Production in a Digital World: Integrating Media Literacy and include a variety of exercises such as fill-in-the-blanks, checklists, and background research. Grades 9-12.

Customer Reviews:

Missed some info.......2005-01-14

I had ordered about 3 other books before this one and when I read the description I guess I missed the fact that this is ONLY the Student Workbook. Probably my fault for not reading carefully but I'd suggest putting "Student Workbook" into the title somewhere.
Now it looks like I need to buy the 40$ book that goes along with this.

Great classroom resource.......2004-03-17

I found this book to be a helpful resource for the classroom, teaching digital video. It really helps on the literacy side of the class, with lots of student worksheets, projects, questions and reading material. I found it lacking in actual "how to's" so will have to have a supplemental book.

Ed tech book club.(Product watch): An article from: T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education)

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Ed tech book club.(Product watch): An article from: T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education)
Matthew Miller
Manufacturer: T.H.E. Journal, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education), published by T.H.E. Journal, LLC on April 1, 2005. The length of the article is 565 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Ed tech book club.(Product watch)
Author: Matthew Miller
Publication: T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education) (Refereed)
Date: April 1, 2005
Publisher: T.H.E. Journal, LLC
Volume: 32 Issue: 9 Page: 48(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Data Mining: A Tutorial Based Primer
Average customer rating:

Well Done Volume

A very good choice for learning data mining concepts with minimal resources

A poor book, even for beginners in DM

Inconsistent Depth

Overall, a very good hands-on book for learning data mining

Data Mining: A Tutorial Based Primer
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Manufacturer: Addison Wesley
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Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

Well Done Volume.......2006-06-16

One of the sad aspects of reading these reviews is that the reviewers insist on judging a book on the basis of their own frequently irrelevant and often limited experience in the subject matter rather than assessing the actual qualities of the book as written.

Without expecting the book to satisfy every single personal and professional need, I tried to evaluate how well the information was presented to a broader audience in a reasonable context. Considering the target audience and the limitations of any single volume, I thought basic concepts were handled well and suitable direction provided to the novice as well as the more experienced professional information technologist.

The CD used in the instruction was very helpful and provided a suitable basis for starting limited scale data mining in even the smallest enterprise thereby showing its usefulness in that environment. If you expect to emerge from reading the book with a master's degree in IT, you will be disappointed. You will also not find any insight into nuclear physics, human evolution or revelations pertinent to "The DaVinci Code." If, however, you are interested in data mining and some small scale practical application os the concepts, this is the book for you.

A very good choice for learning data mining concepts with minimal resources.......2005-10-12

The particularity of this book is that it is more accessible to read than most of data mining books, which in general require some maths/statistics/computing background.

The book is not written in the best way from the point of view of a data mining expert, as for instance sometimes a theme is recurrent in the text, but it is not obvious to explain data mining concepts using minimal previous knowledge in computing/maths/statistics.

A second important positive aspect is that the book comes with a software (IDA) running under Excel, which can be used to illustrate the techniques presented in the book (BTW a new version of the software is freely available to download, regularly). This is not the case with most of the data mining books. So if you wish to learn the basics of data mining with minimal or no previous resources (good maths/computing background and access to expensive data mining software) then this is a very good choice.

A poor book, even for beginners in DM.......2005-10-12

The author is not able to clearly present/describe concepts without using many examples. For many subjects(even simple ones), the book is lacking in clarity and logic, so that it's hard to find out what the author is trying to say. Too many pages are wasted on irrelevant sentences. Don Box books contain difficult logic, but you feel his clarity and preciseness in his writing. George Shepherd books are also enjoyable to read even though the subjects covered are wide and not easy. This book is just the opposite: easy concepts presented with a messy, hard-to-follow style.

Inconsistent Depth.......2005-05-24

When I bought this book, I knew nothing about data mining. Unfortunately, this book glossed over the topics I knew least about and spent a depressing amount of time on stuff anyone should have learned by junior high. They introduced 188 "Key Terms" in a book that's only 350 pages long. In chapter 1 they give definitions for words like "fact", "hypothesis", etc. Yet by chapter 5 they start flinging the symbols for attribute standard deviation at you with no explanation or warning. So I'm not sure who they think will be reading their book...but from what I can tell, they assume their target audience can handle advanced algebra with ease but may need a definition of "the scientific method".

They also spend quite a bit of time walking you through the Excel PivotTable creation wizard and other such fluff. They carefully instruct the reader that dragging and dropping is accomplished through use of the mouse, and that you should drop columns into the area marked 'Drop Column Fields Here'.

On the upside, I do know a bit more about data mining now. I don't feel that I could run right out and get a job, but at least when I start reading another book I'll have an idea of what the terms and concepts are.

So I suppose if you're good at statistics, have never taken a basic science course and have poor computer skills, this book is for you.

Overall, a very good hands-on book for learning data mining.......2004-01-28

The book does a good job covering basic data mining terminology and concepts, and provides introductory, but still subtantial coverage of the most common data mining methods.

Positives: a trial version of the easy-to-use Excel-based iDA tool is included with the book, which allows the reader to reproduce the examples (very helpful for understanding the text). iDA may also be used to complete many of the well thought out exercises provided at the end of each chapter. Working with the hands-on examples and exercises is an excellent way to learn data mining, and due to this, the book provides unique and excellent value.

Negatives: the order of topics and chapters seems rather disorganized; topics are often (surprisingly) repeated and the overall structure of the book doesn't seem to make sense at times. But if you read each chapter more or less independently, this isn't a serious problem. The iDA tool that comes with the text is a trial, 180-day version, and it is unlikely that the average reader will want to spend $5,000 to purchase a license for the commercial product after the six month trial is up. So you should buy the book knowing ahead of time that after a while, the iDA tool will no longer be available to go back over the examples or exercises.

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