A blog about Bloomsbury Academic's 33 1/3 series, our other books about music, and the world of sound in general.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Master of Reality

In April we'll be publishing John Darnielle's book about Black Sabbath, which is described thus:

Black Sabbath's Master of Reality has maintained remarkable historical status over several generations; it's a touchstone for the directionless, and common coin for young men and women who've felt excluded from the broader cultural economy. John Darnielle hears it through the ears of Roger Painter, a young adult locked in a southern California adolescent psychiatric center in 1985; deprived of his Walkman and hungry for comfort, he explains Black Sabbath as one might describe air to a fish, or love to an android, hoping to convince his captors to give him back his tapes.

If you'd like a sample of the book, as a PDF, just send an email to me at this address (sabbathsampler at yahoo dot com) and I'll email one right back to you.

In the meantime, here's the first video from the upcoming Mountain Goats album, which hits stores in two or three weeks. I tried that all-white look once on holiday in 1997, and it was a disaster.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

what a great video. wow.

Glenn Mercer said...

Superb. Mountain Goats, IMHO, has always been about the lyrics, and what a great way to almost force a viewer/listener to follow and comprehend the lyrics.

No Radio said...

Just got a chance to listen to the new Mountain Goats album and it's fairly wonderful, moving a bit away from the wrought autobiography of he last two and more towards dense, detailed narrative. "Master of Reality" will be the second book in the series I'm picking up without having heard the album.

Anonymous said...

I am only 15 and i have been listening to The Mountain Goats my whole life. I remember realizing that they weren't on the radio all the time, that i just listened to that C.D. so much! Now everyone knows why I love them so much!
See you in Denver at the Bluebird!