The Invisible Hit Parade

A shadow history of how unofficial tapes and gray area recordings shared among obsessive fans shaped popular music, from wax cylinders at the opera to disc cutters in jazz clubs, from Bill Monroe to the Grateful Dead, from Grandmaster Flash to DJ Screw, by the acclaimed host of Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, and the Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast.

With an epic scope, The Invisible Hit Parade challenges the history of recorded music as it’s usually told. Tracing the impact of viral hits from wax cylinders to the streaming age, Jesse Jarnow animates the lost stories behind a century-and-a-half of legendary underground recordings that reached mass audiences without the help of the music industry—and transformed it again and again in the process. 

Driven by underground heroes, colorful obsessives, and generations of big-eared hustlers, it is the secret lore of popular music. A complex history connecting musicians, mediums, market forces, genres, and eras, The Invisible Hit Parade looks far beyond the idea of a “bootleg,” detailing a layered history of recorded music as it exists in the real world.

Using iconic underground recordings as springboards, The Invisible Hit Parade whirls between the entwined stories of opera cylinders, jazz transcription discs, hip-hop mixes, Grateful Dead cassettes, bootleg LPs, DJ tapes, white label dubplates, eastern European magnitizdat, bluegrass reels, pirate radio, leaked mp3s, and other radical mediums.

Amid seemingly disparate musical worlds, Jarnow seeks out “the taper” in the far-flung corners of the landscape. An unsung figure alongside musicians, managers, DJs, journalists, and other cultural workers, The Invisible Hit Parade uncovers a mindset that emerged with the first recording devices and has persisted as a set of skills and beliefs long after tape’s half-century as dominant recording medium. The Invisible Hit Parade might be hard to discern with the naked eye, but it’s never quiet.