Good books about music

Please kill me.

Oh well. Read it anyway. It's amazing. And Our Band Could Be Your Life. If you're interested in criticism, check out Psychotic Reactions and Carbeurator Dung or anything by Lester Bangs or one or two Greil Marcus books (The Basement Tapes). I'd stay away from Camden Joy, contrary to popular opinion.

I need something that doesn't take too long to get into

But you're going to college, man! Just buy Adorno's Essays on Music and accept that the next 4+ years of your life are going to be like that mwahahaha...

I also enjoyed Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and there's the ever-classic Generation Ecstasy.

I had never heard of Tate until I saw him speak not long ago. He is a BAD. ASS. Does he still write for The Voice? I feel like I never see him in there. Does he have a blog?

I'm mostly interested in reading a book of his since his prose is fairly magnificent.

If you want a cracking funny read on hip-hop, though, pick up The Rough Guide to Hip-Hop by Peter Shapiro, which has just been updated and enlarged (it was a pocket-size the first time, now it's 8 x 10). Best line goes to the Bad Boy Records writeup, when he notes that Puff Daddy, having been responsible for 40% of all 1997's number ones, moved to the Hamptons "so he could live by the sea, just like his magic dragon namesake."

Same here! (Of course there's also the Led Zep bio.)

Next week on "The O.C.": Seth and Ryan get into a fatal disagreement over "James Taylor: Marked For Death," while Summer meets a new hottie who shares her disgust of Nick Hornby.

Dino by Nick Tosches (about Dean Martin; as deep as Catch a Fire by Timothy White, as entertaining as that Motley Crue book)

Backbeat: Earl Palmer's Story, by Tony Scherman (oral history/autobiography of the New Orleans drummer; had me at "Louis Armstrong was a pimp"...)

We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen (better than Please Kill Me, kind of like L.A. punk itself)

I was torturing this guy in the garage of my mom's house in this nice suburban neighborhood with my whole family inside eating Easter dinner... and I'd got this guy tied up in the rafter with a rope around his legs and I'm beating him with a two-by-four. I said, "Hang on a minute," and put the two-by-four down and walked into the house and kissed my aunt and said like, "Oh hi, how you doing?" I grabbed a deviled egg, told them I'd be back in a minute, and I went back out, grabbed the two-by-four, and kept workin' on the guy. I finally had to get out of Vicious Circle 'cause of the violence. There were constant stabbings and beatings and people cruising by my house at night, shooting up the neighborhood....

I did something pretty bad to somebody and they retaliated with guns. It was a big deal, I had to split to Alaska for a while, they cut the lines on my car, blew up my car... fuck...I don't wanna say who they were, but they weren't punks... boy, they were pissed off.

i went on holiday with the Deborah Curtis book and the Nick Drake biography once. happy times, let me tell you.

if you ever find dave rimmer's "once upon a time in the east", abt berlin east and west b4 the fall of the wall, i utterly UTTERLY recommend it: tho it's only somewhat abt music - unlike his earlier (and also good) "like punk never happened"

Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic is being reissued sometime this year.

Electronic and Experimental Music by Thom Holmes
also; Wireless Imagination (d kahn / g whitehead)
Paul Griffiths - A Concise History of Avant-Garde Music
Paul Griffiths - Modern Music And Beyond
Curtis Roads
William Duckworth : Talking Music
Cage: Silence / A Year From Monday
Cage / Feldman: Conversations
James Tenney : Meta / Hodos
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stockhausen on Music (Compiled by R Maconie)
Sound By Artists (ed. Dan Lander)
Chris Cutler - File Under Popular
Attali - Noise
Russolo - The Art of Noises (get a hold of a copy any way you can)
Trevor Wishart - On Sonic Art
Douglas Kahn - Noise Water Meat

i think the attali book is lousy at book length—it's a good short polemic idea bulked out to a contradictory nonsense schema—and wireless imagination is patchy (which is a pity, cz it's a great idea for an essay collection)

The Elvis Guralnick books - again, you don't have to care about the subject matter to enjoy them (personally, I was so-so on Elvis before readin' 'em, am now an unabashed fan), and the second one is one hell of a car wreck: the descent starts like twenty pages into it, and by the end of the book you can't even feel sorry for the guy anymore, you just wonder why he hasn't kicked the bucket already.

"Where Did Our Love Go?" by Nelson George has some nice anecdotes, and is probably the best book on Motown around, tho to be frank I didn't learn all that much from it.

"The Heart Of Rock & Soul" seconded, and throw in the "New Book Of Rock Lists" too, if only for the sheer joy of reading the sentence "Tragedy The Intelligent Hoodlum Lists..." over and over again (not that book of rock jokes, tho, that was awful.) And also "Fortunate Son: The Best Of Dave Marsh", great stuff on Elvis, Muddy Waters, latino rock, etc.

I remember reading Maryiln Manson's "The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell" in my early teens and being surprised by how good it was (I'd always loathed the guy's music.) Dunno if it holds up.

"Sweet Soul Music", hell yeah.

I've read the entirety of Christgau's consumer guide online, and there's some great, great stuff there. So the books are recommended, too.

yay I've been wanting to read that one for a while!

adding to my prev post here leroi jones 'blues people' which I just finished this morning: most gd bks on music accept that they aren't just abt notes and chords.

You mean it's not long enough? I loved the book. Should re-read it...

I also loved the Lexicon Devil (bio on Darby Crash) though it's certainly not essential...

the ONLY thing wrong with JMC's line is that he somewhat slightly seems to accept the assumption that the social dimension—the "dance"—isn’t also always part of all music in the West (though he does this in the context of getting ppl to see/hear/look for the fuller sense of the meaning of music): taking his insights abt Africa (Ghana, to be more accurate) and applying them everywhere else is revelatory

Most of it is a charming telling of him learning African drumming in Ghana

And I hope someone someday undertakes a lengthy Sabbath bio.

Also, the massive "The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes are Hungry for the Prize" by David Cavanagh would certainly be interesting to anyone with a major Creation bent. If you aren't down for hundreds of pages detailing the exploits of Biff Bang Pow and The Orange Juice, skip to the midsection for a compelling account of the Loveless miracle/ catastrophe.

The book works as both:

a) an academic (in content, but not in style) explanation of sampling in recorded music (Beadle devotes a chapter each to the careers of PWEI and The KLF),

and

b) an extended thinkpiece on pop music, dance music, and the populism that bridges both.

It's aged fairly well, having been written in 1993, and Beadle's tone is that of scholarly but uncondescending curiousity - a curious granddad who enjoys this newfangled music and wished to legitimize it to his peers. I've almost worn my copy out.

As noted, "The Dark Stuff" and both Lester Bangs anthologies are both totally essential reading.

milton, has "modern music and beyond" been updated at all?:

yes, there's a new version that tackles the 80's/90's and it's not bad, for him Boulez is the culmination so his take on post-1970 is a bit weird. but good. the early to mid 20th century sections remain the best, brought me up to speed on a lot of the basics very quickly. he writes clearly, you don't need to agree with him to figure out which pieces you're interested in actually hearing.

the second edition of Electronic and Experimental Music by Thom Holmes -- I was blown away by that, a fantastic overview. A great reference book. Though again, rocky once it gets to the 90's and interesting work starts to happen in pop.

Audio Culture is more of an epiphany-prompter, the number of ideas per page in that book... most of the featured texts are from the musicians. not the musicologists.

Talking Music by Duckworth -- Duckworth himself is an excellent composer. Probably the best collection of interviews with those composers I've ever read, and organized like a narrative of late 20th century musical development, especially the Young > Riley > Reich > Glass section -- those four nearly read like a soap opera

and the Cage books are just gifts. especially Silence & A Year From Monday, & Kostelanetz' 'John Cage: An Anthology' (xeroxed hand on cover) & the Feldman conversations (which are online at Internet Archive but Lovely Music is still selling copies of the book)

But on the other hand, the Clash book by their roadie, A Riot of Our Own, is a hilarious good read...

(I also enjoyed Last Gang In Town but that feels like another one for obsessive fans like myself.)

What really popped my eyes open was him and Mr Cooke having to sing naked in front of some southern sheriffs. Sad...very sad...

I never knew of this East book! I must have it.

Cavanagh's Creation book seconded. Also, Chris Heath's books on the Pet Shop Boys and Marc Almond's two autobiographical volumes.

if the new Carducci reissue has another rewrite/edit that reins it in a bit then it could be pretty great

TOTALLY AVOID the reissue of A Riot Of Our Own, all the Ray Lowry illustrations taht are at least 40% of the reason for purchase have been rendered completely illegible by editorial or pre-press morons, and look like faxes of blown-up thumbnails of low-res .gifs of the pictures as they appeared in the original

Sniffin Glue Anthology (don't know what the book is called; I have an original truncated version entitled The Bible); Brit punk fanzine '70s, interviews and rants, earnest, petulant, funny.
Francis J. Child ed. English and Scottish Popular Ballads (I've got an abridged version of which I've read 1/20th).
The Portable Ring Lardner and/or Shut Up, He Explained, for his radio reviews c. 1930. The first rock critic, proto-Meltzer.
Gene Fowler Schnozzola, bio of Jimmy Durante, haven't read this yet, but the title and blurb are promising: "The lusty saga of an uninhibited era - from the Coney Island honky tonks, through the wild and roaring twenties, to the fabulous role of clown prince of video."
Tom Wolfe The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Craig MacGregor, ed. Bob Dylan: A Retrospective, lots of early reviews, articles, interviews, love and hate, back when Dylan was the Eminem of "rock."
Charlie Gillett The Sound of the City
Bill C. Malone Country Music USA
John Morthland The Best of Country Music
Richard Meltzer A Whore Just Like the Rest
John Storm Roberts Black Music of Two Worlds
John Storm Roberts The Latin Tinge
Martin Williams The Jazz Tradition
Peter van der Merwe Origin of the Popular Style, a great book of music technical theory (like, what the musicians actually played) on the sources of 20th century popular music

Very hard to put down.

The best music book I've ever read was a list of the 100 "best" rock singles by Paul Williams, the one who ran rock zines in the '60's, but it seems to be long out of print. I disagree with his taste in many places, but the prose itself is awesome.

(if that hasn't been mentioned yet)

"New Orleans Rhythm and Blues" by John Broven is another great one, you'll learn everything you need to know about all those guys and then some.

As I did discuss somewhere else, Castro's book on bossa nova is magnificent. From the same publisher/editor, it's a long 'un but it's equally magnificient, Sublette's "Cuba and Its Music" is just essential, as a history of the island and as a much-needed corrective to the conventional "origins of rock and roll" theory you always hear...

I've been re-reading Alma Guillemoprieto's "Samba" recently too--fine reportage on the samba schools in Brazil. I'm a fan of her work.

Whatever it's called these days--"Rock from the Beginning" or "Awopbopaloobop"--by Nik Cohn, is still to my mind the single best and most stylish book ever written on rock up until 1968 or so.

David Henderson's "Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age" (may have a new title by now, I have an old edition) is still probably the best book on Jimi Hendrix.

I second the above recommends on Guralnick, and yeah, his Elvis bios, while evenhanded and thorough, are actually...a bit boring somehow...something missing there...altho the bit on EP recording with Chips Moman is one of the best pieces of writing on Presley I know.

Steve Calt's book on Skip James, now OP and probably impossible to find, is certainly worth tracking down...as is his book on Charley Patton. Wrong-headed and cranky as they can be, they certainly are a nice alternative look at blooze culture and its discontents. (Steve's a friend of mine, and ailing these days, so help him out...)

Rob Bowman's book on Stax is exhaustive and very well done.

I also recommend, for lite reading that's of very high quality (and I generally don't like police/crime/novels), anything by George Pelecanos, who writes about D.C. Great fiction in the crime/police vein, very hip, uses music as reference/culture extremely well. I mean, "King Suckerman" is one of the few novels I know that references, intelligently, both "Clear Spot" and Big Star's "Radio City," so of course I like.

My fave Tosches is "Hellfire," his Jerry Lee bio, and second is "Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll." I think he lost the beam a bit with "Where Dead Voices Gather," ostensibly a book about Emmett Miller but really a Tosches-ean screed agin the modren world or something...nice bits but self-indulgent in a bad way.

And of course Meltzer's "Aesthetics of Rock" and his Da Capo reader "Whore Just Like the Rest," which is some of my favorite stuff ever. The man sets a bad example and I'm glad of it.

I'd think either of their final two albums would make a dynamite edition in the 33 1/3 series

I was skeptical about the premise of "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk" by Steven Lee Beeber, but the book won me over. Interesting stuff on NY and the Jewish cultural backgrounds of Joey Ramone, Tommy Ramone, Lenny Kaye, Chris Stein, Richard Hell, Alan Vega, manager Danny Fields, Lou Reed, members of the Dictators, Jonathan Richman, Hilly Kristal, various photographers, and others (plus some Jews from elsewhere including Malcolm McClaren). Not in total agreement with his descriptions of punk elsewhere, but otherwise pretty impressive. I'd think some of the childhood background stuff would be interesting to any fan of the music even if they're not a member of the Jewish tribe.

I meant his descriptions of "punk elsewhere from NY"

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Zhn1Q8Y%2BL._AA240_.jpg
^^^
that realness

“Brian Coleman’s writing is a lot like the albums he covers: direct, uproarious and more than six-fifths genius.”
– Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop and editor of Total Chaos

“Check the Technique is a truly essential rap history… epic, enthralling and long-overdue…”
– Ronin Ro, author of Raising Hell and Have Gun Will Travel

“That realness“
– BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, internet personality

It is a pretty awesome book. Raw he gives it to you, plenty of trivia.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Bill Graham Presents...he's a real SOB but the book is hilarious.

