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Microgroove is a brilliant contribution to the tradition of Nat Hentoff, Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, John Rockwell, and Robert Palmer. John Corbett loves improvisation and can write about unusual and nonpopular music in popular ways, taking readers behind the curtain to help them understand what creativity means and the conditions under which it comes to be. Corbett plays against the ultra-narrowcasting concept that dominates media now, and seeks audiences willing to chance an encounter with the unexpected. The genre-busting of Microgroove is highly laudable and sorely needed. -- George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music John Corbett likes, I'm sorry - LOVES - all kinds of music. But who doesn't? Well most people really just dig one kind of genre or other but there are those who are into it ALL and continue to seek and follow the wild threads from African American jazz, blues, R&B and hip hop to the indie rock heart beat of college kid psychosis to the luscious worlds of Braziliana to European free improvisation to Japanese noise and pop paroxysm. One may suspect this erudite fellow as a chin scratching academic but I've been in the passenger seat next to this dude while he's blasting Chicago blues cassettes and he's hammering the steering wheel and fully turned on by the dripping music moment of creation and emotion. To share and express the impression of expression in discussion to the intellect and to the cosmic fire, this is where the righteously engaged Corbett comes into play. The respect, consideration and wonder is genuine. As music defines his aesthetic perspective, so he playfully identifies our sentience with the promise of music, the power of foreverness. -- Thurston Moore Corbett has just published a terrific new anthology of his writing called Microgroove, the long-delayed follow-up to his 1994 book Extended Play... There's a lot of great stuff in the new book-which went through multiple iterations over the years, scrapped and revisited several times-but in his introduction to a piece called 'Twenty-Seven Enthusiasms: A Spontaneous Listening Session,' Corbett expresses a major part of what makes his work so special. 'Show-and-tell was always my favorite part of school,' he writes, eventually explaining that 'you accumulate things not to own them, but to share them.' It's what he's done as a writer, a music presenter, and, in recent years, a gallerist, at Corbett vs. Dempsey. -- Peter Margasak The Chicago Reader One of the more interesting features of Microgroove is the inclusion of multiple pieces on some of the artists. This allows Corbett to consider them from different angles or over time, providing a fuller picture of their art in the process. That, combined with the eclectic scope of Corbett's interests, makes of Microgroove a rich, multifaceted survey of some of the more challenging artists of the last two decades. -- Daniel Barbiero Avant Music News The far-ranging scope of the 53 essays and interviews collected in these nearly 500 pages, dating from 1993 to just last year, reminds us that even within music's commercially neglected fringes complex gradations of sub-genre exist, separating the hardcore avant-garde devotee from one who thinks they're down because they own a copy of Space Is the Place. ... But first and foremost [Corbett] is a devotee of challenging and outre sounds, and his essays are most compelling when he dives headfirst into his chronicles with a fan's enthusiasm and verve. ...These pieces beautifully balance serious musical scholarship and critical analysis with the kind of collar-grabbing, give-this-a-listen excitement that draws us all to music in the first place. -- Matt R. Lohr Jazz Times Corbett, like the best kind of record store crate digger, pinpoints the association between acknowledged innovators and the achievements of lesser-known figures... [T]he book's key achievement is how Corbett's psychiatrist-like probing questions elicit the most definitive and/or instructive statements about their art from certain musicians. -- Ken Waxman MusicWorks [E]ssential ... a must for fans of out music. -- Andrew Lambert Bomb John Corbett is a smart guy who really, really loves music, and his intelligence and enthusiasm come through in every one of the essays and articles in this volume of his collected writings... Anyone interested in what was happening on the cutting edge of music during the years these articles appeared needs to read this anthology of John Corbett's writing. -- Ed Hazell Association for Recorded Sound Collection Journal

John Corbett likes, I'm sorry - LOVES - all kinds of music. But who doesn't? Well most people really just dig one kind of genre or other but there are those who are into it ALL and continue to seek and follow the wild threads from African American jazz, blues, R&B and hip hop to the indie rock heart beat of college kid psychosis to the luscious worlds of Braziliana to European free improvisation to Japanese noise and pop paroxysm. One may suspect this erudite fellow as a chin scratching academic but I've been in the passenger seat next to this dude while he's blasting Chicago blues cassettes and he's hammering the steering wheel and fully turned on by the dripping music moment of creation and emotion. To share and express the impression of expression in discussion to the intellect and to the cosmic fire, this is where the righteously engaged Corbett comes into play. The respect, consideration and wonder is genuine. As music defines his aesthetic perspective so he playfully identifies our sentience with the promise of music, the power of foreverness. --Thurston Moore

