Let’s Do It (2022)

Bob Stanley’s prequel to his ambitious, impressive Yeah Yeah Yeah is even more ambitious and impressive—and massive, weighing in at approximately 600 pages. Where Yeah Yeah Yeah covered developments of pop music in the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st, largely from a UK perspective, Let’s Do It covers the first half of the 20th century, from 1900 into the 1970s. It always keeps an eye on the UK, but this time most of the action is from the US. Stanley—whose day job is playing keyboards and writing songs for the band St. Etienne—also charts out developments in technology, from wax cylinders and sheet music to the 78s, 33s (LPs), and 45s (7-inch singles) that would bear the music to the populace. He also charts out the entertainment modes and developments of musical theater, from vaudeville to Broadway to Hollywood. He has given himself so much to cover that it may feel a little rushed and compressed. Yet, as with Yeah Yeah Yeah, I see already that I have approximately one metric ton of music to check out. Building playlists starts tomorrow, one chapter at a time. I know I come with a rockist type of resistance to much of this fare. Take Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Stanley adores them. I have grave lifelong reservations about both. Some Mel Torme and Gordon Jenkins pieces that Stanley endorses enthusiastically have already left me cold as too schmaltzy (note that my use of the term “schmaltz” is, as always, imprecise). So we’ll see. I loved an Irving Berlin playlist I tried, and am already inclined toward Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and many others he talks about, along with many more he mentions that I don’t know well. I’m looking forward to actually hearing more of the music and already feel reasonably confident of Let’s Do It as a guide, though my tastes may differ from Stanley’s. There’s also a history of jazz here, I should say. A thread I thought was intriguing but not developed enough was about pop music itself. What is “pop” and how does it work? He’s playing with the ideas but not entirely pulling them together. I almost think there needs to be a third volume in this series, explicitly exploring “pop” in more depth now that he has established such a useful architecture of the 20th century. I suspect I will be referring to this tome for weeks and months, if not years. Recommended.

In case the library is closed due to AI assault, which is not happening.