October 11, 2023
We at Letters To You are honored to have our YouTube channel serve as the YouTube platform for this official promo video. (You also can watch it above in its embedded form.) It was created for the recent publication of Dave Marsh's new anthology Kick Out The Jams: Jibes, Barbs, Tributes, and Rallying Cries from 35 Years of Music Writing (Simon & Schuster, August 2023.)
The video features comments from (in order of appearance) Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Wayne Kramer, Stevie Van Zandt, Greg Tate, Ann Powers, Nona Hendryx, and Marsha Music. It was edited by Samuel Shapiro, with music by Lorenzo Wolff.
Dave recently retired, but in his long career that stretched from the late 1960s through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, he has written and spoken passionately and brilliantly about so many important aspects of music and culture, including three major books on the work of Bruce Springsteen. (The mere listing of Marsh's books at the beginning of the Kick Out The Jams anthology is staggering in and of itself.) In fact, the Kick Out The Jams anthology makes it clearer than ever why Dave Marsh should become widely recognized as one of our greatest and most insightful writers on popular music and the roles it has played - and can continue to play - in reflecting and supporting our struggles for a saner, safer, and more equitable planet.