Brian Cullman with Ken Field on ‘How to Prepare For The Past’ (Boston)
October 6, 6:30 PM ET • Boston, MA: Parkside Bookshop | 260 Shawmut Ave., Boston, MA 02118
Join ZE Books at Parkside Bookshop for an evening with How to Prepare For The Past: Travels In Music and Time, Brian Cullman’s memoir of a life in music. Cullman will be joined in conversation by the saxophonist and composer Ken Field.
How to Prepare For The Past: Travels In Music and Time is writer and musician Brian Cullman’s rapturous evocation of life in the bike lane—before the world was digital, when music was everything and magic was everywhere—encompassing friendships with Lester Bangs, Nick Drake, Big Joe Turner, Tim Hardin, and Paul Bowles.
The book moves between New York, London, Tangier, and points further out, gathering the encounters, near-misses, and long nights of a life spent listening. It begins with the radio as a first love: “It was all one sound. It was all one song: the drums and the words, the words without words, the rhythm and the static and the joy and amplified tears.”
About the Author
Brian Cullman is a writer and musician based in New York and in France. He has written extensively for The Paris Review, Antaeus, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice, and has won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor award for excellence in music journalism three times. He has three solo albums on Sunnyside and is currently a member of the Lisbon-based group Rua Das Pretas.
About the Interlocutor
Ken Field is a saxophonist, flutist, and composer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has played with the avant-rock ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic since 1988 and leads the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, the New Orleans–inspired improvising brass band he founded in 1990. He has written music for Sesame Street and for documentaries on HBO, PBS, and the Sundance Channel, and hosts the weekly radio program The New Edge on WMBR in Cambridge and WOMR in Provincetown.
About the Venue
Parkside Bookshop opened in 2024 on Shawmut Avenue, a general-interest store that takes the history and diversity of Boston’s South End as its brief. Fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, and children’s books share the room with records and art supplies, along with armchairs by a fireplace and a standing events program. parksidebookshop.com
Writer and musician Brian Cullman’s rapturous evocation of life in the bike lane, before the world was digital, when music was everything and magic was everywhere, encompassing friendships with Lester Bangs, Nick Drake, Big Joe Turner, Tim Hardin, and Paul Bowles.
Release: Apr 28, 2026
Paperback ISBN: 9798988670100 • 256 pages
UK release: Jun 11, 2026 • UK Price: £14.99