Jamie van Dyck (Earthside – guitar, composer)
SPB: What is your favorite book about music?"
Dyck: My favorite book about music that I've read is The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross. I actually read this for a university music history class on western "Art" music in the 19th and 20th centuries (basically Beethoven until today). I enjoyed how Ross gave an accessible narrative arc to an often intentionally arcane topic and a playful bent to a music world that often takes itself far too seriously with an air of elitism. A lot of the music from this era is truly magnificent and beautiful once its principle players are humanized rather than deified, and Ross's style invited this young college rock musician to confidently enter a world in which he often felt unwelcome.