Also, next to impossible to find, but these days I'm sure someone will find it, John Mendolssohn's The Kinks Kronikles, a breezy and very funny self-deprecating look at the Kinks.

And though I haven't read it in years (and therefore don't hold me completely accountable), England's Dreaming by Jon Savage.

I also second, third, whatever we're up to...on the Julian Cope Head On and Possessed. And Nick Tosches' Dino, Hellfire and Country...(for fiction people, his In the Hands of Dante was bizarre...the half that dealt with Nick as Nick was fascinating, whereas I couldn't follow the other narrative that was going on...either because I'm simple or because it didn't capture my interest...)

the updated rockcritics.com website now lists a bunch of books

In The Country of Country
Songwriters on Songwriting

Rate End Of Year Music Books As: Worth Buying, Worth Taking Out Of Library, Worth Browsing in Store, Wouldn't Touch With A Tenpole Tudor

Backbeat: Earl Palmer's Story, by Tony Scherman (oral history/autobiography of the New Orleans drummer; had me at "Louis Armstrong was a pimp"...)

Finally read this. Very entertaining although frustrating as well. Palmer very casually and hurriedly describes his efforts behind the kit for Little Richard, Fats Domino and other early rockers. He's much more proud of his time playing jazz or doing movie and cartoon soundtracks.

Dark Stuff has got to be one of my favorite books ever. Brilliant.

Ned Sublette book reccommendations in his e-mail

Thomas Brothers’s Louis Armstrong's New Orleans (from 2006) might be the best music book I read this year. It contains as good an attempt as I’ve seen to reconstruct – albeit with a certain amount of necessary speculation – the social milieu and the process by which jazz emerged, with a coherent account of the uptown-vs.-downtown interplay. It’s a richly detailed portrait: “New Orleans during Armstrong’s childhood was overflowing with African-American venues for music. By one count there were ten to fifteen dance halls uptown alone; between them they produced a function every night. A step or two below the dance halls were the ubiquitous honky tonks. Then there were the outdoor venues of lawn parties in the city and dancing pavilions at Lake Pontchartrain, where, on Sundays, up to twenty bands took position for daylong performances.”

I also got around to Rick Coleman’s Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll (from 2007), an essential work of rock and roll history that fills in some necessary gaps in reconstructing the emergence of that other great music that came out of New Orleans.

Co-sign on Louis Armstrong's New Orleans - although should be read in conjunction with the James Lincoln Collier Biog. for a real sense of LA as an 'Artist'.

Turn the Beat Around - Peter Shapiro
Words and Music - Paul Morley

did anyone read the willie mctell book? i started it in the lrb shop once and it looked great.

Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes - In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray does look good

that's the one. the prologue or first chapter is mctell stumbling around a parking lot/makeout spot serenading teenagers for change, as a prelude to being recorded again for the library of congress etc, or so i remember. it read really nicely too - the guy says it isn't a muso biography about the ins and outs, but a portrait of him as a man, for people who'd never heard of him. i'm sure this thread is full of guralnick love, but it's definitely nice getting the whole portrait of a place, social context kinda thing, like in dream boogie.

Chic and the Politics of Disco.
Turn the beat around.

Both get under the surface of Disco. The Second one has a great discography of obscurities that I'm steadily working through.

Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective

This is both hilarious and informative.

has anyone read "appetite for self-destruction," steve knopper's book on the decline of the music industry? i'm asking cause they interviewed him on lol pitchfork today and i'm intrigued.

No recommendations on this thread, but I know the ILM massive has been loudly proclaiming their love for Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise and after finishing it last night I have to join the chorus. Such a well written exploration of the 20th century composers. Outside of my love for Reich, I had very little interest in the subject, but it kept me engrossed from start to finish and left me with a long list of composers to check out.

I do think he's absolutely right about what hip-hop's significance is (paraphrasing, renders African-Americans "all but invisible" in a cultural sense)

^deej on tate upthread. anyone know where i can read more on this? i'm quite intrigued.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-12-28/news/hiphop-turns-30/3

Greg Tate's article (he is/was a longtime Village Voice writer). Google "Tate and 30th anniversary hiphop" and you'll find others at other sites commenting on Tate's article. As far as background, you might also want to read Tate's book "Flyboy in the Buttermilk"

xpost - Wow thanks for the tip on the Alex Ross book. I'll be picking that one up today.

There's a thread on just that book (the Ross one)also

cheers curmudgeon :)

i'm surprised no one's mentioned eno's "a year with swollen appendices" which is as odd, cerebral and interesting as his music. also "the manual: how to have a number one the easy way" is, as it states, a manual (rather than a book) but it's still a great read - even better if you're actually want to have a number one hit, as it really does tell you exactly how to go about it.

"the manual" is by the klf btw

"A Year With Swollen Appendices" is fun. There's a new book about Brian Eno, "On Some Faraway Beach," which I just ordered so I'll try and remember to discuss it after it's been read.

Read On Some Faraway Beach recently. Good, although focuses on the well known/critically aclaimed period a lot which is what you'd expect. Read shortly after Remake/Remodel so it was interesting to see the same events overlap in the two books. Not any real differences in the facts which made me think both authors had done their research well.

i looked at that knopper book at barnes and nobel and was hesitant to pick up because there's like 600 rushed-out books on how downloading killed the music industry. Is his legit?

from the pitchfork interview, it sounded like it. he interviewed a lot of ppl

well, i own it now so i'll let you know. apparently he did a ton of interviews (like 200+) so it should be well-researched if nothing else.

I recently came across a copy of Music for Vagabonds - The Tuxedomoon Chronicles. It's quite chunky, and even though I only know a few assorted tracks by them, I was tempted by what looks to be a good overview of the SF scene at the time, so probably a fair bit about the Residents, Factrix, Patrick Miller aka Minimal Man, etc.

Anyone read it??

Oh, and I have to recommend Diary of a Punk by Mike Hudson of the Pagans.

From Ned Sublette's e-mail newsletter:

elijah wald will be appearing monday (22) at bookcourt in brooklyn, 163
court street, http://www.bookcourt.org/ to promote his fine new book with
the bait-and-switch title of "how the beatles destroyed rock and roll: an
alternative history of american popular music." earlier this week, elijah
was a guest for what turned out to be one of the livelier episodes of john
schaefer's "soundcheck" on wnyc-fm. you can hear it at
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2009/06/17

Elijah's book sounds interesting even though some of the non-rock that he's writing about from the 50s and stuff doesn't interest me alot.

That's me not Ned talking about the 50s pop that is covered in part in Elijah's book.

i looked at that knopper book at barnes and nobel and was hesitant to pick up because there's like 600 rushed-out books on how downloading killed the music industry. Is his legit?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, May 27, 2009 9:35 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

just finished it and the answer is....sort of. i think he needed about 200 more pages (book is like 250). he's torn between writing a serious history of the music industry between 1980 and the present, and more of an entertaining, you are there, storyteller approach. the latter is obvs attractive to him 'cause he interviewed all these dudes who i'm sure are interesting and charismatic as hell, but it means he has trouble tying everything together. it's more choppy than it needs to be. i would've preferred something more along the lines of "love saves the day" which was also exhaustively researched (to the point of information overload), but presents a much more compelling and coherent history.

knopper can't do this for a couple reasons. first, several dudes who are still in the industry refused to talk to him, and second, napster and ipod/itunes, which are two of his key chapters, were already gotten to in a more complete way by other books, which he leans on heavily for narrative. that would be ok if his own book was more substantial.

all that being said, it's an entertaining read and i'd recommend as a paperback or library book. but it will not go down as the definitive work on this topic.

has anybody read greg kot's ripped: how the wired generation revolutionized music? guessing it's similar to knopper's book.

If Elijah Wald is doing for the Beatles what he did for Robert Johnson, I say thanks but no thanks.

something about the title of wald's latest makes me laugh, like oooh how provocative

Yes exactly. The Johnson book was the same. Theory went something like "Blues was an artificial construct of the recording industry, because in fact these guys sang all kinds of other songs that were not the blues. Robert Johnson was an artificial construct of the recording industry because back in the day no rural black people actually listened to his records- he only became popular after Eric Clapton came along. Therefore Robert Johnson is a doubly artificial construct and should be shunned by all authentic lovers of real blues music. Such as myself. By the way I play the guitar as well as write books, so I know whereof I speak."

QED

Exactly. I love the QED genre.

It's not that what he's saying is completely off-base but it's the enfant terrible agent provocateur watch-at-me-while-I-overturn-the-received-wisdom attitude that's annoying. In the matter of the blues, others such as Francis Davis and Ted Gioia have dealt with the same issues with a more even hand.

"The Beatles were an artificial construct of George Martin and the British Record Industry who had already tried and failed to get the Shadows a hit in the US. They watered down the purebred New Orleans out-of-Africa-by-way-of-Cuba rock and roll beat with their halfwit hillbilly harmonies and their Music Hall mumbo-jumbo thereby ruining rock and roll radio forever. Therefore they should be shunned by all authentic lovers of real blues based rock and roll music such as myself."

"... and that is all that the people need to know."

Looking forward to his next book Livin' In Shame: How Berry Gordy and Motown Records Destroyed Jazz

Not that this makes complete sense either, but isn't Wald actually trying in the new book to say "Lotsa people were listening still to Sinatra and Lawrence Welk and other 'older adult' singers and whomever was also on the pop chart then and not every one was listening to either country, rockabilly, or r'n'b before the Beatles came along." I think he's trying to parallel this with the way he would describe his Robert Johnson book--Johnson was a very good, albeit,not popular country blues guy, however more people were listening to Ma Rainey, Ida Cox and Bessie Smith, but hailing them would not fit into the Crossroads myth." It's an attempt to be populist in some sort of demographic way and not musical elitism. But yeah, the title seems generated merele to sell copies.

But yea Wald did say that Johnson sang all kinds of other songs.

I recently read last year's Can't Buy Me Love Beatles biography. You'd think the world doesn't need another but I think it deals with the history and the sociology with in depth research and plenty of hindsight in a way that is genuinely effective. The only failure is that it doesn't really discuss any of the music or songs in depth... but that may be for the best.

Seems to me that the big Beatles Anthology book (told in their own words), Can't Buy Me Love (the outside-in view), and a box set of the music might be all you need (besides Love, right?).

So maybe the gimmick is that we thought all along that the Beatles were destroying Tin Pan Alley and Johnny Mercer, but in fact it was rock and roll they were destroying?

This is reminding me that I need to keep making my way through those 9 CD Allen Lowe compilations.

Yeah you do (although I have braved That Devilin' Tune yet).

That's what I got, the four volumes of That Devilin' Tune. I couldn't get a hold of American Pop.

yeah Devilin' Tune is awesome, so much good music, and the liners are great as well. i only have vols. 2-4, though. Is the American Pop thing in print?

Don't think so, at least not the CDs. I got the book by emailing Allen Lowe.

In fact maybe we don't even have to have this discussion, we can just read the organissimo thread, since both of those guys have showed up on it.

yeah i actually got my copies from Lowe via the organissimo board ... have been meaning to get the first one from him, wonder if he still has copies?

Nick Kent's "The Dark Stuff" is epic. "Our Band Could Be Your Life" is great too. I also like Chuck Klosterman's "Killing Yourself to Stay Alive", which is very funny.

I just dug out AL's email from when I ordered that stuff and contacted him. He told me that American Pop was out of print but he was working on a new project that was coming out this year that sounded good.

I've been reading Michael Moynihan's Lords of Chaos and definitely have mixed feelings about it. I'm not sure I totally accept his thesis that the rise of violent Satanism, Paganism, and Black Metal is some Hegelian rebellion against the Scandinavian social welfare state. All I got is that guys like Varg were gaping sociopathic assholes long before they got involved with Black Metal. Varg, in particular, was game for any ideology that allowed his atavistic desires to run free. If not Black Metal, then radical environmentalism, fascism, anarchism, or some other cause would’ve been used as justification for his crimes. And that seems to be true of almost all the other sensational acts that Moynihan covers in the book. If you peel back the layers of myth and bullshit, most of the crimes had more prosaic causes than Satanism or Paganism, more like drunken teenage stupidity, dude owns me money, and petty jealousy.

I really want to check this one out.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1576874354/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Oops, here's the pic.
http://kicknrun.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/tnbm_ad-simple.jpg

Not actually 'about' music but Edwyn Collins' Some British Birds is very lovely, indeed.

OK so I just finished Wald's How The Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music and if you go into it with the latter half of the title more in mind rather than the attention-grabbing former, it's really a very fine book. It could definitely stand pruning and the six-page epilogue, "The Rock Blot and The Disco Diagram," is a mess (if not an offense - thanx for the parenthetical mention of gays in relation to disco). But he does a great job of recreating some of the ways in which music was actually lived and how they've been distorted by recording-based histories.

As for The Beatles, well, we already knew that they kinda sorta destroyed rock 'n' roll (as opposed to rock) in addition to laying waste to Tin Pan Alley and Johnny Mercer (although they only kinda sorta did that too).

