Picks! (Book)
The perfect companion to the scads of pictorial guitar retrospectives of recent years, this engagingly written and very colorfully illustrated little history of guitar plectrums is also a pop-culture collector's guide and the story of a miraculous and beautiful (but highly explosive) substance--celluloid. Picks come in an amazing array of shapes, sizes, and colors, and celluloid was ideal for them, partly because of its flexibility, but also because of its artistic qualities. It lends itself to lovely, swirling designs, to incorporating sparkling and otherwise eye-catching additives, and to better string tone, too. Unfortunately, besides its instability, it is time consuming to produce, and today, very few sources of celluloid are left. So picks are made of dozens of other materials as well, which may not enhance the playing of music as much but do open up additional niches in the collectibles environment. A fun little book.Mike Tribby