Last month, we fea­tured poet, pro­fes­sor, and WFMU radio host Ken­neth Gold­smith singing the the­o­ry of Theodor Adorno, Sig­mund Freud, and Lud­wig Wittgen­stein — heavy read­ing, to be sure, but there­in lay the appeal. How dif­fer­ent­ly do we approach these for­mi­da­ble the­o­ret­i­cal texts, Gold­smith’s project implic­it­ly asks, if we receive them not just aural­ly rather than tex­tu­al­ly, but also in a light — not to say goofy — musi­cal arrange­ment? But if it should drain you to think about ques­tions like that, even as you absorb the thought of the likes of Adorno, Freud, and Wittgen­stein, might we sug­gest Ken­neth Gold­smith singing Har­ry Pot­ter?

Per­haps the best-known mod­ern exem­plar of “light read­ing” we have, J.K. Rowl­ing’s Har­ry Pot­ter books present them­selves as ripe for adap­ta­tion, most notably in the form of those eight big-bud­get films released between 2001 and 2011. On the oth­er end of the spec­trum, with evi­dent­ly no bud­get at all, comes Gold­smith’s 30-minute adap­ta­tion, which you can hear just above, or along with his var­i­ous oth­er sung texts at Pennsound. Here he sings, with ever-shift­ing musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment and through some oth­er­world­ly voice pro­cess­ing, what sounds like the final nov­el in the Har­ry Pot­ter series, Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows.

“She tells a good sto­ry” — thus has every adult Har­ry Pot­ter-read­er I know explained the appeal of Rowl­ing’s chil­dren’s nov­els even out­side of the chil­dren’s demo­graph­ic, espe­cial­ly as they await­ed Death­ly Hal­lows’ release in 2007. Hav­ing nev­er dipped into the well myself, I could­n’t say for sure, but to my mind, if she tells a good enough sto­ry, that sto­ry will sur­vive no mat­ter the form into which you trans­pose it. The Pot­ter faith­ful hold a vari­ety of opin­ions about the degree of jus­tice each movie does to their favorite nov­els, and even about the voice that reads them aloud in audio­book form, but what on Earth will they think of Gold­smith’s idio­syn­crat­ic ren­di­tion?

Update: Ken­neth shot us an email a few min­utes ago and filled out the back­sto­ry on this record­ing. Turns out the sto­ry is even more col­or­ful than we first thought. He writes: “I was a DJ on WFMU from 1995–2010. In 2007, J.K. Rowl­ing released the sev­enth and final Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows. Pri­or to the book’s release the day I went on the air at WFMU, some­one had leaked a copy to the inter­net, enrag­ing Scholas­tic Books, who threat­ened any­body dis­trib­ut­ing it with a heavy law­suit. I print­ed out and sang in my hor­ri­ble voice the very last chap­ter of the book on the air, there­by spoil­ing the finale of the series for any­one lis­ten­ing. Dur­ing my show, the sta­tion received an angry call from Scholas­tic Books. It appears that their whole office was lis­ten­ing to WFMU that after­noon. Noth­ing ever came of it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Two Har­ry Pot­ter Audio Books for Free (and Get the Rest of the Series for Cheap)

The The­o­ry of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, Lud­wig Wittgen­stein & Sig­mund Freud Sung by Ken­neth Gold­smith

Read Online J.K. Rowling’s New Har­ry Pot­ter Sto­ry: The First Glimpse of Har­ry as an Adult

How J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

The Quan­tum Physics of Har­ry Pot­ter, Bro­ken Down By a Physi­cist and a Magi­cian

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Just yes­ter­day we were mus­ing on perus­ing rock stars’ book­shelves, and today we learn it has become a real­i­ty, if you live in Lon­don. Poly­math and all-around swell per­son David Byrne opened the 22nd annu­al Melt­down Fes­ti­val this last Mon­day, and in the spir­it of London’s Poet­ry Library (which is host­ing this part of the event), the for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man has shipped over 250 books to stock his own lend­ing library for the dura­tion of the fes­ti­val, until August 30.