Here's his basic theory and how he ties The Beatles to the rest of the book:

"(The Beatles) had led their audience off the dance floor, separating rock from its rhythmic and cultural roots, and while the gains may have balanced the losses in both economic and artistic terms, that change split American popular music in two. When similar splits had happened in the past, the demands of satisfying live audiences had always forced the streams back together, but by the end of the 1960s live performances had lost their defining role on the pop music scene. So the Beatles and the movement they led marked the end not only of rock ’n’ roll as it had existed up to that time but also of the whole process explored over the course of this book, in which white and black musicians had evolved by adopting and adapting one another’s styles, shaping a series of genres—ragtime, jazz, swing, rock ’n’ roll—that at their peaks could not be easily categorized by race." 246

Morton Feldman's 'Give My Regard to Eighth Street' has some good essays on music--would go along with Mark's suggestion of John Cage's 'Silence.'

Kodwo Eshun's More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction

Neil Rosenberg's Bluegrass is such an insane, epic read. Beyond thorough. Great stuff. I now have, like, two pages of records I need to hear.

Has anybody read Richie Unterberger's "White Light, White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-by-Day? He just did a bunch of appearances for it in England in July and is gonna be at the Library of Congress Pickford Theater in DC Monday August 3rd and in Philly on Tuesday August 4th. He's showing rare film footage at some locations.

Bought the book last time this was mentioned, might try to see this in NYC.

On Sunday

Ah, that might be a problem.

Revolution In The Head

A few recommendations by Simon Reynolds:

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2009/08/when-acquaintances-make-books-bit-of.html

The Numero Group presents:
A Light On The South Side
Release party, Discussion, and Social
Sunday, November 1st 2pm – 6pm
Chicago Cultural Center
Discussion with Michael Abramson and Rick Kogan in the Claudia Cassidy Theater
Reception in the G.A.R. Rotunda

Peter Margasak's writeup of the Abramson book makes it sound great.

For the label’s next knockout release, Light: On the Southside, the music is actually a complement to the art: a stunning 12-by-12, 132-page hardbound book featuring gorgeous black-and-white photographs shot by Michael L. Abramson at a handful of south-side blues clubs and lounges between 1975 and 1977. http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2009/10/29/a-snapshotmusical-and-visualof-the-south-side-in-the-70s#more

Currently reading Gimme Something Better, an oral history (inna Please Kill Me stylee) about San Francisco punk. Diggin' it.

Really enjoyed Thurston Moore/Byron Coley's photo essay book about No-Wave, some really great shots, too much Lydia tho'

"too much Lydia tho'"

There was clearly a shortage of photogenic No Wavers.

I just finished Jack Chambers' Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis and would definitely recommend that to anyone who enjoyed the autobiography.

Really enjoyed Thurston Moore/Byron Coley's photo essay book about No-Wave, some really great shots, too much Lydia tho'

Yep, this is a good 'un.

King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records
Jon Hartley Fox
University of Illinois Press
(280 pages, 23 photographs

I bet this book about that old-school r'n'b label is worth reading

Wanna put a good word in for Henry Pleasants' "Serious Music — and All That Jazz! (1969)"

Pleasants was more of a classical and jazz critic -- as well as a spy for the CIA, that too -- but his takes on swing, 50s jazz, and 60s pop are entertaining and fresh.

I always thought it incredibly cool that Pleasants would sometimes go to Europe to review shows, but he was really there to do espionage work.

That's pretty wild

The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry is a powerful little illustrated novel about the relationships you have with friends, and with music as you first discover it as a teenager. I haven't read it in over a decade but I remember feeling it pinned that vivid obsession and thrill in a very poignant way. Turns out it's on Google Books if you can't find a copy or don't mind reading things online.

ok only part of it is ;_;

Yea, I remember years ago when her comic strip was in my local weekly that she periodically would include music references and story lines. I also saw her in the crowd at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest a time or 2.

The Luke Haines biography.

'The Fallen' by Dave Simpson.

A freebie given away by The NME in the mid-90's called Unknown Pleasures which contains reviews of writers favourite albums. You can pick up copies occasionally on Ebay for very little. depressing read in a way as it gives you a real insight into how much music journalism has deteriorated in the intervening years but contains the most perceptive pieces I have ever read on Chic and Cathal Coughlan.

Wow! Never heard of that. Who wrote the Chic piece?

It was Melody Maker, not NME. Some of the essays used to be floating around the web, and there used to be an ILX thread about it.

Here ya go

Melody Maker's "Unknown Pleasures"

Here ya go

Melody Maker's "Unknown Pleasures"

― I'm into SB (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 2 January 2010 22:07 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Thanks for the link. Lost my copy a while ago.

Paul Lester did the Chic one. Never heard of him. Will seek out. Thanx!

The Chic piece was by Paul Lester.

It's online somewhere but I'm not sure where.

Xpost. I have it saved on an old computer. Will find and post tomorrow. It's good.

Oooh you're awesome! Thanx!!!!!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B000S548Y6/ref=sr_1_olp_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262473588&sr=1-9

Appetite for Destruction

anyone here read this guys stuff before? any good?

Whether it's hanging around with Marillion's Fish in Berlin, seeing Whitesnake fail to ignite 1985's Rock in Rio, talking through old times with Jimmy Page in his Berkshire pile or following Ozzy Osbourne to Moscow, there isn't a rock luminary that Wall hasn't cross-examined or kept the flame burning with at some point over the last thirty years. Here, amongst several pieces, he catches Lars Ullrich just on the cusp of world domination; has dinner with Ritchie Blackmore on the eve of a Deep Purple comeback; and is up all night in LA with W. Axl Rose. Appetite for Destruction gathers together Wall's journalism for Kerrang!, for whom he was the star writer in their eighties heyday. It also features brand-new introductions to all the pieces, written with maybe less hair but also the benefit of twenty years' hindsight.

About the Author

Mick Wall was the founding editor of CLASSIC ROCK magazine. He's the author of numerous music titles, including books on Iron Maiden, Don Arden, W. Axl Rose and Black Sabbath. He ghosted XS ALL AREAS: the autobiography of Status Quo, and is a former DJ on Capital Radio. In the 1980s he was the chief writer for KERRANG! His most recent book is a biography of Led Zeppelin: WHEN GIANTS WALKED THE EARTH.

I'm slowly working my way through Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone by Nadine Cohodas

Cohodas did a ton of research for the Nina Simone book but quote after quote after quote from concert reviews in both major media and the African-American press kinda wears one out after awhile.

Anybody reading the latest books with Elvis Costello lyric references in the title:

Brett Easton Ellis' fiction sequel to Less than Zero. Imperial Bedrooms (I think he added an 's') is out.

Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit From the Goon Squad is out.

The latest novel from the acclaimed author of The Keep unfolds in the music worlds of punk-era San Francisco and contemporary New York. As the characters grow out of their early rebelliousness, their attention turns from performance to money-making. Egan charts the fluctuations of fortunes and friendships, exploring various notions of change and stability.

Do not know if these books are good, or necessarily about music, but figured they would fit under this thread better than over on ILE or something.

I never read Less than Zero or saw the movie. Dropping Costello references seems to big for 40-something writers. I haven't seen it, but apparently there's a scene in Treme where musician Kermit Ruffins (I think that's who it is) is told that Elvis Costello is in the audience and wants to meet him and he does not care (and then gets scolded by someone for not caring).

Not sure if "goon squad" is a reference to an Elvis Costello lyric.

Just picked up and enjoyed "We Never Learn", by Eric Davidson from ye New Bomb Turks. Fine anecdotes about, for lack of a better word, garage-punk bands from the late 80s-late 90s or so. He uses the word "gunk-punk". Despite that, a good read, good pics, fun stuff. Especially if you're a fan of Crypt Records, Sympathy For The Record Industry, etc. Good related website here: http://www.weneverlearnbook.com/

I've been reading Michael Moynihan's Lords of Chaos and definitely have mixed feelings about it. I'm not sure I totally accept his thesis that the rise of violent Satanism, Paganism, and Black Metal is some Hegelian rebellion against the Scandinavian social welfare state.

Did I read the same book? For me it's just a bunch of sociopaths saying 'Christianism is alien to Scandinavian culture'.

And am I the only one who thinks this book is well-balanced and that's why Varg hates it?

Really The Blues by Mezz Mezzrow is a great autobiography.
Early jazz stories from was an associate of Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke - his lasting contribution was to introduce good w33d to NYC. Bonus, sometimes it gets so slangy that you need to refer to the "hipster glossary" in the back.

"Talking Music: Conversations with Five Generations of American Experimental Composers" (amazon)

There are two books out about Bomp magazine, put together by Mrs. Shaw, that are interesting. Also, its still hard to go wrong with Guralnick's 'Feel Like Going Home.' Bill Harkleroad's book on Beefheart & the Magic Band is reputed to be excellent & if I can ever find it for a price that wouldn't require taking out a 2nd mortgage I'm gonna snag it.

Got this baby on order, have a sneaking feeling it's gonna be ace:

http://www.faber.co.uk/site-media/onix-images/thumbs/12591_jpg_280x450_q85.jpg

this thread is pretty long for no one to've mentioned dean wareham's 'black postcards.' great insider insight into the life of a critical darling ambivalent about sales and the 80s/90s/00s music industry he finds himself in. it's almost as good as dylan's 'chronicles,' and a lot more forthright and (seemingly) honest. i read it a few months after mick wall's illuminating zeppelin bio, 'when giants walked the earth.' the two texts are almost like mirror images of each other

xp
very excited for that! but Faber's US distribution is terrible. yesterday some crazy person was selling it on Amazon for over $2000.

This Rob Young book is so good it has me purring with pleasure. I'm 100 pages in and he hasn't even got going on folk music in earnest yet. Instead he's making me want to check out Vaughan Williams, Holst and Bax, which is no mean achievement.

Keith Richards' "Life"

Any other 2010 items?

Terry Teachout's Pops (Louis Armstrong bio) is great and extremely readable at a quick-paced 300 pages.

OTOH an 800 page Frank Sinatra bio that stops in 1953 strikes me as too detailed - anybody read this?

^^Frank by James Kaplan

Christgau offered a mixed take on the Teachout book (and on Teachout himself)(see link below) earlier in the year that was discussed or mentioned somewhere here on ilx. Am wondering now if reading this book, is like reading a George Will book on baseball? Your (coleman) take suggests I need not worry which is good to know.

http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Pops-as-Pop/ba-p/2578

Mark Anthony Neal's Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic has some really good writing on R. Kelly...

xpost

I'm no fan of Teachout's neoconservative theatre criticism to put it mildly and Pops is surprisingly balanced w/little or no politicized axe-grinding. even better than Xgau is willing to admit IMO.

If you like Van Morrison, the Greil Marcus book was very good.

I just knew of his Dylan collection book, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010, but yep Listening to Van Morrison is out too.

Sean Wilentz' book on Dylan, Bob Dylan in America came out in 2010 too. I haven't read any of these yet!

What do you guys like/want for coffee table books?

The Jazz Loft Project by Sam Stephenson

Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present by Gail Buckland

Jazz by photographer Herman Leonard

Sacred Steel

The Boombox Project

Alex Ross' new book (Listen To This) is good so far.

Just bought Husker Du: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock . Haven't cracked it yet.
That's uh some title.

^it's tru, tho.

This Rob Young book is so good it has me purring with pleasure. I'm 100 pages in and he hasn't even got going on folk music in earnest yet. Instead he's making me want to check out Vaughan Williams, Holst and Bax, which is no mean achievement.

― margana (anagram), Wednesday, August 25, 2010 7:10 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really, really want to read this. Vaughan Williams is really good too.

Amused/bemused that the Rob Young book is featured in the Toast catalogue.

And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records by Larry Harris

this was so much better than I expected, as advertised an insiders account of disco era excesses and the subsequent near-collapse of the record industry.

oops published in nov 09 but worth a look regardless

i want to read that. i need all disco books.

OK so I just finished Wald's How The Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music and if you go into it with the latter half of the title more in mind rather than the attention-grabbing former, it's really a very fine book. It could definitely stand pruning and the six-page epilogue, "The Rock Blot and The Disco Diagram," is a mess (if not an offense - thanx for the parenthetical mention of gays in relation to disco). But he does a great job of recreating some of the ways in which music was actually lived and how they've been distorted by recording-based histories.

As for The Beatles, well, we already knew that they kinda sorta destroyed rock 'n' roll (as opposed to rock) in addition to laying waste to Tin Pan Alley and Johnny Mercer (although they only kinda sorta did that too).

Here's his basic theory and how he ties The Beatles to the rest of the book:

"(The Beatles) had led their audience off the dance floor, separating rock from its rhythmic and cultural roots, and while the gains may have balanced the losses in both economic and artistic terms, that change split American popular music in two. When similar splits had happened in the past, the demands of satisfying live audiences had always forced the streams back together, but by the end of the 1960s live performances had lost their defining role on the pop music scene. So the Beatles and the movement they led marked the end not only of rock ’n’ roll as it had existed up to that time but also of the whole process explored over the course of this book, in which white and black musicians had evolved by adopting and adapting one another’s styles, shaping a series of genres—ragtime, jazz, swing, rock ’n’ roll—that at their peaks could not be easily categorized by race." 246

― Kevin John Bozelka, Sunday, August 2, 2009 4:47 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

this book is A++

so many books to read

any good stuff coming out in the next few months?

Good boobs about music

The new SReynolds might be interesting?

I'm currently readin John Powell's "How Music Works" (simple and entertaining - lots of stuff I didn't know), and Oliver Sachs' "Musicophilia" (also very interesting).

Is there such a thing as a book about IDM/electronica scene early-90s to early 2000s?

