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Positively 4th Street
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
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Publisher's summary
The story of the transformation of folk music from antiquarian pursuit to era-defining art form has never fully been told. Hajdu, whose biography of Billy Strayhorn set a new standard for books about popular music, tells it as the story of a colorful foursome who were drawn together in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and inspired a generation to gather around them.
Even before they became lovers in 1963, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were seen as the reigning king and queen of folk music; but their songs and their public images grew out of their association with Joan's younger sister, Mimi, beautiful, haunted, a musician in her own right, and Richard Farina, the roguish, charming novelist Mimi married when she was 17. In Hajdu's candid, often intimate account (based on several hundred new interviews), their rise from scruffy coffeehouse folksingers to pop stars comes about through their complex personal relationships, as the young Dylan courts the famous Joan to further his career, Farina woos Mimi while looking longingly on her older sister, and Farina's friend Thomas Pynchon keeps an eye on their amours from afar.
Positively 4th Street is that rare book with a new story to tell about the 1960s: the story of how some of the greatest American popular music arose out of the lives of four gifted and charismatic figures.
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Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. But he formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style called the "wall of sound". But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music was doomed, and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior.
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Descent Into Madness
- By Chris on 06-11-12
By: Mick Brown
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Fire and Rain
- The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970
- By: David Browne
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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January 1970: the Beatles assemble one more time to put the finishing touches on Let It Be; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are wrapping up Déjà Vu; Simon and Garfunkel are unveiling Bridge Over Troubled Water; James Taylor is an upstart singer-songwriter who's just completed Sweet Baby James. Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives---and the world around them---will change irrevocably.
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Fascinating information, easy to listen
- By NCKitkat on 07-28-11
By: David Browne
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The Never-Ending Present
- The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip
- By: Michael Barclay
- Narrated by: George Stroumboulopoulos
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From our talent-rich neighbor to the north comes this biography of one of the most successful Canadian rock bands, The Tragically Hip, which announced a year-long tour after sharing the news of lead singer Gord Downie’s inoperable cancer. Now available to US listeners, The Never-Ending Present details what led up to the memorable night when music fans all over the world watched Downie’s heroic final performance.
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Hometown Heroes
- By Tommy Garou on 12-13-18
By: Michael Barclay
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So Many Roads
- The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead
- By: David Browne
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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No longer dismissed as relics of the hippie era, a new generation has lionized the Dead for creating a culture that paved the way for social networking, free music swapping, and the uncompromising anticorporate attitude of indie rock. Now, fifty years after the band first began changing rock 'n' roll both sonically and psychically, So Many Roads paints the most vivid portrait yet of the Grateful Dead, one of the most enduring institutions in American music and culture.
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Great first book on the Dead
- By robert on 10-30-15
By: David Browne
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Outlaw
- Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville
- By: Michael Streissguth
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Waylon Jennings. Willie Nelson. Kris Kristofferson. Three renegade musicians. Three unexpected stars. Three men who changed Nashville and country music forever. Streissguth's new book brings to life an incredible chapter in musical history and reveals for the first time a surprising outlaw zeitgeist in Nashville. Based on extensive research and probing interviews with key players, what emerges is a fascinating glimpse into three of the most legendary artists of our times and the definitive story of how they changed music in Nashville and everywhere.
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Revealing little-known Details does Captivate!
- By Cody Meyer on 11-20-17
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Who I Am
- By: Pete Townshend
- Narrated by: Pete Townshend
- Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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From the voice of a generation: the most highly anticipated autobiography of the year, and the story of a man who wanted The Who to be called The Hair; wanted to be a sculptor, a journalist, a dancer and a graphic designer; became a musician, composer, librettist, fiction writer, literary editor, sailor; drank too much and nearly died; detached from his body in an airplane, on LSD, and nearly died; planned to write his memoir when he was 21; and published this book at 67.
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Glad To Meet You
- By Mel on 10-12-12
By: Pete Townshend
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Beatles '66
- The Revolutionary Year
- By: Steve Turner
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966 - the year of their last concert and of Revolver, their first album created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner investigates the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives and work during 1966.
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Great listen
- By Tad Davis on 07-28-18
By: Steve Turner
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Uncommon People
- The Rise and Fall of The Rock Stars
- By: David Hepworth
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations. What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had. What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn't stay the course.
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INSIGHTFULL!
- By CLAUDIA R KENNEDY on 02-18-18
By: David Hepworth
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Kicking and Dreaming
- A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll
- By: Ann Wilson, Nancy Wilson
- Narrated by: Ann Wilson, Nancy Wilson
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Two sisters. Two voices. One Heart.
The mystery of "Magic Man." The wicked riff of "Barracuda." The sadness and beauty of "Alone." The raw energy of "Crazy On You." These songs, and so many more, are part of the fabric of American music. Heart, fronted by Ann and Nancy Wilson, has given fans everywhere classic, raw, and pure badass rock and roll for more than three decades. As the only sisters in rock who write their own music and play their own instruments, Ann and Nancy have always stood apart - certainly from their male counterparts but also from their female peers.
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Good Behind-The-Scenes Look At "Heart"
- By Kathy on 11-13-12
By: Ann Wilson, and others
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Iggy Pop
- Open Up and Bleed
- By: Paul Trynka
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Iggy Pop's legendary career has been tumultuous, reaching great heights with mega-hits and then hitting rock-bottom lows in jail and mental institutions. Along the way, he's become a cult-rock hero, an inspiration for dozens of other famous rockers, and has had a pretty good time of it, too. But the image of Iggy Pop versus the man behind that image, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., is surprisingly contradictory.
