Pick Up the Pieces

Library Journal
"Just as a rich gumbo benefits from the perfect combination of diverse ingredients, so does Corbett’s analysis and so do the 1970s songs and performances he examines. . . . Corbett is in the upper echelon of music criticism."

Rainn Wilson 
“Corbett is the Carl Sagan of vinyl. Funny and irreverent, he’s voyaged across the stars and the human imagination to bring us music both ‘pathetic and sublime’ from that most misunderstood of decades, the 1970s.”

Neneh Cherry, singer
 “This book is a gift and a joy! My own life storycomprised a tapestry of tracks that felt just like this, a mind-map of music. Corbett’s journey through the universe of each song is detailed, deep, and soulful.”

Lars Iyer, philosopher and author of Wittgenstein Jr. and the trilogy Spurious, Dogma, and Exodus.
“This is a love cry. A cornucopia of zappy chapters, dedicated to the question as to what ‘70s music means. Deliciously nonpartisan, curious, open-eared, Corbett honors cross-pollinating musical fusions in a fleet, polymorphous prose that wears great knowledge lightly. There are bits of memoir here—but no dull autobiographical trudge. There are famous names—but deep obscurants, too. Above all: no yawnsome retreads of ye olde rock lore. It helps that Corbett’s right about everything. Pick Up the Pieces is another gem in a maverick diadem.”

Arto Lindsay, former guitarist for DNA
“They say that real edge never grows old. Steering back and forth between sexual and musical first times—best times!—Corbett does justice to all sorts of intensity.”

Gregg Bordowitz, artist and author of Tenement and Volition
“‘Time takes a cigarette and puts it in your mouth’—Bowie croons, addressing a weary soul at the start of ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide.’ The singer/prophet/alien holds out a hand to pick YOU up. Listen! Exalt! And like a fellow space commuter, Corbett clocks the tunes and throws out lines to the untethered. Dear reader, forget your age. The ‘seventies’ is an abstract pattern. Doesn’t matter if you were an adult, a teenager, a tot, or not yet conceived in that decade, turn-on with Corbett in this one.”