"(The Beatles) had led their audience off the dance floor, separating rock from its rhythmic and cultural roots, and while the gains may have balanced the losses in both economic and artistic terms, that change split American popular music in two. When similar splits had happened in the past, the demands of satisfying live audiences had always forced the streams back together, but by the end of the 1960s live performances had lost their defining role on the pop music scene. So the Beatles and the movement they led marked the end not only of rock ’n’ roll as it had existed up to that time but also of the whole process explored over the course of this book, in which white and black musicians had evolved by adopting and adapting one another’s styles, shaping a series of genres—ragtime, jazz, swing, rock ’n’ roll—that at their peaks could not be easily categorized by race." 246

i don't know if i agree with any of this. especially the live performance thing. unless you don't think consistently filling football stadiums with 100,000+ people all throughout the 70's wasn't some sort of social pop phenomena. it was the decade of live concert "events".

and as far as the genre thing goes, there was plenty of music not easily categorized by race in the 70's. fusion, free jazz, disco, soft rock, singer songwriter pop, lite pop soul, etc.

and people dance to beatles music all the time. the beatles were very much in touch with their rhythmic roots. i can play you 4 zillion 70's r&b beatles covers that were played in black clubs filled with black audiences as evidence if needed.

oh i could go on...

i mean the some of the biggest pop acts in the u.s. in the early 70's were pop/jazz/r&b/rock hybrids like chicago, blood,sweat&tears, and three dog night. and they packed in the fancy dancers everywhere they played. so what did the beatles kill again?

http://www.twitteringmachines.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/the-recording-angel.jpg
Highly recommend this, which I just discovered (first published in 1987, I think). It's all about how the experience of listening to music on records — as opposed to live concerts — has changed the direction and development of music itself.

yeah you get to raid the fridge and don't have to pay for parking.

plus, no long lines in the bathroom.

The new SReynolds might be interesting?

― ford lopatin (dog latin), Monday, April 4, 2011 7:54 AM

oh man, fantastic -- thanks for the heads up

So Reynolds' 2010 "Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews" consists of a mixture of old and new interviews he did plus previously written pieces and a little bit of new analysis?

Pretty much. All interviews with people like David Thomas, Lydia Lunch etc. Plus a nice little write up all about Mutant Disco. Basically it's Rip It Up Extra.

The new one coming out is about retro culture and our relationship with it. I don't know how much there is let to say on the subject - it sounds a bit meta tbh, but I've enjoyed nearly all his books I've read (especially Rip It Up) so I'll be getting it when it comes out.

I really like Bez's Freaky Dancin book, though I guess it's not really about the music at all

just ordered phill brown's "are we still rolling?", supposed to be really good:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0977990311
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5179zRQa4CL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Phil struggles to balance his home and family with a job where drug abuse, chaos, rampant egos, greed, lies and the increasingly invasive record business take their toll.

read excerpts of it in tape op, it was entertaining though i didn't really care about a lot of the musicians/bands involved

should i get a tape op subscription?

you might as well, it's free. it's usually too tech-y for me but they have good interviews occasionally.

Sammy Hagar's book #1 on NYT bestseller list.

RED ROCKER BIO BOOK BOX OFFICE SOCKO SHOCKER!

but who will play him in the movie...

XP - Yes you should.

I read that Philllll Brown book a couple of weeks ago, interesting stuff, he's obviously a contrary bastard, and he misses out loads of bands I would have liked to have read about (Eat, Bark Psychosis) and mentions a lot that I wouldn't give a ha'penny for but it's still pretty great. i reckon a lot of people will be reading it to get some sort of scoop on those arcane Talk Talk sessions, but there's not much that hasn't been written about beforehand in Sound On Sound magazine or in other PB interviews.

I never knew that his brother Terry moved to Canada and was *the* Terry Brown that recorded a lot of the classic Rush albums.

oh sweet, for some reason i thought tape op was only free in the uk.

Anybody seen the new Will Friedwald 800 page book on jazz vocalists?

anybody?

Once looked at an earlier book of his on the subject. Seemed pretty good, although he hated a certain strain of cabaret singer. Just downloaded a sample of this one.

Joshua Clover's new one on 1989 was excellent.

OK, Curmudgeon, I just skimmed the first few As, starting with Ernestine Anderson. Definitely looks like a keeper.

Ha. Thanks. Didn't Christgau or someone once complain about Friedwald's writing (or maybe that's just me remembering something I did not like about it?).

Pricey though, which is I guess why you are asking.
(xpost)

Looking to pick up owen hatherley's 'uncommon' about pulp soon, anyone read it?
spied it in the wire that came in the post this morning nut not read a review yet

Clover's 1989 book is very good.

The Archivist (Vintage Vinyl Jesus Music 1965-1980) - Ken Scott Not a new book, but really enjoyable if you dig for these records, he's amazingly thorough.

Guess that is a different Ken Scott from the British recording engineer and producer who worked with the Beatles and Bowie.

Just sprung for the WIll Friedwald book, now reading around in it and it seems pretty amazing. Full of all kinds of information about all kinds of singers from all kinds of eras, lots of serious efforts to nail down exactly what the appeal is and strengths are of each singer, and lots of: I used to think so-and-so was a joke, but a lot of really smart people I respected told me otherwise so I kept trying and finally I started to warm up and now I can tell you why there are so great.

http://motherjones.com/media/2011/10/quiz-fictional-rock-bands

Re that link: Are The Heaven Seventeen in the book or only in the movie?

Came to post that I read some of the recent Tony Bennett bio and it starts out seeming too sycophantic but it gets better. Last night started reading The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun by Robert Greenfield and I can't put it down.

For dub fans:

Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae

http://www.amazon.com/Dub-Soundscapes-Shattered-Jamaican-Culture/dp/0819565725

Academic approach to dub music cultures around the world.
It contains some detailed descriptions on how some of the dub tracks were recorded and mixed.

still reading rob young's electric eden. going slowly because i don't want it to end! really really good.

i read "everybody loves our town: an oral history of grunge" by mark yarm over this past weekend and it's really fun! i love oral histories like "please kill me" because you don't have a boring author prattling on about their opinions. and he does a good job of not focusing just on nirvana/pearl jam/soundgarden but also including bands like cat butt and skinyard.

Forgot about Electric Eden. Gotta finish that one too.

Has anyone read Detroit Techno: Transfer of the Soul Through the Machine by Mathias k*l*an Hanf?

that should be Mathias k*l*an Hanf.

"everybody loves our town: an oral history of grunge" by mark yarm

suspiciously fortuitous name

Sounds like Bruce is not a fan of Elijah Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll:

https://twitter.com/#!/sisario/status/180347408486633474

Assuming that is the book in question.

He probably read only the title.

He probably was just told the title by someone else.

promising project in the works to make e-books collecting musicians' thoughts on the first time they heard certain artists:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/scottheim/the-first-time-i-heard-book-series

Interesting idea, but hopefully future books will included other subjects than white British art rockers.

Just finished James Fearnley's book about the Pogues. It falls away in the second half, but the stuff set round Kings Cross and Camden in the early 80s is fantastic.

Surprised that it hasn't been mentioned, but Aaron Copland's What to Listen for in Music. It was written in the early fifties, so even jazz barely rates a mention but don't let that putt you off. As a foundation, 'where the hell am I?' sort of resource it is invaluable and regardless of what you listen to, you'll find it useful.

For old skool industrial types like me, the three essential tomes are Charles Neal's Tape Delay, Simon Ford's Wreckers of Civilisation and David Keenan's England's Hidden Reverse.

Bob Mould's memoir See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody is a great read.

agreed re: copland's book, very readable and relevant to just about anyone

life against dementia by joe carducci is a fun read so far (not all music). a bit of an odds n sods compilation, but some great stuff, including a really interesting, detailed look at the portland music scene of the 70s (hurley, holy modal rounders, etc.)

trying to find a good thread to put something about the upcoming Meat Puppets oral history bio in. It's called Too High To Die and its by Greg Prato.
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=wtt7y9cab&v=001xIsb6zOAIu7Rlnkead1HL3_WCTRVv9eduECqEm79iLaM0Y31Thj0F3zSAK1cGvvcc1eQkH1W-i8GH0X6NuhSvVGJEdHEUijIgdvX4TwKekx7EiyhtdNeaA%3D%3D
Looking forward to reading it whenever I can get my hands on a copy

Stevolende

I am in

^^ really looking fwd to that book. here's hoping it's good to great...

Holy shit that looks awesome!

yeahhh that is a book i would read.
been re-reading a bunch of carducci stuff, so i've been listening to vintage sst quite a bit.

on a similar tip, the forthcoming Yo La Tengo book is great. wouldn't have thought that a rock book so devoid of sex/drugs/mania would be so entertaining, but there it is. monogamy! softball leagues! feedback!
it covers a lot more than just the band -- there's kind of a history of the underground rock scene of the 80s thread running through it all. a little overlap with something like our band could be your life, but not a lot. also, some interesting stuff about Georgia Hubley's animator parents which could almost be a whole book on its own.

Charles Neal's Tape Delay is indeed awesome--lots of self-flagellating short fiction from Michael Gira interspersed among the terrific interviews. Charles is a friend of mine; funnily enough, he now imports really interesting wines and spirits from SW France, and I met him in the context of distributing those through the NY-based company I used to work for.

x-post--oh, so a wfmu dj and critic wrote the YLT bio coming out in June

http://www.wunderkammern27.com/

I like old biographies that have the social history in them. Right now, I'm slowwwly working my way through a Cole Porter biography.

new Richard King, "How Soon Is Now"

this looks like it might be fun
http://www.feeding-back.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2012-03-15-FB-Front-Cover1-209x300.jpg
Introduction: The Quine Machine
1) …If You Dug It: Lenny Kaye
2) The Individualist: Richard Thompson
3) Don’s Secret: Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad)
4) Doing the Work: Wayne Kramer
5) Riff Appeal: James Williamson
6) Forst Exposure: Michael Rother
7) Infinite Delay: Richard Pinhas
8 ) Love Theme from The Twilight Zone: Tom Verlaine
9) They Say the Neon Lights are Bright on the Bowery: Cheetah Chrome
10) Gun, Guitar, Bullhorn: Lydia Lunch
11) Meta Box: Keith Levene
12) Purloiner: Rowland S. Howard
13) The Shi(f)t: Fred Frith
14) The Shakespeare Squadron: Glenn Branca
15) Starting with Thunders: Bob Mould
16) Infinity Suitcase: Lee Ranaldo
17) The Believer: Johnny Marr
18) Purple Sparkle: J Mascis
19) Reverend Spaceman: Jason Pierce
20) Furtive Gestures: David Pajo
21) The Joy of Despair: Kim Deal & Kelley Deal
22) The Radiant Guitarist: John Frusciante
23) Psychedelic Sound Freak: Michio Kurihara
24) Fennesz + Not-Fennesz: Christian Fennesz
25) Black Wolf, White Wolf: Ben Chasny

Ha! Just saw David Todd speak on his book at the Pop Culture Association of Canada conference last weekend. Sounds pretty cool.

Everything but the Bishop.

yeah seems like only chasny and thompson are repping on the acoustic side of things -- though obviously they both have their electric sides. still, if he's a good interviewer, i'd read the hell out of this.

it's pretty much me catnip.

here's the site for the book
http://www.feeding-back.com/
some good mixes, excerpts etc.

Currently reading Forces in Motion, Graham Lock's Anthony Braxton book. Lock comes across as a total Braxton fanboy so the gushing enthusiasm can get a bit tiring. OTOH there's enough interview transcripts, gig reviews and tour diary minutiae to make a total Braxton fanboy like, er, me very happy. Wish he'd do a second edition.

James Brown/The One by RJ Smith is magisterial.

today the new york times book review ran a review of "the one" by al sharpton. this is strange because sharpton is a source and 'player' in the book (by his own estimation sharpton was JB's surrogate son). would the times have bill moyers review the latest LBJ installment by robert caro? don't think so.

That is weird.

Looked at Feeding Back in the store but deferred purchase for now.

A few books by Albin J. Zak III look interesting: The Poetics of Rock and I Don't Sound Like Nobody.

Thanks. I see he's got a nice blurb from Rob Bowman, author of that Stax book in re to
I Don't Sound Like Nobody
Remaking Music in 1950s America

http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=295986

Saw that which was a selling point for me too.

xpost Not uncommon in UK book reviewing to have someone involved in events covered in non-fiction review the book: that's if you're treating reviews more as entertainment than buyers' guide. I take it that's not the case in the US, then.

Thinking about picking this up.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51-hCpX1YVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Oh, yeah, forgot about that. I somehow thought I was going to be able to buy a copy of Dr. John or Ivan Neville at BAM a few months agao.

Has Alice Echols' recent-ish "Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture" been mentioned here yet? That's a good 'un.

x-post-- Eyed the Sandmel book on Ernie K. Doe when I was down in New Orleans at Jazzfest, but decided not to get it right then at the fest. Maybe I should have. It looks very nice and comprehensive and well-written

Two-thirds of the way through the Charlie Louvin autobiography that I've been flacking for here RIP Charlie Louvin, which may turn out to be one of the best music books ever.

I've started reading Dave Tompkins' history of the vocoder How to Wreck a Nice Beach, lots of crazy fun so far.

I have that book and like to look at the pictures but it is so off-the-wall that I haven't been able to really read it so far.

Two-thirds of the way through the Charlie Louvin autobiography ― ratso piazzolla (James Redd and the Blecchs

You are the king of reading books about music. I am impressed. Seriously, I take forever to get through books.

The trick is to post before you've actually finished or even read much of the book at all.

The singer of DC band Edie Sedgwick does an ocassional column for the Washington City Paper blog called "5 Books I would read if I had the time."

