Book Review: Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business - Why So Much Music You Hear Sucks by Hank Bordowitz - Page 2

Perhaps a better route to take would be to analyze how or why a mediocre (my opinion, yes) band like the Strokes received such a huge initial marketing and media push a few years back, when they ended up being relatively disappointing in just about every way. I do not blame The Strokes for this. They make music. Somebody else tried to make The Strokes a culturally penetrating fad. Who was this person and why? That’s what I wanted to get from this book. Sadly, I was left wanting.

I admire Bordowitz's efforts, but at times he feels like an apologist insider writing what he thought would be an incredibly informative and insightful book. While succeeding at the former, he fails in the latter, simply because it lacks the venom that the title claims is lurking beneath the cover. I was really itching to learn what Bordowitz’s personal feelings on the music business are. The reality is that most of the material that Bordowitz relates is neither remarkably controversial, nor very subjective. I was hoping to get the music industry expose version of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. I wanted to visualize the slippery guts of the music industry strewn across the kill room floor as Bordowitz pointed out the disgusting gristly truths hidden therein. Instead the gears are carefully taken apart, separated into little pieces and carefully explained as they are shined and put back together.

Dirty Little Secrets is worthy of reading for anyone wanting to get to know the inner workings of the whole of the record business, which may indeed have been Bordowitz's original purpose. The book itself is relatively complete -- and occasionally fascinating -- in this regard. Who knows why this title was chosen? Possibly for sensationalistic purposes. But anyone who is ready to roll up their sleeves and dig deeper into why music does, in fact, suck, may come away feeling disappointed and just a little duped.

Article Author: Kory Lanphear

Kory Lanphear is a reality-television producer newly moved to Denver, CO from Los Angeles, CA. He enjoys living slow.

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