In his Guardian essay explain­ing his deci­sion to let you rifle through his col­lec­tion of music books—some of which were used as research for his own How Music Works—Byrne wax­es about the library he loved in his teenage years in sub­ur­ban Bal­ti­more:

We were des­per­ate to know what was going on in the cool places, and, giv­en some sug­ges­tions and direc­tion, the library was one place where that wider excit­ing world became avail­able. In my lit­tle town, the library also had vinyl that one could check out and I dis­cov­ered avant-garde com­posers such as Xenakis and Mes­si­aen, folk music from var­i­ous parts of the world and even some pop records that weren’t get­ting much radio play in Bal­ti­more. It was tru­ly a for­ma­tive place.

A full list of the books has yet to sur­face, but a few peo­ple are tweet­ing pho­tos of titles, like Evan Eisenberg’s The Record­ing Angel: Music, Records and Cul­ture from Aris­to­tle to Zap­pa or Steve Goodman’s Son­ic War­fare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecol­o­gy of Fear. Squint­ing our eyes at the pro­mo­tion­al pho­to of Byrne sit­ting in front of the shelves, we can spot Lester Bangs’ Psy­chot­ic Reac­tions and Car­bu­ra­tor Dung, Eric Weisbard’s Lis­ten Again: A Momen­tary His­to­ry of Pop Music, Paula Court’s pho­to­book New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Under­ground 1978–88; and Thurston Moore’s Mix Tape: The Art of Cas­sette Cul­ture. (Rec­og­nize some oth­er titles? Please add them in the com­ments.)

Byrne has set up a free-to-bor­row sys­tem with a cred­it card on file just in case you abscond with the book, although he does admit it may hap­pen and “so be it.” There’s also an added thrill:

Some of my books may have high­light­ed bits or notes scrawled in the mar­gins. I hope noth­ing embar­rass­ing.

Byrne’s pro­gram­ming for the Melt­down Fes­ti­val can be seen here. High­lights include an a cap­pel­la work­shop by Petra Haden, a show­ing of There Will Be Blood with live score by Jon­ny Green­wood and the Lon­don Con­tem­po­rary Orches­tra, the reap­pear­ance of Young Mar­ble Giants, Young Jean Lee’s band Future Wife per­form­ing We’re Gonna Die with David Byrne as spe­cial guest; and many oth­er selec­tions of “Things David Thinks You Should Hear.”

In the mean­time, here’s a pho­to from the fes­t’s open­ing of Mr. Byrne rid­ing a portable espres­so shop on wheels.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Like much of the rest of the coun­try, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is get­ting some down­time in August — in his case spend­ing 16 days in Martha’s Vine­yard. From that nice get­away spot, POTUS has launched on Spo­ti­fy (down­load the free soft­ware here) two playlists of music — 20 songs for a hot sum­mer day, and anoth­er 20 for a nice sum­mer evening. You can play the songs below, and fur­ther down the page, find six books on his sum­mer vaca­tion read­ing list.

Day­time lis­ten­ing fea­tures songs from Bob Dylan, Bob Mar­ley, Cold­play, Howl­in’ Wolf, Aretha Franklin, Flo­rence and the Machine, and The Rolling Stones. For night­time, he’s serv­ing up John Coltrane, Van Mor­ri­son, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone and more. The man has taste. And for sum­mer read­ing you can do worse than offer Jhumpa Lahiri, James Salter and Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert.

“The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Day”

“The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Night”

Oba­ma’s Sum­mer Read­ing List:

All That Is, by James Salter

All The Light We Can­not See, by Antho­ny Doerr

The Sixth Extinc­tion, by Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert

The Low­land, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Between The World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Wash­ing­ton: A Life, by Ron Cher­now

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