Well gosh, these seem enticing (he btws sev right at the end)
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Music-for-Lovers/ba-p/8231

So glad I finally read The Rest Is Noise. (how is Listen To This?)

http://operachic.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c83e69e20128773a6dd4970c-400wi

You ready to sign on for some Sibelius, Dick Strauss and Feldman now, dow?

I haven't read Listen To This yet, but it's basically an expanded collection of his NYer pieces, right? In which case, go for it definitely.

btws sev = ?

He mentions several other books right toward the end, almost off-handedly or something. Jon, Ross has me more interested in getting back into Messiaen, and checking out the great villain/fabulous ahole of the book, Boulez--wotta punk!

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155293473/aretha-einstein-and-knowing-too-much

A new Anthony Heilbut book looks good

The Fan Who Knew Too Much--Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church, and Other Meditations

Sounds intriguing

But hating on Robert Johnson, not a good look.

I agree but it seems to be the thing to do now. I can't find it right now, but I just read something making arguments against him

Wasn't that other book by the author of The Beatles Weren't So Hot After All or whatever it was called, was it?

Just started reading the Charlie Louvin book. Holy shit — the part about how he and Ira had a bulldog mate with one of their dad's prized coonhounds. The resulting litter prompted quite the extreme reaction.

that was hilarious and O_o

Really liked David Browne's book on 1970. (Waited an extra six months, not realizing I'd ordered the trade paperback of a book that was already out.) It was a little like Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution: it's a great story, just get out of the way and tell it.

Reminds me, doesn't Ken Scott have a new book out?

Yes he does. It's called Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust: Off The Record with the Beatles, Bowie, Elton & So Much More.

Still thinking baout reading that Ben Sandmel Ernie K Doe book.

Wonder how this is--more on storyamp.com (incl zen "saved Cage from himself")

John Cage and the Music of Zen -- the biography

John Cage's immense contribution to the arts - and to music by Brian Eno and Philip Glass, Morton Feldman and Pierre Boulez, Nam June Paik and La Monte Young - has a crucial yet invisible Zen component.

A new biography, "Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Life of Artists" (Penguin Press, 2012), by critic Kay Larson (New York Magazine, the New York Times), makes visible the music of Cage's Zen path.

In the 1950s, Cage heard lectures on Zen by the great Japanese scholar D. T. Suzuki. These ancient teachings spoke to Cage as though meant just for him. He wrote music based on Zen principles of indeterminacy and chance, and a “silent piece” (4’33”) that honors Suzuki’s teachings. Cage’s transformation became ground zero in a new international postmodern art, music, and performance avant-garde that still honors him as pioneer.

Early press:

"Without a doubt, the richest, most stimulating, most absorbing book I've read in the past year, if not decade. . . ." -- Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

"Tough-minded even when working at high levels of abstraction, Where the Heart Beats is one of the most profound, not to mention unexpected, gifts imaginable during John Cage's centennary year." -- Seth Colter Wells, Slate.

"A thoroughly researched and wittily written guide to Cage and the Zen mind. There are delightful surprises and revelatory anecdotes on nearly every page." -- Larry Lipkis, LIbrary Journal.

got the new ted gioia book Jazz Standards from the library -- really entertaining stories behind a couple hundred classics. occasionally drifts into stuff that's more directed at musicians, but for the most part very readable.

Be interested to see that. I have dipped into some of Philip Furia's books on the subject.

John Cage and the Music of Zen -- the biography
Have not read this, but did read What's Welsh For Zen? by his namesake John Cale.

translated into english for the first time, just went online for pre-order this week

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520265745

In Search of a Concrete Music
Pierre Schaeffer (Author), John Dack (Translator), Christine North (Translator)

Went to look for that Ted Gioia book but did not find it so I got Feeding Back instead which I dipped into on the way home. Seems like he does a good job of letting each guy state his case

definitely need to read that

Read the Tom Verlaine interview and skimmed the Zoot Horn Rollo one. Both guys were pretty careful and insightful in their statements

books on my shelf that i promise myself i will read this year:

the house that trane built - the story of impulse records - ashley kahn

worlds of sound - the story of smithsonian folkways - richard carlin

the liberation of sound - an introduction to electronic music - herbert russcol (from 1972. doubt its in print.)

celebrating bird - the triumph of charlie parker - gary giddins (i am really friggin' picky about who i read when it comes to jazz. even more so in my old age for some reason. i almost always prefer reading oral histories from musicians themselves when i can find them. or good autiobios by musicians. read that art taylor interview book and it kinda knocked me out. so when i pick up bird and bud books that look...i don't know...biased in some strange way (the mythos thing? the anecdotes spread around for decades?) they can really turn me off. had this bud book written by a french guy who took care of bud in france and it just really rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. i mean the guy knew him and he can write whatever he wants but i dunno...just seemed off or weird. like graverobbing? maybe not that bad.)

i mean musicians can be biased too obviously but it seems easier to read between the lines when the people who made the music speak for themselves. that gil evans book i read last year - which was mostly comprised of extensive interviews with musicians and family - was one of the best books i've ever read. it wasn't perfect, but it was very satisfying. plus, i just loved 200+ pages of people saying nice things about one of my heroes.

sooo, you don't like that Giddins book about parker? i haven't read it, but i've liked some other giddins things. i wonder when stanley crouch will finish his supposedly definitive Bird bio, i think he's been talking about it for like 30 years. i imagine it will be extremely problematic, but hopefully in an entertaining way.
that impulse records book is not a work of genius but it is a fun read, and will get you listening to a bunch of great jazz.

i haven't read the giddins one yet. i'm gonna read it. i don't mind him. he's got knowledge. he does his homework. he has love in his heart.

yeah see i wouldn't want to read the crouch thing...i dunno he bugs me. i definitely find him problematic.

still wanna get rj smith james brown book. kinda dumb that i didn't get one from him at the emp conference. he was sitting right there with a big stack of them. but i'm kinda dumb.

that brown bio is the best new music bio i've read in a while. by a longshot, i think.
yeah crouch bugs me too, but he can be good when he's not trolling. from what i've read about his parker bio it's going to be *the* book on parker, just in terms of deep research. or maybe that's just what crouch has said, haha. i haven't really read a great book about parker, i would like for one to exist.

Anyone read that Art Pepper autobio/oral history his wife put together? It kind of reads like a jazz Memoirs of Vidocq or something in that ballpark. He's racist as hell, though, even though he has black friend up the wazoo.

friendS

how many of us have theM?

loL

I'm about three-quarters through Violence Girl, Alice Bag's memoir, and it has been a fantastic read.

It's like a manual on how to be fierce, fabulous, and big-hearted all at the same time.

The one thing that strikes me -and this will sound weird- is just how outright lovable LA's early punk scene was. In the spring of '77 it was basically three or four dozen kids from throughout the Basin, just months removed from severe Elton John / David Bowie / Freddie Mercury obsessions, converging in Hollywood to meet other "different" kids, form bands, and basically do all sorts of wacky 'avant-garde' arts-and-crafts projects together, like drawing flyers for shows and sewing up outfits. That ended up sounding more glib and silly than I intended, but there's something really beautiful and sweet about those early days.

You can order the book direct from her website, btw. http://alicebag.com/violencegirl.html

saw alice speak at the emp conference and she was great. she was with beck's mom for some reason and beck's mom spoke but she was kinda eh...

from David Byrne's newsletter:
Over the last few years I wrote a book that McSweeney’s is publishing in North America and Canongate in the UK. It’s called How Music Works and that’s what it's about. It examines how music is affected by a multitude of contexts—financial, technical, social, and architectural. There are personal anecdotes and pictures and some pie charts, as well.
This book in all its formats—physical, enhanced eBook, eBook, and audio book—will come out on September 12 in the US (and September 13 in the UK). The physical book is truly a lovely object—the McSweeney’s folks are known for this—so if you like to touch things, this is your best option. It’s large and slightly squishy. I gave my mom my advance author's copy for her birthday. The enhanced eBook has short audio snippets embedded to help you understand the kind of music played at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, for example… but you can’t touch an eBook. Each format caters to different senses.
David Byrne
Western Chelsea

Publisher's Weekly gives the advance word:
How Music Works
David Byrne. McSweeney’s, $32 (352p) ISBN 978-1-936365-53-1
In this fascinating meditation, Talking Heads frontman Byrne (Bicycle Diaries) explores how social and practical context, more than individual authorship, shaped music making in history and his own career. Touching on everything from bird-song and mirror neurons to the scene at CBGB, his wide-ranging treatment analyzes the effect of music venues (he theorizes that terrible stadium acoustics bias arena-rock bands toward plodding anthems), technology (sound recording induced opera singers to add vibrato), finances (he proffers balance sheets for two of his albums), and much else on the music we hear. He draws extensively from his own experiences, as his music shifted from the minimalism of early Talking Heads (“no ‘oh, babys’ or words that I wouldn’t use in in daily speech”) to complex theatricality; his chapters on Heads recording sessions are some of the most insightful accounts of musical creativity yet penned. The result is a surprising challenge to the romantic cliché of musical genius: rather than an upwelling of authentic feeling, he insists, “making music is like constructing a machine whose function is to dredge up emotions in performer and listener.” Byrne’s erudite and entertaining prose reveals him to be a true musical intellectual, with serious and revealing things to say about his art. Photos. (Sept. 21)
Reviewed on: 07/23/2012
Other Formats
Hardcover - 978-0-85786-250-1
Mo

hmmmm. Wonder if he has any catty comments about his former bandmates

He was the worst part of the band, by far.

At least as a performer.

http://i55.tinypic.com/fu9mqf.gif

lol! byrne was a pretty amazing performer imo.

Just reading the Pete Brown autobio White Rooms and Imaginary Westerns which is pretty interesting. Even if he does dismiss punk wholesale and Keith Richards too.
Have always enjoyed the music PB made at the turn of the 70s with Battered Ornaments and Piblokto! not heard the rest.

Oh yeah , neglected to mention that main reason I was looking at this list was to see waht had been said about Bob Mould's autobio which i just found a cheap hardback copy of. Thought I'd seen it slagged elsewhere but I do like Husker du's psychedelic era at least.
Funny sat down to read the intro/1st chapter while I had to wait somewhere earlier and wound up with Husker Du coming on my walkman as the next track on its random playlist.

Bob Mould comes off as the biggest dickhead in the universe in his autobio

hmmmm. Wonder if he has any catty comments about his former bandmates

― curmudgeon

I was referring to Byrne once saying that getting the Talking Heads back together would be like a high school reunion, and he doesn't like those. I don't think he was too crazy about Frantz and Weymouth touring as "The Heads" . They made fun of he and Eno once upon a time too for dressing alike or something.

“making music is like constructing a machine whose function is to dredge up emotions in performer and listener.”

this quote doesn't exactly sell me on his prose

Definitely would not make me want to check out someone's music either. I don't think I've ever had the feeling of emotion being dredged up from within me, while listening to music, and it doesn't sound appealing.

xpost Mould's autobiography does him no favours at all. Completely humourless and always seeking to lay blame.

Just read two forthcoming ones: Peter Hook's Joy Division memoir, and Barney Hoskyns' Led Zep oral history. Too much of the latter relies on secondhand quotes sourced from other interviews, which means you can never quite trust the context in which he's using the quotes (for instance, a section of Plant on Richard Coles comes from a 1985 interview in which he's been asked about Cole's co-operation with Hammer of the Gods). What comes out of it most plainly is what a revolting man Jimmy Page must be. And for all that Plant is the de facto good guy, he still colluded in all the awfulness. Lots of stuff about the "light and dark" of Led Zep, but the darkness really means there were a load of wankers in the Zep camp, not that Page made a pact with Satan.

Have to say I've enjoyed reading the Mould so far, but he's still in Husker du.
Have disagreed with some comments and he does already seem to offload on Grant a bit & exclude Greg.

Wondering how many people would think the 1984 line-up of Black Flag was decidedly not their best line-up. I really love the Marquee set anyway.

Prose is not Byrne's first language, and "dredge" is an off-putting term, but his main point is you're not supposed to *feel* like your emotional response to music is being dredged, extracted, extruded, as so much "sensitive" music so often does make me feel. I suspect that he associates such words with his music, because that may be how he hears it, at least sometimes. An interviewer asked Plant what it was like to listen to Zep records, and Plant said he would just think about how much work went into a certain track, a certain part of a certain track. Especially likely for Byrne listening to Talking Heads albums, considering the strife with Tina--check the book The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, or any number of comments she's made elsewhere. I've gotten David Byrne's Journal as email newsletter for quite a while, so I'm pretty used to his style, but he's pretty thoughtful anyway, can see how his book might be good.

Also, not to put it all on Tina, the creative process does involve so much dredging, especially with the pressure of deadlines, money, making sense of you're trying to do--making it clear enough to yourself, and whoever is necessarily involved.

Skimmed parts of the Bob Mould and the Byrne books in a bookstore; I think I will get and read RJ Smith's James Brown bio, first.

the byrne book is such a joy to read.

got the new ted gioia book Jazz Standards from the library -- really entertaining stories behind a couple hundred classics. occasionally drifts into stuff that's more directed at musicians, but for the most part very readable.
Agreed. Loving this book. It's making me hunt down at lot of recordings I don't have, too (which is always a good sign). There's a Spotify playlist of all the recommendations here: http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/161618065.html#!page=0&pageSize=10&sort=newestfirst

"Light And Shade" - new book of Jimmy Page interviews (with oral history from assorted others including Yardbird Chris Dreja) is - so far - an entertaining and fascinating read. Just getting to the formation of Led Zeppelin part now. Lots of detail via
Page about background stuff in his session and Yardbird days (gear, context, technique) - light on rock star bs.

