[.ca] American Music: Photographs (ISBN 0375505075)

From Amazon.com:
It looks like a gorgeous nostalgia trip to judge by the cover image alone. The photo is of an old school record player that lies unplugged, a white label test-pressing waiting on the turntable, while a band of paper wrapped around the cover announces the title in ye olde woodblock-looking type, American Music. A reading of the small type on the back cover reveals the image to be the very record and turntable left in Elvis Presley's bedroom the day he died, and the mind reels, thinking about whether the King listened to this record on that day or not, and who are the Stamps, anyway? An excellent selection of musician portraits interspersed with crumbly wooden jook joints and wide open fields in the South, American Music covers a wide gamut of jazz, blues, punk, country, hip-hop, rock and roll, folk and gospel musicians. And while most of the pictures were shot between 1999 and 2002, some go back to the early 1970s, when Leibovitz first became Rolling Stone magazine's chief photographer. Some of the artists are very well-known (Michael Stipe, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan) and some of them are not (Jessie Mae Hemphill, Other Turner, Carlos Coy). Leibovitz really has a way of relaxing her performers, and this is a great part of her gift. Even when the pictures are so posed as to be ridiculous (like, what's Michael Stipe doing on that bedbug-ridden mattress—-the guy's a billionaire?), she catches her subjects at their most "real." They are lost in their music, or just doing some "real person" thing (look, there is Beck in his car—does Beck really drive his own car?). The presentation may be a little hokey, but this book is sure to please most any music fan. --Mike McGonigal

What is Missing, Speaks Volumes!:
This is more of an observation rather than a review... There isn't a single classical musician shown in this book.. I find that very depressing yet not totally unexpected. The title of this complication should really be Popular American Music. So many great classical American musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, to use one example who covered the entire musical spectrum, surely deserved a place in this book...

Popular Music Gets Really Ugly:
A few of the pictures here are very good, but for the most part, this presents Pop Music in the same manner that "Sunset Boulevard" portrayed the movie business. Most of the photos are dull (scores to choose from), moronic (The White Stripes, Eartha Kitt), or just plain ugly (Iggy Pop, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash,at least another dozen). While some peeople argue that poor aesthetic quality is an essential attribute of "art", there is no excuse for the lack of technical competency shown here. Most of the photos here look like the work of a person who has no camera skills. If the bad aesthetics are deliberate, then it seems clear that the photographer regards musicians with great contempt, judging by how she portrays them here. Pass on this, and just get copies of your favorite rock music magazines if you want a collection of good pictures.

Don't know what these other folks are talking about.:
Gee. I've never heard that poor aesthetic quality is an essential element of art. I'm not even sure what "poor aesthetic quality" means. But if it describes the heartbreaking, iconic portrait of Johnny Cash and June Carter, then I surely want more of it. These are beautiful, sometimes funny and often emotionally moving pictures in which the subjects collaborate with the artist to present a certain face to the world. Maybe not all the faces are completely honest ones, but they're interesting and beautifully photographed.

Classical?:
OK, think for a minute what it means deep down to chronical AMERICAN music. That would be music that comes from the Delta and from Chicago and spread from there as essential Blues, Jazz, Rock and Roll and later forms of Pop. Classical came to us from Europe, what these artists represent are the outcome of truly American born music. I'm staggered that anyone would not make that connection.. And yes, we know that some may find Iggy Pop "ugly", but American Music isn't all about chicks that look like Britney Spears..