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Banal and Boring
- By Michael on 12-03-08
By: Paul Trynka
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Shine Bright
- A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop
- By: Danyel Smith
- Narrated by: Danyel Smith
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, Shine Bright is Danyel Smith’s intimate history of Black women’s music as the foundational story of American pop. Smith has been writing this history for more than five years. But as a music fan, and then as an essayist, editor (Vibe, Billboard), and podcast host (Black Girl Songbook), she has been living this history since she was a latchkey kid listening to “Midnight Train to Georgia” on the family stereo.
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Ok might have been better reading the hard copy
- By cde on 06-18-22
By: Danyel Smith
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What listeners say about Positively 4th Street
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Karolyn Wilson
- 03-20-23
Frustrating
I couldn’t finish it. The reader if frustrating and the pace very slow. I had to speed up the reading speed to get it to sound normal.
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- James David Bottoms
- 06-14-18
Best music-culture book I've ever experienced.
Gripping, exhaustively researched and masterful. Simply a tour de force. I'd read The Ten-Cent Plague, and was dazzled, but this was something else altogether...
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2 people found this helpful
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- Martin B. Cramer
- 01-18-24
The story was well written. I enjoyed the detailed description of the time and places.
Dislike the reader's reading in voices approximating characters in the book. It took away from the story and descriptions.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-25-20
Great stuff!
For fans of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez this is a must. I first heard Dylan at school in 1966 in South Africa when we put on George Bernard Shaw's Arms And The Man and a teacher used Masters Of War as the main theme.
From their I got on to Baez and it opened a whole new world of music for me.
In January 1973 I was lucky enough to see Mimi performing at a coffeehouse in San Francisco with Hoyt Axton and it turned into one of my all time favourite evenings as Joan turned up. She had just returned from a concert tour in Japan.
She a Mimi sang together, performing In The Quiet Morning, written by Mimi about Janis Joplin.
Listen to this book. It opens up a whole new dimension on some of the greatest folk artists of all time.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Chas Herren
- 09-11-24
Page Turner…awesome
Well read, well written piece. You don’t know Dylan or Baez till you’ve read this, and real story is much more interesting than the mythology. I found narration outstanding, thank you!
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Overall
- R.S.
- 05-10-05
Positively gripping
The book was surprisingly good and interesting.
The story of the rise of folk music in the 50's and 60's is like a big puzzle, as it came on the heels of McCarthyism, and a long poltical chill.
David Hadju's book, which tells the story of Richard Farina and Mimi Baez, provided a vital piece to that puzzle, and in so doing fashioned a dramatic frame with which to make this account compelling.
The rise of folk music, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and this milieu has a special place in contemporary social history, besides its entertainment value. The sudden popularity of folk music is an often overlooked story of that generation. Not only does it describe an aspect of a protest movement, but also the evolution of a niche of mass culture.
I chose this book reluctantly because the reader's voice had been denigrated by a previous review.. At first I thought perhaps there was merit to the criticism, but I became accustomed to the reader's voice, and felt her dramatic inflections and vocal characterizations added considerably to this book's many merits. I would have no hesitation to chose another book performed by this reader.
Anyone who has read Bob Dylan's Chronicles, would certainly find this this book a fascinating companion volume.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Arthur
- 01-02-12
Folk music tangled up in blue
The characters are fascinating and the story reveals so much about interconnections and creative forces in music and literature that it's a wonder the author could have known so much, let alone presented it in such a compelling, coherent narrative. Just as important, Bernadette Dunne makes it all come alive. She was an ideal choice to read this book and she takes the listener through thick and thin. Hearing her was much better than reading it myself.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sharon S
- 06-16-18
Wonderful History and Great Performance by Dunne
This is an excellent book that details the history of folk music as it relates to Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, Richard Farina, and tangentially Bob Dylan. As someone who does not like Dylan, this book affirmed my impressions of Bob Dylan and introduced me to people who were more interesting and inspiring than any contemporary musicians in the news.
I am not someone who likes folk music so I was surprised that the quality of this book is so good that it maintained my interest. Hajdu does a brilliant job putting events in chronological order and detailing the evolution of these different musicians and why their music evolved. The misogyny of the period is plainly described and Hadju uses first person quotes whenever possible.
The way the folk scene had moments of synchronicity, politics, and apathy are really interesting. I enjoyed this book quite a bit and became a fan of the Farinas in the process.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jim G
- 02-17-23
Good book, unfortunate reading
Although I don't agree that Bernadette Dunne's reading of Positively 4th Street ruins the book in its entirety, her choices are genuinely unfortunate.
Her Dylan voice is absurd and that's being nice about it.
Dunne's reading of other quoted persons in the book are also in affected tones but halfhearted ones. None match the patronizing affect she places on the Dylan voice, with the possible exception of the insulting Italian-American dialect she attempts when quoting an Italian restaurant owner.
None of these voices are required by the book itself, which has all the written conventions of ", he said" and "she said" that a reader needs to distinguish the quotes.
All that said, if you're interested in this period of American music, David Hajdu's book is a seminal addition to the record.
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- David
- 10-12-23
A Generally Compelling Listen
I liked this audiobook for the most part. The narrator had her hands full - there were so many characters (literally, lol) she had to voice, some of them famous and therefore with some pressure to sound convincing. But I thought she did admirably. I did find, however, the actual writing to be a bit “catty”, not exactly true (Robbie Robertson would contradict the statement that Albert G came up with The Band as the name for his band) and draggy in places to the point that I almost stopped listening. But I’m glad I didn’t.
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