About the Book
Popular culture has woven itself into the social fabric of our lives, penetrating people’s homes and haunting their psyche through images and earworm hooks. Justice, at most levels, is something that the average citizen might have little influence upon leaving us feeling helpless and complacent. But pop music is a neglected arena where some change can concretely occur—by exercising active and thoughtful choices to reject the low-hanging, omnipresent commercialized and pre-packaged fruit, we begin to re-balance the world, one engaged listener at a time.
In fifty-nine concise and clear points, Brennan reveals how corporate media has constricted local culture and individual creativity, leading to a lack of diversity within “diversity.” Muse-Sick’s narrative portions are driven and made corporeal via the author’s ongoing field-recording chronicles with widely disparate groups, such as the Sheltered Workshop Singers. Marilena Umuhoza Delli’s striking photographs accompany and bring to life each tale.
About the Author
Ian Brennan is a Grammy-winning music producer who has produced three other Grammy-nominated albums. He is also the author of six books and has worked with the likes of filmmaker John Waters, Merle Haggard, and Green Day, amongst others. His work with international artists such as the Zomba Prison Project, Tanzania Albinism Collective, and Khmer Rouge Survivors, has been featured on the front-page of the New York Times and on an Emmy-winning 60 Minutes segment with Anderson Cooper reporting. Since 1993 he has taught violence prevention and conflict resolution around the world for such prestigious organizations as the Smithsonian, New York’s New School, Berklee College of Music, the University of London, UC Berkeley, and the National Accademia of Science (Rome).
Special Guest
Michelle Cruz Gonzales, who writes about the intersections of race, class, and gender, is an English professor and author of the memoir, The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk which has been taught in colleges and Universities in colleges all over the United States. She has essay and fiction in anthologies by Putnam, PM Press, Seal Press, and Literary Kitchen, and she has published online in Longreads, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Latino Rebels. She and Spitboy, who released a discography, Body of Work: All the Songs on Don Giovanni Records in June 2020, were featured in the 2017 documentary, Turn it Around: Story of East Bay Punk.
Ian Brennan is a Grammy-winning music producer who has produced three other Grammy-nominated albums. He is the author of four books and has worked with the likes of filmmaker John Waters, Merle Haggard, and Green Day, among others. His work with international artists such as the Zomba Prison Project, Tanzania Albinism Collective, and Khmer Rouge Survivors, has been featured on the front page of the New York Times and on an Emmy-winning 60 Minutes segment with Anderson Cooper reporting. Since 1993 he has taught violence prevention and conflict resolution around the world for such prestigious organizations as the Smithsonian, New York’s New School, Berklee College of Music, the University of London, the University of California–Berkeley, and the National Accademia of Science (Rome).
Back to Ian Brennan’s Author Page
About Michelle Cruz Gonzales:
Michelle Cruz Gonzales played drums and wrote lyrics for three bands during the 1980s and 1990s: Bitch Fight, Spitboy, and Instant Girl. Her writing has been published in anthologies, literary journals, and Hip Mama magazine. Michelle teaches English and creative writing at Las Positas College, and lives with her husband, son, and their three Mexican dogs in Oakland, California.
