The Invisible Rockstars - by Dana L Miller (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Setting out to query passersby of every age, ethnicity, creed, and social background about names they know and love within the wide world of music will produce an infinitesimally small percentage of people in any city of the world who claim not to have a favorite song, album, band, or singer. It is for this very reason that music has quite rightly been colloquially referred to as 'the universal language' for centuries, and most people can and will tell you in an enthusiastic flash who they most like to see step up to a well-lit microphone. However, conduct the same kind of questioning experiment around the names of the sonic spirits sitting behind the recording consoles on the fabled records of even the most diehard music fans in any genre, and one finds that this precious-few percentage shifts swiftly over to represent the number of people who can actually name the decibel-designing dream dealers that are responsible for the soundscapes we have all come to associate with the best moments of our lives.

Whilst famous frontpeople, six-string slingers of every stripe, pulse-grabbing bassists, drummers both divine and dilettante, kaleidoscopic kings of the keys, and legendary backup singers are asked pointed and personal questions nearly every day about their interests, inspirations, irksome incidents and overall approaches to their craft, the choices and challenges of the harmonic heroes hitting "record" are scarcely given any notice at all by the same public and press. Those rare times when music producers have been talked to at any length beyond what constitutes clickbait or the occasional congratulatory clap on the back, it has generally occurred within a distinctly technical remit and with little to no mention made of their own impetus inside the glowing marks they have left all over the records that have meant the most to the world. Preposterously, they have never before this book been brought together in one place in any capacity, and certainly not ever for the purpose of a collective and comparative appreciation study of their artistic methods, their most meaningful memories, and their vibrantly varying interpretations of a serious job that comes with no hard and fast definitions whatsoever.

The Invisible Rockstars fervently argues that the acclaimed audio apparitions who have engineered every chordal chimera soundtracking our shared lives should not be phantoms just because they and their fastidious work are inherently phantasmagorical. Because we cannot see soundwaves, we can only hear and feel them, music will always remain in many ways a sensorial mirage. The men and women who conscientiously labor to faithfully capture its truest and prettiest essence without compromising any of its wild, spending lifetimes of sleepless nights to make it sound its best once transferred to your living rooms, car stereos, offices, hideouts, parties, weddings, and all the best and worst nights of your life should not be likewise intangible. Music producers, audio engineers, mixers, masterers: these are the unheralded invisible rockstars of the world, and their sonic signatures are writ as large or larger than that of any of the artists they serve. Featuring first-person interviews with more than thirty of the most significant aural architects who ever signed up for the task, and with bespoke portraiture lending a peek into their respective studios and work spaces, this book strives to show why and how that is so by encouraging the producers to tell their tales in their own words, and to shine an overdue spotlight at last upon their indelible cultural legacies of sound.

About the Author

Dana Miller is a wicked wordsmith, giggling provocateuse, and mega-melomaniac from Atlanta, Georgia. Her poetic syllables like to trundle in the wilds--usually in search of a smackerel or two. On their way, they have found themselves featured in The Punch Magazine, Postscript Magazine, Better Than Starbucks, Fairy Piece, FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Sledgehammer Lit, ChillFiltr Review, Small Leaf Press, The Avenue, Tofu Ink Press, Nauseated Drive, Rabble Review, and Twenty-two Twenty-eight. Her first full-length book of poetry entitled Never Née Fey is currently out on Finishing Line Press and her second, entitled Winks from Wildmoor is available via Dancing Girl Press. Dana's journalistic works have found their faces in places like L.A. Weekly, OK Magazine, Grazia, Maxim, Women's World, and International Business Times. When not wielding a lethal pen, Dana adores surf culture, Australian grunge rockers, muscle cars, Epiphone guitars, glitter, Doc Martens, and medieval-looking draft horses with feathered feet. Oxford, England is her spirit-home and Radiohead is holding the last shard of her girlhood heart.