Jazz Standards is great. I wish I'd had that Spotify playlist while I was reading it!

New Mary Wells bio out by a guy named Peter Benjaminson (his first book?). I think it's just out in hardcover.

Guess not - he wrote a bio of Florence Ballard, too.

just saw a book called TUNES a comic book history of rocknroll. only skimmed it briefly, kind of weird selection of artists and a bit too wordy for a "comic book", but the iggy section was cool......

While finally reading Byrne's How Music Works, I just now checked robertchristgau.com for back-in-the-day descriptions of T. Heads and Byrne's albums and shows, also came across this vintage stash of succinct, substantial rock bio reviews (his recent reviews of Lennon's letters and a new Cohen bio are appealing too)http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bkrev/rockbios-83.php

As posted on the thread devoted to (mostly complaints about) Neil's Waging Heavy Peace--A Hippie Dream, I dug it (in a not entirely different way than Byrne's book, come to think about it)

Those two, plus Chronicles, are the most refreshing books by rockers I've come across (although also like what I've read of Keith Richard/Richards and Ian Hunter's Diary of A Rock Star)

just saw a book called TUNES a comic book history of rocknroll. only skimmed it briefly, kind of weird selection of artists and a bit too wordy for a "comic book", but the iggy section was cool......

The Sebastian Lumineau "Ramones" story in there is the best.

Also Veloso's Tropical Truths--here's hoping for books by Tom Ze and Rita Lee as well.

anything good about the cure? the only thing I've found that's available on nook is "Never Enough" by Jeff Apter, which looks like it's probably awful.

Just recently read The Beach Boys' bio Heroes and Villains which I've seen recommended on a couple different threads around here. Yes, it's a tabloid-style trashy tell-all, but if you have a soft spot for that kind of stuff, it's essential reading. Also if you are not aware of how fucked up these guys were, it's pretty eye-opening.

Ten Imaginary Years by Steve Sutherland seems to get a few good reviews on Amazon.

xp

Just finished Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor's Faking It, which I'd recommend. The premise is hardly startling--that the Grateful Dead/R.E.M./Wilco should not be accorded points for a perceived authenticity lacking in the Archies/Milli Vanilli/Carly Rae Jepsen--and lots of people have made the same argument before them (myself included, I'd like to think). But they approach it in a really evenhanded way; it's not some pleased-with-itself polemic that tries to sell you on the (equally false) idea that the Archies are inherently better than the Grateful Dead. The tone of the book gets it exactly right, I think.

I just read "Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group" by dear old Ian Svenonius. It's a set of reflections on the dynamics of rock 'n' roll groups as handed down by rock 'n' roll greats (alive & dead) in a series of seances, yes it is. Sitting somewhere in a triangle of vulgar Gramsci, vulgar Adorno and vulgar Chuck Eddy, I reckon. Siultaneously right and wrong the whole way through. I laughed and laughed.

re Never Enough, the first few pages compares a 1985 cure concert crowd to a britney spears crowd, which tells you a lot about where this author is coming from. nonetheless, i'm plodding through it since it apparently quotes extensively from Ten Imaginary Years, which is not itself available on ebook.

Just ordered Luke Haines' Post Everything after storming through Bad Vibes in about a day. Can't wait.

Been dipping into Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneers by John Broven and it is awesome. Full of great detail. Covers all the usual suspects snappily- Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, Syd Nathan, Berry Gordy etc- and lots of fresh first-hand stories of everybody else betwixt and between.

Time for new screenname in honor of Syd Nathan and the Bihari brothers.

This could be good

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/03/toure_prince_i_would_die_4_u.php

Comes out this week.

I'd like to read a really good Prince book. Ronin Ro's was strictly business and Matt Thorne's was like a printout of a tediously obsessive blog.

I have assumed that SAF publishing went under some time ago since books from the imprint turn up on Amazon etc for increasingly rising prices.
I just looked at their webbsite and they have a Copyright footer for 2007 which presumably means it hasn't been updated since then, still says there are Xmas special offers happening too.

Anyway, there were some fantastic book titles through the imprint. A lot of stuff on head type music especially from the early 70s,though some late 60s Gong, Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, Incredible String band all had titles out under the imprint as did Shilrley Collins.

I've just been thinking recently that with those great titles currently in limbo it would be great to get some other label to pick them up. Or to put that another way, one might think that there would be a market for the books so some other imprint would want to pick them up.
Just wondering what the likelihood of that happeningmight be. Anybody on here have any idea what the story actually is on these? Or does having missed them by a few years now mean they have permanently been missed unless one gets lucky with charity shop finds or possibly gets rich enough to afford the online prices?

Another book on Stax is out. Memphis writer Robert Gordon's book
Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

Been dipping into it today since it came from Memphis last night.

Ha!

Read a critic/FB friend raving positively about the Gordon Stax book, but saw someone on Yahoo southern soul email list criticizing it and saying stick with the Bowman Stax book

Just wondering what the likelihood of that happeningmight be. Anybody on here have any idea what the story actually is on these? Or does having missed them by a few years now mean they have permanently been missed unless one gets lucky with charity shop finds or possibly gets rich enough to afford the online prices?

David Keenan's C93/NWW/Coil book England's Hidden Reverse is very rare now and commands high collector prices. Strange Attractor have picked it up though and are publishing a revised version next May. The other really good SAF book is Charles Neal's Tape Delay which is a collection of interviews with various industrial and post-industrial types. That one remains out of print but can be found relatively cheaply second-hand.

currently reading love saves the day. content really interesting but dude is such an awful writer. he was a grad student when he wrote it, right? some of the moments where he piles on the puns, jeez

David Keenan's C93/NWW/Coil book England's Hidden Reverse is very rare now and commands high collector prices. Strange Attractor have picked it up though and are publishing a revised version next May.

That's great news, gonna buy the shit outta that.

Cornily enough i am now reading Victor Bockris' lou reed book Transformer and digging it a lot so far.

Haven't got too far into the Gordon but never imagined it would replace the Bowman. Just figured it would be a slightly different angle on the same materials perhaps with some more hit-or-miss forays into local color that wouldn't have made it into Bowman's book.

Just finished Michael Walker's Laurel Canyon book. The usual array of end-of-the-'60s signposts you've read about before, but very good on the transition to mid-'70s big-money in pop music (and the centrality of cocaine to that). I think it would have been amazing to live there in the early '70s. I don't know if I would have been disciplined enough to make it out of that moment.

http://musictomes.com/

Website that lists music book releases and sometimes includes reviews or links to them

2 Soul Train books, one by Danois, and one by Questlove....Maybe will get to 1 or both someday

http://musictomes.com/review-soul-train-the-music-dance-and-style-of-a-generation/

http://musictomes.com/ericka-blount-danois-board-the-soul-train/

I predict I will be bought the Morrissey and Bob Stanley books for Xmas.

Wait what Bob Stanley book?

OK, I see. That's not out here anytime soon either.

Where's "here"?

US.

If you bought the deluxe version (£150) from the Saint Etienne website, I suppose the £16 postage wouldn't seem so bad?

James, I was at the new rough trade Brooklyn store for the television gig last night and they're selling the bob Stanley book there for 30 bucks.

Thanks!

How was Television?

They were great. So insane to see them in such a small space. I got to see them last night by the grace of ilxor thus sang freud; getting in tonight by the wiles of my buddy Alex.

I've heard Questlove talk about Soul Train in interviews and he comes off as legitimately obsessed with the show, like not in that NPR-ish, nerd-in-quotes sort of way, but like obsessed to an unhealthy and bizarre degree.

Had great fun exploring all of these in the late 90s/early 00s: http://www.johnschott.com/record-shrine/book-shrine/

just finished the new stanley crouch bio of charlie parker (first volume). really great, almost more for the historical side stuff than the actual info about parker's life.

& jon, i need a full Television report ASAP

Yeah, Bird bio is absolutely essential, and otm re: historical context. There's context, and there's context: Crouch paints an incredibly engrossing picture of how, where, and why Bird developed the way he did. Other Bird bios/accounts I've read were basically "He started in Kansas City, where there were a bunch of swing bands, and then moved to NYC where the REAL shit happened." This vividly illustrates how Parker and his innovations could have only come from the Kansas City of the 30s/40s.

(and Crouch still manages to shoehorn in a clumsy-ass swipe at hip-hop in the process; fortunately, it's easily ignored/forgotten)

Just finished a kind of depressing but nonetheless fascinating book "The Prettiest Star" which is a bio of Brett Smiley, a failed Bowie wannabe who barely had a recording career, and passed by an awful lot of famous people while rocketing (almost) to the bottom. By Nina Antonia who's probably better known for writing about NY Dolls.

Thanks--just ordered a copy through Abe for my glam-loving friend. Also went looking for the Brett Smiley CD put out in 2004; used copies go for $150-200, and new copies...sure, why not?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0000AJ5SX/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

So I located a copy through other means.

Bob Stanley book's pretty decent, feels very bloggy in parts...v ILX friendly.

I'd rather hear Pete Wiggs' point of view.

This looks rad.

http://www.amazon.com/Aleister-Crowley-Magick-Wickedest-World/dp/0399161902/

Kinda surprising how many books Gary Lachman (aka Gary Valentine of Blondie) has written. I liked Turn Off Your Mind quite a bit, though, so might check this one out.

any good books about folk or country music? very broad i know but for a gift and i can't think of anything i've ever heard recommended

i'm reading this right now, it is good!
http://www.nashvillescene.com/imager/b/story/3438188/d401/books1-1.jpg

country - nick tosches (his other books too of course, but this is my favorite)

This a book of his that I have not read. He likes to be provocative

yeah tosches is a good time, but should be taken with ye olde grain of salt. that book has some great stuff in it...

thx both look perfect

folk
http://thewire.co.uk/images/the_wire/main/originals/thewiresalonaug.jpg

otm

Loved 'Electric Eden' - found so much fantastic music I had no clue about or just hadn't investigated beforehand.
Shirley & Dolly, the soundtrack to Kes, Mr.Fox and Peter Warlock have been in regular rotation ever since. Hot stuff!

fuuck okay that looks really tight

yeah that book is seriously one of the best books about music (or anything!) i've read.

damn, not in stock. would have to order online

ooh country recommendation:

http://www.cowboysindians.com/images/cache/54855e5eb4a25360aaf8dd20c1389304.jpeg?aspectratio=0.67873303167421

cannot recommend it highly enough, it's so great

"don't forget this song," frank m. young and david lasky's graphic novel about the carter family, which came out not too long ago, is fantastic.

tosches is a good time, but should be taken with ye olde grain of salt. that book has some great stuff in it...

yeah tosches can really try your patience in any number of ways, but "country" is a particularly great one of his. formative for me.

also on the country tip, peter guralnick's "lost highway" is a fantastic collection of interviews/essays about roots musicians, with a strong country leaning as the title would suggest. his "feel like going home" is more blues-focused, but that book's chapter on charlie rich is as good as music writing gets and is entirely responsible for my lifelong love of charlie.

Ditto--both Charlie pieces are mandatory. (If I remember right, the first one catches him while his career's floundering, the follow-up when he had that unlikely brush with fame and wasn't handling it well.)

Another recommendation for Electric Eden - got me into Fairport Convention and Pentangle, neither of whom I'd ever listened to before that.

Yeah man, these people got the right idea"---Charlie Rich, while observing couples and hopefuls, between sets played at Max's Kansas City. "Behind Closed Doors" indeed---wonder of any of the ex-Velvets were there that night? Also: apparently mostly on the strength of Guralnick's otm say-so (also to further cash in on his belated comeback-and-then-some), Rich's most Fully Realizedsides, from the Smash label, were reissued as a twofer: some of these are nice, some are darn good, some are great, some are fucking awesome. Only wish Margaret Ann's composition "Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs" was here, speaking of fucking awesome. Hear ye! (thanks discogs)
A1 Mohair Sam

Written-By – Frazier*

2:07
A2 I Can't Go On

Written-By – C. A. Rich*

3:03
A3 Dance Of Love

Written-By – C. A. Rich*

2:14
A4 A Field Of Yellow Daisies

Written-By – M. A. Rich*

3:01
A5 I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water

Written-By – J. Babcock*

2:40
A6 Every Thing I Do Is Wrong

Written-By – C. A. Rich*

2:26
B1 She's A Yum Yum

Written-By – D. Frazier*

2:11
B2 It Ain't Gonna Be That Way

Written-By – C. A. Rich*

2:14
B3 Just A Little Bit Of You

Written-By – D. Frazier*

2:31
B4 Moonshine Minnie

Written-By – D. Frazier*

2:19
B5 Down And Out

Written-By – M. A. Rich*

2:15
B6 Lonely Weekends

Written-By – C. Rich*

3:01
C1 No Home

Written-By – C. Rich*

2:33
C2 So Long

Arranged By – Ray Stevens Written-By – C. Rich*

2:43
C3 The Best Years

Written-By – M. A. Rich*

2:35
C4 Party Girl

Arranged By – Ray Stevens Written-By – M. A. Rich*

2:02
C5 You Can Have Her

Arranged By – Ray Stevens Written By – C. Cook

2:30
C6 Have I Stayed Away Too Long

Written By – F. Loesser

2:26
D1 Hawg Jaw

Written-By – D. Frazier*

2:23
D2 Something Just Came Over Me

Written-By – M. A. Rich*

2:00
D3 Double Dog Dare Me

Written By – B. Logan, C. S. Snooddy

1:54
D4 Just A Little Bit Of Time

Written-By – C. Rich*

2:02
D5 Blowin' Town

Written-By – C. Rich*

2:12
D6 Tears A Go-Go

Written By – D. Fritts

2:24
Credits

Producer – Jerry Kennedy

Notes
Fully Realised is a 1974 compilation of highlights from Charlie Rich's two Smash albums, The Many New Sides of Charlie Rich 1965, and Fast Talkin', Slow Walkin', Good Lookin' Charlie Rich 1966.
(p) 1965 Catt#.9299 114
(p) 1966 Catt#.9299 115
(Think there's more on The Complete Smash Sessions)

my debut book just came out. It's about music:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ba5VauwCcAApNBF.jpg

Buy it here:
http://bronze-age.net/RNB-EDITS.html

Should I read "Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life in Rock" by Steven Pearcy or "Dirty Rocker Boys" by Bobbie Brown?