John Corbett is a smart guy who really, really loves music, and his intelligence and enthusiasm come through in every one of the essays and articles in this volume of his collected writings.... Anyone interested in what was happening on the cutting edge of music during the years these articles appeared needs to read this anthology of John Corbett's writing. -- Ed Hazell * Association for Recorded Sound Collection Journal * [E]ssential ... a must for fans of out music. -- Andrew Lambert * Bomb * Corbett, like the best kind of record store crate digger, pinpoints the association between acknowledged innovators and the achievements of lesser-known figures. . .. [T]he book's key achievement is how Corbett's psychiatrist-like probing questions elicit the most definitive and/or instructive statements about their art from certain musicians. -- Ken Waxman * MusicWorks * The far-ranging scope of the 53 essays and interviews collected in these nearly 500 pages, dating from 1993 to just last year, reminds us that even within music's commercially neglected fringes complex gradations of sub-genre exist, separating the hardcore avant-garde devotee from one who thinks they're down because they own a copy of Space Is the Place. ... But first and foremost [Corbett] is a devotee of challenging and outre sounds, and his essays are most compelling when he dives headfirst into his chronicles with a fan's enthusiasm and verve. ...These pieces beautifully balance serious musical scholarship and critical analysis with the kind of collar-grabbing, give-this-a-listen excitement that draws us all to music in the first place. -- Matt R. Lohr * Jazz Times * One of the more interesting features of Microgroove is the inclusion of multiple pieces on some of the artists. This allows Corbett to consider them from different angles or over time, providing a fuller picture of their art in the process. That, combined with the eclectic scope of Corbett's interests, makes of Microgroove a rich, multifaceted survey of some of the more challenging artists of the last two decades. -- Daniel Barbiero * Avant Music News * Corbett has just published a terrific new anthology of his writing called Microgroove, the long-delayed follow-up to his 1994 book Extended Play. . . . There's a lot of great stuff in the new book-which went through multiple iterations over the years, scrapped and revisited several times-but in his introduction to a piece called 'Twenty-Seven Enthusiasms: A Spontaneous Listening Session,' Corbett expresses a major part of what makes his work so special. 'Show-and-tell was always my favorite part of school,' he writes, eventually explaining that 'you accumulate things not to own them, but to share them.' It's what he's done as a writer, a music presenter, and, in recent years, a gallerist, at Corbett vs. Dempsey. -- Peter Margasak * The Chicago Reader * John Corbett likes, I'm sorry - LOVES - all kinds of music. But who doesn't? Well most people really just dig one kind of genre or other but there are those who are into it ALL and continue to seek and follow the wild threads from African American jazz, blues, R&B and hip hop to the indie rock heart beat of college kid psychosis to the luscious worlds of Braziliana to European free improvisation to Japanese noise and pop paroxysm. One may suspect this erudite fellow as a chin scratching academic but I've been in the passenger seat next to this dude while he's blasting Chicago blues cassettes and he's hammering the steering wheel and fully turned on by the dripping music moment of creation and emotion. To share and express the impression of expression in discussion to the intellect and to the cosmic fire, this is where the righteously engaged Corbett comes into play. The respect, consideration and wonder is genuine. As music defines his aesthetic perspective, so he playfully identifies our sentience with the promise of music, the power of foreverness. -- Thurston Moore Microgroove is a brilliant contribution to the tradition of Nat Hentoff, Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, John Rockwell, and Robert Palmer. John Corbett loves improvisation and can write about unusual and nonpopular music in popular ways, taking readers behind the curtain to help them understand what creativity means and the conditions under which it comes to be. Corbett plays against the ultra-narrowcasting concept that dominates media now, and seeks audiences willing to chance an encounter with the unexpected. The genre-busting of Microgroove is highly laudable and sorely needed. -- George E. Lewis, author of * A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music *

Author Information

John Corbett is a music critic, record producer, and curator. He is the author of Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein, also published by Duke University Press. His writing has appeared in Downbeat, The Wire, the Chicago Reader, and numerous other publications.  He is the co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery in Chicago.

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