An Ideal For Living Cover Art, credit: Joan LeMay
Pre-Order Available Here
First Book To Highlight The Format Features Contributions
By Nearly 50 Music-Industry Veterans
Including Britt Daniel (Spoon), Molly Neuman (Bratmobile),
Chris Slusarenko (Guided By Voices, Eyelids), And Many More
Today, author and veteran music writer and editor Corey duBrowa announces his first book, An Ideal For Living – A Celebration of the E.P. (Extended Play) set for print and digital release on May 31 via Hozac Books. Featuring contributions from nearly 50 music-industry veterans, including a foreword written by Spoon’s Britt Daniel, the project transforms a list of the 200 Best EPs ever recorded into an impressive first ever overview & history of the often-neglected EP format. Pre-orders are available now, here.
“While my two decades as a rock critic were the inspiration behind the exploration of the EP, I realized I was always delighted to be asked to review an EP over the years but had never seen a book, magazine article or even essay that was focused only on this particular (and underrated) musical format,” duBrowa explains. From Dangerhouse to Touch & Go to Sub Pop to Flying Nun, and all roads in between, savvy labels have used the EP to great effect as a way to introduce artists on a less risky, mid-sized platform for decades. With an immediacy that flies in the face of the LP’s “grand concept,” EPs are designed to act as a short, sharp shock to the system that can serve as a musical snapshot as opposed to an LP’s fuller picture.
An Ideal For Living shows how the format developed and how it took on a life of its own, from early jazz & rock’n roll through the beat & psychedelic rock era, the ascendance of punk, new wave, and post-punk, into the alternative/indie rock era, and ultimately the modern age. With a catalog of 200 EPs (the top 25 per decade from the 1950s to the present) topped off by a list of the 25 greatest ever recorded in any era, and a list of 13 noteworthy “almost made it” EPs, the book makes the case for treating the EP as artistically significant as LPs, singles, or any other format in our increasingly streaming-dominated and less-physically-oriented environment.
About Corey duBrowa
In addition to an all-consuming day gig in communications, Corey duBrowa has been a freelance contributing editor and music journalist for more than two decades, penning more than 1200 bylines in publications such as Rolling Stone, GQ, MAGNET Magazine, Paste, No Depression, Village Voice, Seattle Weekly, the Stranger, the Oregonian, Willamette Week, and the sorely-missed Seattle bi-weekly the Rocket (R.I.P.). He also appeared in the Elliott Smith biopic Heaven Adores You and spent two pandemic years DJing for KXSF-FM in San Francisco, hosting the Bring Yr Own Beats program and serving as one-fourth (along with Henry Wimmer, one of this book’s contributors) of the rotating Barndance alt-country collective. He splits time between Bend, OR and New York City. This is his first book.
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