Hubbub
Nicholas Spice, 6 July 1995
Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music
by Michael Chanan.
Verso, 204 pp., £39.95, May 1995,1 85984 012 4 Show More
by Michael Chanan.
Verso, 204 pp., £39.95, May 1995,
Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak Easy Listening and other Moodsong
by Joseph Lanza.
Quartet, 280 pp., £10, January 1995,0 7043 0226 8 Show More
by Joseph Lanza.
Quartet, 280 pp., £10, January 1995,
“... the invention of hieroglyphics by a god, in Plato’s story in the Phaedrus, refuses it, as John Ray recalled in these pages, ‘because it would ruin his subjects’ powers of memory and concentration’. Television stands accused of promoting apathy and inertia, pocket calculators of the decay of mental arithmetic. Often technology is blamed for an ... ”