When New York Was ‘On Fire’: A Mid-’70s Musical Revolution
If you were in New York City in the 1970s, you might have stumbled upon the birth of punk, new-wave, hip-hop, salsa, disco, minimalist classical and avant-garde jazz. The city during these five years — 1973 through ‘77 — was the birthplace of many of the most innovative and influential musical genres born in the second half of the 20th Century, despite the fact that it was economically devastated, and was thought — at the time — to be musically bankrupt.
Will Hermes was there. He was a teenager during the mid-’70s, and he’s written a new book about that era called Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever.