Stuart Coop

And this short story just hones in on, you know, maybe you just happened to be that morning going in to get a cup of coffee and

And, you know, the person who tells the story, you know, is really getting grumpy with someone who's not serving them fast enough and there's all these trivial things and then there's the gunshot and then there's the ramifications of this gunshot.

And Scott O'Connor just goes on and on with these stories and, yeah, it was breathtaking, totally entertaining as well and I just went, I got to the end and I want more, please.

I loved it.

Look, at last count I'd read 8,763 books about music.

I made that up but it sounds impressive, doesn't it?

But the bar is pretty high for me when it comes to music writing and I measure, again, I look for breathtaking and great music writing.

I also frequently will measure how good and affecting a book about music is by how much it costs me.

You may wonder what I mean by that.

It's how much money I end up spending on records that I didn't have before I started reading that book.

And the hands-down winner in 2018, a book that has cost me a small fortune.

It's the third book by Stuart Cosgrove.

And this is called Harlem 69, The Future of Soul Music.

Now, it's the third because Cosgrove has also written Detroit 67 and Memphis 68.

So he's writing a history of 60s soul music, but he's

I love him because he's locating the books very precisely in urban environments and he's talking much more broadly than just about the music.

So when you read Harlem 69, you're reading about the Black Panthers, you're reading about American politics, you're reading all sorts of things and then there's the music that's been shaped by what's going on in America and in Harlem at the time and the effect.

that the political, urban, social environment is having on the music and the recordings that are coming out.

And I thought I knew music that came out of Harlem and soul music and American black music in the late 1960s better than most people.

I read this and I realised I know nothing.