I just read "dirty rocker boys" and it was entirely competent and pretty meh. Plenty of pointless sex gossip that I won't ruin spoil unless asked.

The Pearcy book is pretty good.

I saw a recommendation for this book but I haven't read it yet:

Ickes, Scott. 2013. Afro-Brazilian Culture and
Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil. Gainesville: University Press of
Florida.

Just finished James Fearnley's book about the Pogues. It falls away in the second half, but the stuff set round Kings Cross and Camden in the early 80s is fantastic.
― Viva Brother Beyond (ithappens), Tuesday, 17 April 2012 11:10 (1 year ago)

I've been wanting to buy this for a while now. Must order now!

I'm enjoying David Byrne's How Music Works which is part musical autobiograsphy part history of recorded sound. Makes me want to listen to the Talking Heads who I've never got majorly into as well as his other projects.

Also reading a book Called This Ain't The Summer Of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk by Steve WAksman which is currently looking at Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper and theatricality after having spent some time looking at Nuggets and before that Grand Funk Railroad. KInd of interesting though it does keep tying everything into metal but then that is at least partially what the book is about. I picked it up partially for the title though I don't think he's going to look at the Imperial Dogs who actually came up with the phrase and partially cos it's got the Iggy crowdwalking photo on the cover * it was £4.99 which is some factor. It is pretty interesting, though main reason I went back to the shop it was in was taht I'd seen a cheap copy of the Byrds day by day book which I think is called So You Want TO Be a rock'n'roll star. Should have grabbed it when I first saw it cos it was gone when I went back but that shop which seems to be a gay erotica shop from the outside but has had some great rock finds over the years. Always seems to have some interesting stuff on a pretty large discount along with other non-gay esoterica.

Also picked up Morrissey's autobiography though I've only looked at the first chapter so far.

& got to mention that Touch & Go Complete Anthology thing my brother got me for my birthday which is very interesting.

Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, by the late Richard A. "Pete" Peterson is my new favorite book on music: masterfully organized and argued, very informative and insightful about the subject at hand and equally useful for understanding the history of the music industry in general.

This looks interesting:

Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris and Vienna by Derek B. Scott

Has anybody read Ben Fong-Torres' book about Top 40 radio in the US?

I got put off the David Byrne book pretty early on, when he refers to Bath as a small town "a few hours East of London". Petty, I know, but factual errors which are easily check able always make me wonder how much of the rest of it is just made up. Once I'd got in that state, the rest of it just started to smack of "look at me, I'm cooler than you". ( Which he is, but whatevs)

At other times in the past few weeks I've read No Sleep till Saltburn (failed music journo shows just why, publishing his fevered teenage fanzine notes from the height of NWOBHM), Choosing Death (a fairly superficial skim of how the Death and Grind scenes started, but still with a couple of new pieces of info) and the KLF book (entertaining, but inconsequential).

Started Lords of Chaos the other night and have Louder Than Hell in a pile with Varg's book on Scandinavian religion(s) amongst others awaiting reading.

Has anybody read Ben Fong-Torres' book about Top 40 radio in the US?

― MaresNest, Friday, January 31, 2014 9:17 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, but i read his book about Little Feat and it was decent. Really a Lowell George bio, to tell you the truth.

Looking forward to getting the new david Stubbs book Future Days on Krautrock. Hopefully going to get taht through the door over the next couple of days. Nice to see that the local chain newsagent got copies in but it was €10 more than I paid for it.

NO sign of HMV starting selling books yet, have been hoping that Bob Stanley would come in cheap.

Oh & read Bathing In Lightning Colin Harper's book on John Mclaughlin up to the mid 70s which was great. Read it since the previous posting on here anyway

I think Byrne's How Music Works lives up to its title, in terms of his experience, from the 60s on, live and in studios, also different business models employed for creating, promoting, distributing albums, times the luck of, for instance, crashing in a schoolmate's pad almost directly across the street from CBGB's, and why that was such a good place for bands and audiences (yet pointing out that other seemingly equally likely venues somehow failed to grow or sustain a scene).
He alternates the personal experiences with historical overviews of recording technology and related biz matters, how they impacted the aesthetics, and the psychology (quotes somebody who walked into a room and encountered a friend listening to lovely recorded music *all by himself*: it was like catching somebody jerking off). Ends with a great history of the whole Music of The Spheres thing, from Ancient Greeks to Modern Geeks: he's got aome zings, but he's into it too.
He doesn't talk that much about inspiration/what a song of his is About or "Don't know where this cosmic stuff comes from, man, I just write it down,", nor does he (past the somewhat stiff first chapter) get too lecture-y or formulaic.
The ebook's got music files, but haven't heard 'em.

(quotes somebody who walked into a room and encountered a friend listening to lovely recorded music *all by himself*: it was like catching somebody jerking off) In the early days of record (maybe cylinder?)-collecting.

Anyone read these?

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18377990-yeah-yeah-yeah

St.-Etienne guy's epic history of pop since 1950(?)

Or Greil Marcus' new History of Rock and Roll in Ten Songs

Tempted by both but don't know if I want to pull the trigger

Read a few chapters in Bob Stanley and each one was an ace. Know next to nothing about GM book.

I read Yeah Yeah Yeah, I find the first half of the book pretty fun and informative but the closer it got to our times, the more I found it naive and dull. As a whole it's good, especially if you were hit by Napster at age 12 like me and never got to fully live the singles era, and of course it's pretty anti-rockist. Also, the unfair thing is that I haven't read the last R&B chapter, which renders my criticism null.

third of the way through future days and it's excellent so far

Need to get and read the Stanley book.

Nitpicks and compliments in W. Post freelancer's review I just read:

His personal taste as a dance musician is refreshingly far from the “rockist,” Led Zeppelin-worshiping tendencies of so many pop historians. Perhaps as a result, when the music gets louder, his facts occasionally get blurry, as when he dates the rise of thrash metal a bit too late, wrongly refers to Black Flag as a D.C. band (though the group’s onetime singer Henry Rollins is from the area), and uses the term “heavy metal” much as it was first used in the ’70s, with no regard for the difference between the pop-chart success of hard rockers like AC/DC and the long-term influence of metal royalty Black Sabbath. But much of this is forgivable because of the way Stanley writes, as if he were engaging the reader in conversation rather than delivering a treatise. His affable writing style is punctuated by moments of wit and insight, even when some of his stories sound apocryphal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/yeah-yeah-yeah-the-story-of-pop-music-from-bill-haley-to-beyonce-by-bob-stanley/2014/08/13/10aedd7c-2158-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html

http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2014/09/your_favorite_books_about_new.html

Fave books about New Orleans musicians with more books and stories added in the comments

Here were some of them:

Under a Hoodoo Moon," Dr. John (with Jack Rummel)
"Up from the Cradle of Jazz," Jason Berry
"I Hear You Knockin'," Jeff Hannusch
"The Brothers Neville," the Neville Brothers (with David Ritz)
"Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans," John Broven
"Triksta," Nik Cohn
"Song for my Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White," Tom Sancton
"Unfinished Blues," Harold Battiste with Karen Celestan
"From Stapleguns to Thumbtacks: Flyer Art from the 1982-1995 New Orleans Punk and Hardcore Scene," Pat Roig
"Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans," Matt Sakakeeny (artwork by Willie Birch)
"Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock n'Roll," Rick Coleman
"Huey 'Piano' Smith and the Rocking Pneumonia Blues," John Wirt
"Ernie K-Doe: The R&B Emperor of New Orleans," Ben Sandmel
"Groove Interrupted: Loss, Renewal & the Music of New Orleans," Keith Spera
"New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans," John Swenson
"The Definition of Bounce: Between Ups and Downs in New Orleans," 10th Ward Buck and Lucky Johnson with Alison Fensterstock
"Bounce: Rap Music and Local Identity in New Orleans," Matt Miller
"Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz," John McCusker
"Not Just Another Thursday Night: Kermit Ruffins and Vaughan's Lounge," Jay Mazza

I have that Creole Trombone book but haven't started it yet. Still busying reading Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism!

I really enjoyed Sidney Bechet's yarn-spinning autobio, Treat It Gentle. Funny title, considering that he could be quite the badass, as documented by others. Anybody who want to stage a one-person show might well consider basing it on this book.

Would like to read that Sidney Bechet book.

Came to thread to say I read the first few chapters of Please Be With Me, A Song For My Father, Duane Allman, by Galadrielle Allman, and this thing is amazing well-written so far.

Recent book about Brian Jones by guy who wrote Iggy and Bowie books looks interesting.

Matos' forthcoming opus looks pretty awesome: http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062271808/the-underground-is-massive.

Sounds of Two Eyes Opening, Sinecure Books fourth book, and the follow up to Houston Rap, is a narrative of Southern California chiaroscuro by master photographer Spot, the legendary hardcore producer and engineer for the Misfits, Black Flag, Hüsker Dü and Minutemen.

Edited by Sinecure's Johan Kugelberg and punk expert Ryan Richardson, Sounds of Two Eyes Opening displays shots of punks and bands and clubs in dark swatches of blacks and grays with brief illuminations of white skin. These images sit in contrast to promise of the unbroken horizon of Spots’ beach photographs: youthful beauty, toned bodies, gleaming teeth, big hair, the eternal trilogy of sun/sand/sea.

Spanning the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Sounds of Two Eyes Opening offers an amazing portrait of Southern California coastal life: surfing, bikinis, roller skating and skate boarding’s fledgling days are set in contrast to iconic shots of all the key denizens of hardcore punk rock as it is being invented; candid shots of Black Flag, The Germs, Minutemen abut everyday punk, fans, cops, clubs and now shuttered rehearsal spaces.

Sounds of Two Eyes Opening is presented as a hardbound, 272 page book,

has anyone looked at eric weisbard's top 40 democracy? http://www.amazon.com/dp/0226896188/

looks pretty interesting to me. this short-ish essay that he wrote caught my attn: http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/keep-debates-pop-songs

Barry Blesser's 'Spaces Speak', about the history of acoustic architecture, conscious design of spaces meant for the performance of music, and how it impacted the composition of music itself. From caves to Stonehenge to Mayan temples to Churches to Radio City Music Hall etc.

http://www.blesser.net/spacesSpeak.html

I just finished reading Sheila E's autobio. Part of it is about music (obvs) and the other part is personal history stuff. Her writing isn't like ~spectacular~ or w/e but her voice is very strong and the things she chooses to write about are distinctive and interesting. The way she writes about her love of music really resonated with me, and the chapter(s) where she meets and becomes friends with Prince are some of the most tender words I've read about friendship in a long time. I guess I'd recommend it if you like drumming, Prince, Sheila E, or all of the above.

I've been thumbing through Talkin' to Myself: Blues Lyrics 1921-1942: http://www.amazon.com/Talkin-Myself-Blues-Lyrics-1921-1942/dp/0415973783

which is just an enormous collection of old blues lyrics. It is wonderful.

Xpost I adore Sheila E and u know how I feel about prince. Onto the reading list it goes!

otm

I saw her give a talk and reading at B&N. She said some people bugged her that there wasn't enough Prince in the book, to which her reply was "it's about my life, not Prince's." She seemed nice but I was going to give this book a pass based on that, but now I am intrigued.

Is there a decent book about the Cure? I kind of expect not...

Ten Imaginary Years is great. I don't think there's a good one that covers the subsequent 26.

there's more than enough prince in the book! it's about her life, not his. and the way she talks about his impact on her life is really beautiful imo, even if things didn't exactly work out in the long run.

the last part is heavy on the devotion to the lord, but one of the most interesting things about her book: not a word about wanting or having children. either they are off limits entirely or she doesn't feel compelled to talk about it. either way, kudos, lady!

Recently finished Herbie Hancock's autobio, Possibilities. Written in a no-frills style, I think he does a good job of relating what it's like to play his music, without assuming musical training on the part of the reader. Many funny little anecdotes about Miles Davis and his working methods. One never-been-told-before sordid revelation. His sister sounds really interesting also - the passages about her untimely death and its aftermath are particularly affecting. You have to be able to stomach a lot of references to his Buddhism; this aspect I felt stopped just short of being annoying. Overall I do feel I know the man better now.

Just cracked a new Peggy Lee bio called Is That All There Is? by an guy who's previously written about Chet Baker and Lena Horne. This already feels like it's going to be overwhelmingly entertaining and fascinating.

