Book cover of Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small

Book description

Merge Records defies everything you’ve heard about the music business. Started by two twenty-year-old musicians, Merge is a lesson in how to make and market great music on a human scale. The fact that the company is prospering in a failing industry is something of a miracle. Yet two of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Our Noise as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

One of the throughline themes of my book is the ongoing resourcefulness of the state’s musicians as they battle day jobs as well as an unfriendly music industry.

As portrayed in this highly engaging oral history, North Carolina institutions don’t get much more resourceful than Merge Records, a Chapel Hill-based independent label founded by members of the local band Superchunk.

Over the years, Merge went from putting out indie-rock seven-inch singles to topping the Billboard charts, and even winning an album-of-the-year Grammy Award.

More than one-third of a century later, both Merge and Superchunk are still at it.

From David's list on music to come out of North Carolina.

If you love Our Noise...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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