*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.
