Client details
Dorian Lynskey
Agent
| Sarah Ballard | Assistant: Lara Hughes-Young |
About
Dorian Lynskey is a music writer for the Guardian. He was the Big Issue's music critic for three years and has freelanced for a host of magazines, currently including Q, Word, Spin, Empire and Blender. For more information visit http://33revolutionsperminute.wordpress.com/ Forthcoming publication: 33 REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE - FABER AND FABER - MARCH 2011 The protest song is where pop music collides most dramatically with the wider world, forcing its way into the news, even prompting conversations in Westminster or Washington. Rather than being a worthy adjunct to the business of pop, protest music is woven into its DNA. When you listen to Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Public Enemy or the Clash, you are not sitting down to a dusty seminar — you are hearing pop music at its most thrillingly alive. Bad protest music can be banal, misguided, dreary, hectoring, idiotic, or just plain dreadful, but the good stuff is as exciting as popular culture gets. 33 REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE is a history of protest music told via 33 songs. Why 33? Partly because that’s the number of rotations performed by a vinyl album in one minute, and partly because it takes a lot of songs to tell a story which spans seven decades and five continents — to capture the colour and variety of this shape-shifting genre. Think of it as a compilation CD or iPod playlist in book form. Each track offers a way into a subject, an artist, an era or an idea, to argue that protest music is still entertainment, however serious its objectives. Pop is about the moment, and the unpredictable chemistry of personality, geography and history which produces that moment. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in the protest song.
“As regimes around the world crumble under the weight of popular protest, Dorian Lynskey's excellent and exhaustive history of protest music could not be more timely. He has painstakingly fashioned a social record of the past 100 years out of pop songs, paying tribute to the music that both reflects events and plays a part in changing them ... a fascinating journey.” Rebecca Nicholson, Sunday Times “Dorian Lynskey's excellent overview of protest songs ... He mixes interviews new and old with diligent research ... The book also doubles handily as a countercultural history of the West.” Book of the Week, Time Out **** “33 Revolutions Per Minute argues, in an entertaining and readable style, that songs have had the potential to elicit change - it's just that barely anyone is writing them anymore.” Non-Fiction of the Week, Metro **** “As Dorian Lynskey’s glorious, hilarious history of the protest song demonstrates, protest songs can be any or all of opaquely non-specific, prone to misinterpretation, and utter bullshit. They may also be dazzlingly eloquent, irresistibly purposeful and enduringly magnificent.... Where a less ambitious and able writer might have contented himself with cranking out a potted biography of each song, Lynskey uses each track as starting marks for extensive, thoughtful, beautifully written and often wryly funny rambles around a theme. ... Anyone with any interest in rock ’n’ roll or politics will find multitudes to enjoy here: would that all books about rock ’n’ roll were so intelligent, and all books about history such fun.” Andrew Mueller, ***** New Humanist “There are 33 chosen songs but each track is the starting point for a thought-provoking, fluent discourse on a theme. It's witty, well researched and contains excellent appendices, sources and epilogue over 120 pages ...Where Lynskey is so good - and balanced - is presenting the musicians in their full, complicated differences via some excellent quotes: David Crosby admitted: "I cared mostly about my next fix I didn't care too much about people starving in Afghanistan." Tom Robinson admits that his 1970s gay protest songs "could have been subtler ... could have done without the phony cockney accent." ... The scope of the book is remarkable, too.” Telegraph “[Lynskey's] book is an admirable piece of work with a thorough index, and even a list of 100 songs not mentioned in the text ... This is a great story book. Each one of these songs has a story and is a story in itself. There are songs of love, loss, longing, triumph, despair, exultation and rejection here.” Philip King, Irish Times “33 Revolutions Per Minute is a scrupulously researched, elegantly written and highly absorbing account of the intersection of politics and music built around 33 key songs, and the events that yielded them.” Fiona Sturges, Independent “The book’s 33 chapters – 33 being the number of turns or ‘revolutions’ per minute of a long playing vinyl record – are packed with anecdote and detail, vividly capturing the era in which the songs were written and performed ... The book is profoundly moving in its evocation of the sheer importance of singing to the morale of the young black and white activists who faced down police batons, dogs and the Ku Klux Klan in the struggle for civil rights ... Lynskey does not shy away from addressing the barbs usually aimed at protest songs: that not only do they preach to the converted, but they are a futile gesture in the face of overwhelming forces. “To create a successful protest song in the twenty-first century is a daunting challenge,” he writes. “But the alternative, for any musician with strong political convictions, is paralysis and gloom.”” Patrick Sawer, Telegraph “33 Revolutions Per Minute is a history of the ongoing rebellion against governments who take their citizens for granted, and of how the noise of resistance invariably filters up from the young and the sidelined, pop’s greatest constituents. It covers, to name a few not mentioned already, McCarthyism, the Cold War, Thatcherism, post-9/11 politics, and the political opposition between Stewart Copeland and Sting in The Police (“Not a single inch of shared ground”). Part of me would have liked a glorious multimedia version of the book – what price the rights for all these songs in an iPad version? – but that could detract from the strength of the writing. The book’s achievement is not only to make me want to listen to the songs, but to experience more widely the people behind the music.” John Self “33 Revolutions Per Minute is a scrupulously researched, elegantly written and highly absorbing account of the intersection of politics and music built around 33 key songs, and the events that yielded them.” Belfast Telegraph “An extraordinary piece of work; insightful, sensitively handled and – given the political turmoil of the last few weeks – timely” State Magazine “British music critic Lynskey offers a completely absorbing look at 33 such songs, spanning seven decades and hailing from five continents ... Comprehensive and beautifully written.” Vanessa Bush, Booklist “An ambitious, astute summary of political songs, from the 1940s to the present ... Throughout, Lynskey displays complete command of the music and the events that sparked it, and though he writes from a left-field perspective, he is no cheerleader ... Lynskey presents a difficult, risky art form in all its complexity.” Kirkus Reviews “An intensely satisfying read .. His knowledgeable, hard-boiled prose is slashed through occasionally with fine razor cuts of vivid description which jolt you out of any reverie you may have slipped into.” The Quietus “A pretty darn well written book so take a bow Mr Lynskey.” Sid Griffin of The Long Ryders
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Gallery
The Guardian Book of Playlists 
33 Revolutions Per Minute
Non-Fiction
| Publication Details | Notes |
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| THE GUARDIAN BOOK OF PLAYLISTS 2008 AURUM | Now that iPods are so popular, many people access most of their music online via iTunes or similar applications. But the vast number of tracks available online can make this a bewildering process. The Guardian's weekly 'Readers Recommend' column offers imaginative and idiosyncratic suggestions for music to download on a selected theme, allowing the reader to create new and unusual themed playlists for his or her iPod. These playlists range over all genres of popular music, with brand-new tracks recommended alongside classic songs and rare oddities. The Guardian Book of Playlists brings together the 100 best examples of the 'Readers Recommend' column, with Dorian Lynskey's essay on each theme being followed by the ten chosen songs as a recommended playlist, creating an entertaining, quirky guide for music fans wondering what they should download next. The Guardian Book of Playlists draws on the archives of a popular Guardian feature to create a highly marketable book. He has made a compilation tape of his favourite recent songs every month since October 1992 only these days he makes playlists. |
