Melville House BooksI used to spend a lot of time and money purchasing slick vinyl re-issues of "forgotten" or "lost" eras in American music: albums with titles like New Orleans Funk, Vol. 1: The Original Sound of Funk, 1960-1975 and Miami Sound: Rare Funk and Soul from Miami, Florida 1967-1974.Listening to the artists, who were usually minorities signed to small, regional labels, it was sometimes hard to figure out why they never made it. Bad luck? Lack of ambition? The wrong look? Racism?
Wikicommons​Former Miami New Times staffer, Palmetto High grad, and current New Yorker editor Ben Greenman will read from his new book, Please Step Back, this Saturday at 5 p.m at Books & Books Coral Gables (265 Aragon Ave.).If you missed our review of the book -- a retrospective of the '60s and '70s rock scene through the lens of fictional rockstar Rock Foxx -- give it quick read by clicking here.Even better, read some of Greenman's work while he was a staffer here:&n
Ben Greenman​
Ben Greenman was a 20-year-old rookie scribe
fresh out of Yale when he was hired to write for the Miami New Times in 1990. The Palmettto Senior High alum joined a rabble
rousing crew of writers who included Greg Baker, Jim Defede, Sean Rowe and
Steve Almond. They were the ones who laid the foundation for the alt weekly's
muck-racking ways. "It was the wild, wild west in those days,"
Greenman notes. "The paper gave us a lot of license to do creative
work."
And
Greenman certainl
