Punk Rock and Hip-Hop. Disco and salsa. The loft jazz scene and the downtown composers known as the Minimalists. In the mid-1970s, New York City was a laboratory where all the major styles of modern music were reinvented - all at once, from one block to the next, by musicians who knew, admired and borrowed from one another. Crime was everywhere, the government was broke and the city's infrastructure was collapsing. But rent was cheap, and the possibilities for musical exploration were limitless.
Love Goes to Buildings on Fire is the first book to tell the full story of the era's music scenes and the phenomenal and surprising ways they intersected. Moving panoramically from Johnny Pacheco and the Fania All-Stars renting Yankee Stadium to take salsa to the masses, to the New Jersey locals Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith claiming the jungleland of Manhattan as their own, from Grandmaster Flash transforming the turntable into a musical instrument, to David Byrne and the Talking Heads proving that rock music 'ain't no foolin' around', Will Hermes captures the creativity, drive and full-out lust for life of the great New York musicians of those years whose music went on to change the world.
