"Hold On to Your Dreams "is the first biography of the musician and
composer Arthur Russell, one of the most important but least known
contributors to New York's downtown music scene during the 1970s
and 1980s. With the exception of a few dance recordings, including
"Is It All Over My Face?" and "Go Bang #5," Russell's pioneering
music was largely forgotten until 2004, when the posthumous release
of two albums brought new attention to the artist. This revival of
interest gained momentum with the issue of additional albums and
the documentary film "Wild Combination." Based on interviews with
more than seventy of his collaborators, family members, and
friends, "Hold On to Your Dreams" provides vital new information
about this singular, eccentric musician and his role in the
boundary-breaking downtown music scene.
Tim Lawrence traces Russell's odyssey from his hometown of
Oskaloosa, Iowa, to countercultural San Francisco, and eventually
to New York, where he lived from 1973 until his death from
AIDS-related complications in 1992. Resisting definition while
dreaming of commercial success, Russell wrote and performed new
wave and disco as well as quirky rock, twisted folk, voice-cello
dub, and hip-hop-inflected pop. "He was way ahead of other people
in understanding that the walls between concert music and popular
music and avant-garde music were illusory," comments the composer
Philip Glass. "He lived in a world in which those walls weren't
there." Lawrence follows Russell across musical genres and through
such vital downtown music spaces as the Kitchen, the Loft, the
Gallery, the Paradise Garage, and the Experimental Intermedia
Foundation. Along the way, he captures Russell's openness to sound,
his commitment to collaboration, and his uncompromising
idealism.
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