Al Shipley announces new book "Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music"

This long-awaited history of one of America's most iconic electronic music genres is out later this summer

A few weeks ago, on the city’s official Baltimore Club Music Day, longtime local music writer Al Shipley announced on his blog Government Names that his forthcoming book Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music will be releasing on Penguin Random House imprint Repeater Books on August 19 of this year.

I’ve covered Baltimore club music fairly frequently in this newsletter, most prominently in the piece Ten Newer Baltimore Club Artists You Should Know, so to say that I’m excited for this book’s release is a massive understatement. In addition, while I was doing some research on club music a little while ago, I came across a fundraising link to the book on Kickstarter that dates all the way back to 2010, so it is wonderful to see that the book has been completed.

I’m also very excited that Al Shipley is the author, because he (alongside Lawrence Burney of True Laurels) was my biggest influence in wanting to launch this newsletter in the first place - his extremely vast knowledge of music from Baltimore, much less anywhere else in the world, has always been a major source of inspiration towards my own writing. I particularly enjoyed his music coverage in the unfortunately-defunct alt-weekly Baltimore City Paper, where he wrote extensively about music with a particular expertise towards club music and hip hop (much of his work on the City Paper can be found here, read it before the awful oligarch who owns the Sun purges it). There are very few people I would trust more than him to pen an enriching, meticulous, and accurate history of Baltimore club music, and I’m very happy his vision has been realized all these years later.

Tough Breaks is available for pre-order here.