*A Kirkus Best Book of July* *An InsideHook Book You Should Be Reading This July* A
fascinating history that examines how real estate gentrification community and the highs and
lows of New York City itself shaped the city's music scenes from folk to house music. Take a
walk through almost any neighborhood in Manhattan and you'll likely pass some of the most
significant clubs in American music history. But you won't know it-almost all of these venues
have been demolished or repurposed leaving no record of what they were how they shaped music
scenes or their impact on the neighborhoods around them. Traditional music history tells us
that famous scenes are created by brilliant singular artists. But dig deeper and you'll find
that they're actually created by cheap rent empty space and other unglamorous factors that
allow artistic communities to flourish. The 1960s folk scene would have never existed without
access to Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park. If the city hadn't gone bankrupt in 1975
there would have been no punk rock. Brooklyn indie rock of the 2000s was only able to come
together because of the borough's many empty warehouse spaces. But these scenes are more than
just moments of artistic genius-they're also part of the urban gentrification cycle one that
often displaces other communities and eventually the musicians themselves. Drawing from over
a hundred exclusive interviews with a wide range of musicians deejays and scenesters
(including members of Peter Paul and Mary White Zombie Moldy Peaches Sonic Youth
Treacherous Three Cro-Mags Sun Ra Arkestra and Suicide) writer historian and tour guide
Jesse Rifkin painstakingly reconstructs the physical history of numerous classic New York music
scenes. This Must Be the Place examines how these scenes came together and fell apart-and shows
how these communal artistic experiences are not just for rarefied geniuses but available to us
all.