I thought herbie was a sc13nt0log1s7?

you're thinking of Chick Corea

No I know chick is, but I thought it was the both of them.

i heard him talking about it in a radio interview a few weeks ago
it was pretty shocking and not related to scient0logie

http://www.richieunterberger.com/wordpress/top-twenty-rock-history-books-of-2014/

Barry Mazor provided a very appealing description of Eric Weisbard's Top 40 Democracy in last Saturday's Wall Street Journal. The online review isn't available now to non-subscribers, apparently (WSJ's inconsistent w that), and I don't know how Salon manages such things, but just in case this link
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/07/your_music_snobbery_is_all_wrong_how_top_40_radio_made_the_mainstream_as_interesting_as_the_margins/?utm_content=bufferff0a2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer stops working, here's an excerpt of their excerpt:

Formats let music occupy a niche in capitalism and—as with Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, with its monologue and interviews structure and MOR appeal—connect music to other show-business realms as well. Genres are different. Ordinary people don’t proudly identify with formats, but some do identify with genres. One can have a hit song that goes “I was born country”; probably not “I was born adult contemporary.” Music formats like MOR, AC, and Top 40 were crossover spaces, with no single dominant genre. A trickier category is music, like country, with both format and genre identity, making for something more porous in definition than honky-tonk, soul, or that Bruce Springsteen fans might prefer. Black-oriented pop divided between rhythm and blues (R&B), a format, and soul or hip-hop genres. Rock, in its 1970s form, was the Uncola of formats: a lucrative format posing as a rebel genre. Music genres, more inherently ideological, chafe at formats, with their centrist, commercial disposition.

Yet the very commercial tendencies that made radio formats, and the music they implanted in our consciousness, suspect aesthetically also made them trailblazers for the sounds, artists, and listeners left out by all that genre certainty. Formats, radio, and pop music deserve a much bigger place in the history of American culture than accounts rooted in genre and isolated records have afforded them. Their homogenizing tendencies popularized and routinized each eruption from the countercultural 1960s and 1970s and MTV 1980s to the grunge, gangsta, and new country 1990s. But equally important was this center’s ability to redirect music as a social force: from “serious” fans who were often straight, white, male, and affluent to listeners less vocal and coherent but no less invested in what they heard. That tension structures this book. The safe radio pop that so many commentators have reviled for so many valid reasons opened as many doors as it closed.
I probably won't agree with all of this, but wanna read it. (Mazor said it also traces the careers of the Isley Brothers and others, adapting to their audiences' changes.)

Don't know that country ever was a format---"countrypolitan," sure, and now the national Nash FM chain incl. Nashville Idols, basically a Gen X Hat oldies format, maybe complicated by the return of Garth, though probably not---but why does he say that country is both format and genre, but rock and R&B are not? Oh well, like I said, I'm more interested in the historical road maps, but hoping to learn something conceptual as well.

this year has been great for music books.

That big Beatles book
Bob Stanley's 'Yeah Yeah Yeah'
Viv Albertine's book
Simon Napier Bell's one about music publishing machinations
Was that Jesus and Mary chain book this year? If so, that even if they didn't cite (or use) my old article
I almost bought the Scott walker book, and may yet. It looks good but I can't nom it until I do.

Anyone read Stephen Hanley's book yet?

Need to read Viv's and Hanley's tbh

Read/am reading:

No Wave, Marc Masters
People Funny Boy, David Katz
Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon, Michael E. Veal

xpost thanx brio2 for posting:

http://www.mojo4music.com/18055/viv-albertine-book-of-the-year/">Mojo interview: http://www.mojo4music.com/18055/viv-albertine-book-of-the-year/

NPR's Ken Tucker put it on his '14 Best Music Top Ten: 9 albums, this book

Want to read the Albertine book. Skimmed it in a bookstore. She chose to write it all in the present tense.

Curious about this Richie Unterberger faves:

Ain’t It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones on the Road to Exile, by Robert Greenfield (Da Capo Press). This has the feel of a toss-off, as it’s the third book Greenfield’s written on the Stones in the early 1970s, and at least some of the stories and quotes appear in his Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones. I kind of like it anyway

George Clinton w/Ben Greenman Brothers Be Like Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You

even casual fans of of the pfunk should find this illuminating. George is so smart, sharp and perceptive about music, musicians and the music business. coming up he studied how his peers and influences played and presented themselves and also how the record companies marketed them. he's insightful into the working of his own empire (and failings), offering fascinating insights on leadership, collaboration and cooperation within an unwieldy musical commune. generous and perceptive assessments of the wildly diverse personalities he's worked with over the years. despite his business acumen he does get bogged down in shady publishing rip-offs and the last third of the book drags through tortuous legal wrangles. his self-admitted 25 years + crack habit doesn't help the 80s, 90s and 2000s but he's refreshingly uncliched and frank about drug use. Ben Greenman's hand is evident in the clear readable prose though George's earthy interjections "keep it real" as they say. "The church ladies pitched a bitch because we were singing about pussy." At the end of a rapturous review of Vanilla Fudge concert: "Of course I was tripping my ass off." And after explaining his message of tolerance handed down to children, grandchildren and musicans regarding sexual preferences: "I've seen motherfuckers fuck radiators."

i am so excited to read top 40 democracy :X

(xxpost) I mentioned this on another thread a while back: Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones is surprisingly awful. (I seem to recall that someone else chimed in in agreement.) It's got this unrelenting you-won't-believe-the-depths-of-depravity-we're-going-to-explore tone, and the depths turn out to be that the band used drugs frequently. Glaring factual errors are mixed in.

i gave my brother the george clinton book for xmas. half wanted to keep it for myself

regarding all the new beatles books, what could possibly be revealed in a new one? honest question

I read that Road to Exile book (I put out a book through Da Capo years ago and they continue to send me ARCs of all their music stuff). It was boring.

xpost

not so much new but really wonderfully integrated with cultural/music/social history and with a level of care & enthusiasm rarely seen. dude wanted to give the best possible history of the beatles & truly succeeds

I mentioned this on the Canterbury Scene thread, but I was disappointed in the new Robert Wyatt bio.

I enjoyed the McCartney In The 70's book very much.

the Weisbard book is excellent -- I finished it a few days ago.

haven't read the lewisohn book yet but while there are a lot of beatles bios there hasn't really been one that i'd feel totally comfortable recommending, that feels definitive and objective and well-written in the way that the guralnick/elvis or jon savage/sex pistols books are. so even if there's nothing groundbreaking it feels like there's still space for someone to come along and do the job right, quietly correcting all the misconceptions and adding balance and context.

i think lewisohn definitely fills that gap

Seconded. And I'd argue that Lewisohn's writing style is less dry/clinical than Guralnick's, while providing an incredibly vivid sense of detail that is as intriguing as it is necessary (speaking as someone who thought, before I read it, "Pfft, I already know about these so-called 'Beatles'!").

Viv Albertine book is great, as direct and immediate in its way as the Charlie Louvin book.

ohhh the charlie louvin book
so good

Like driving in an air-cooled Franklin.

Speaking of which, I just came across a book that looks interesting with a chapter on Charlie: In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music, by Nicholas Dawidoff.

been working on Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. It's been interesting to learn about the hits from the 50s and early 60s that I wasn't very familiar with, but some of the chapters read a bit like big lists of songs. Been listening along to this playlist that painstakingly organized the songs from the book in order of mention:

http://open.spotify.com/user/unterwasser/playlist/6Yn3GrP6D6dOSfKFfpzAiC

Need to get back to that book. Thanks for teh link.

May still have a few clippings, but really want to find a copy of his whole run (also, still need to check his own music!) He was really good, on so many things: got me to look for The Plastic People of Prague's secretly recorded, transcontinentally mixed, pressed and smuggled Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned---and I found it, on a Tuscaloosa side street in 1985. Also, as he so cruelly informed Charlemagne Palestine, "It doesn't matter who did it first, but who does it best."

Oops, meant to post this

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6dY0qwIUAAf_e2.jpg:large

Enjoyed this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515RPMIdAYL.jpg

MTV wasn't available up here (not on regular cable, anyway), so I saw almost nothing of it in the early years--a couple of times visiting a friend in Illinois and that was it. I read the book through the filter of Toronto's Much Music, which I can now see very meticulously assembled its VJs to match MTV's: Erica Ehm = Martha Quinn (that one I already knew about), Jeanne Beker = Nina Blackwood, J.D. Roberts = Mark Goodman, Michael Williams = J.J. Jackson, Steve Anthony = Alan Hunter (that one's probably a little iffier).

Two funniest parts: 1) Blackwood telling some story involving somebody from Billy Vera's backing band, and referring to him at least six or seven times as "the Beater"; Dylan, being interviewed by Quinn in the mid-'80s, saying he liked the Police video where they jumped around and wore hats.

Big influence on D's ace "Must Be Santa" vid (incl. much jumping around, wearing of Santa cap & wig); also we know he's a longtime hat fan (Superfly hat in The Last Waltz, more of a Western-associated hat in Renaldo and Clara, but not a Stetson: those are the earliest stage hats of his I can remember)

Has anybody read Kim Gordon's new book? Generally not big on memoirs and mildly ashamed that I mostly just want to hear her bash Thurston.

Not read it but I would totally read a memoir in which Thurston bashes Kim.

Here's a fucking great book about the Who i just read

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11166707/pretend-youre-in-a-war-the-who-and-the-sixties-mark-blake.html

I've been meaning to check that one out!

Things that look interesting:
Cowboys and Indies, a history of the recording industry from the point of view of "Record Men," label owners and moguls

Recent history of music industry by Simon Napier-Bell. Looked at first few chapters, a ton of detail about early history of publishing.

Recent Barry Mazor bio of Ralph Peer looks to be a must read.

Has anyone read "Pigs Might Fly", the Pink Floyd book mentioned in the Who book review?

Not a bad list:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/26/musicians-writers-choose-favourite-books-music-brian-eno-beck

Interesting. Eno goes for an Alan Lomax book

I think I mentioned elsewhere that I want to read the below book by a professor/author who has spoken at several EMP Pop events. The below is an interview with him in which he both praises Peter Guralnik and expresses disagreeement with him and others

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/author-charles-l-hughes-takes-a-swing-at-conventional-wisdom-about-country-soul-and-race/Content?oid=5228976

Viv Albertine's book is so so so so great -- loving every single minute of reading it. Some of the stuff about her early life was so resonant to me that I want to write her a letter. Same with Kim Gordon's book, only the part that resonated was about Coco. Really enjoying getting some inside scoop, would recommend either.

Want to read Viv's book. Just learned from a Joe Strummer movie doc, that Strummer used to live with Viv's bandmate, drummer Palmolive (aka Paloma)

ok i am finally almost done with her book
it's really raw and grueling! so glad she didn't agree to a ghost writer.

i recently read two books by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka which I would highly recommend: Blues People and Black Music.

Blues People is just as much about sociology/history as it is about music, describing how blues developed as an expression of the traumatic displacement of slavery. he draws clear lines between the music that black people were making during the slavery and postbellum periods and the popular music of the early 20th century in America, which was interesting to me because the kinds of cross-generation connections i read about are between early 20th century blues/jazz to mid-century R&B/rocknroll.

Black Music is a compilation of his writing about jazz in the late 50s/early 60s, some of them record reviews or profiles for Down Beat and the like, others more experimental or informal pieces for lesser known publications. it's thoughtfully pieced together, though, so that musicians who are introduced as new people on the scene in the context of pieces about other musicians are later given their own feature later in the book. it's hard to explain, but the flow of the book is very organic and it makes you feel like you're gradually getting familiar with the NYC jazz scene in the early 60s (through Baraka's eyes of course) - who the most talented young players are, where the cool clubs are, why brilliant musicians are having trouble finding paying gigs, who's underachieving and who has just lost it completely. you get a long profile of someone like ornette coleman when he was first breaking in and freaking everyone out, but you also get short profiles of jazz drummers who are completely forgotten now. it doesn't come across like Baraka is sitting in an apartment listening to records and writing reviews - it sounds like he's in the middle of the scene and he knows everyone and everyone knows him and he's invested in it - it really comes through in his writing.

I half considered taking the library copy of Blues People and getting it signed by him when he did a reading at NUIG a few years ago but then didn't.
Think it was just pretty pure coincidence that I happened to have their copy of that out when I heard he was reading.

christgau's memoir 'going into the city' is way more about his love life than music but when he condescends to consider music you sorta feel like you're at ground zero for the establishment of predominant critical shibboleths

Does anyone have a shareable version of that Dennis Wilson book mentioned above?

take it to "bad books about music" xp

Those xpost Leroi Jones collections are eloquent and elegant; he really made the most of his word limit for the columns. At the same time, some of the You Are There aspect incl. settling scores with squares and worse, like the club owner who not only refuses to hire an avant pioneer, but is pissed that he can find a gig anywhere. Also the relatively mainstream star who admits just now saw the free jazz light---Jones: "That's a noble confession and all," but what took him so long? Harsh, but understandable in historical contect, and not too ranty (esp. compared to some other writing).
Think these books might have influenced young Bangs, Tosches and others.

christgau makes a thing out of how ishmael reed's 'mumbo jumbo' had a huge influence on him

christgau's memoir 'going into the city' is way more about his love life than music but when he condescends to consider music you sorta feel like you're at ground zero for the establishment of predominant critical shibboleths

ikr and when he manages to tear himself away from his relationship w/ellen willis and condescend to consider journalism in the mid/late 60s it's pretty interesting like you're at ground zero for the establishment of well, rock criticism. too bad he goes into this "then i reviewed that and it was good if i say so myself and i do" mode for the rest of the book - an insider's overview of the village voice during its 70s heyday would've been something. what the old boy's book totally lacks is any larger perspective/longview on the revolutionary times he lived through. like all those years of micro-reviewing ruined him for macro analysis. he's a good guy for all his quirks, though, reading this made me feel glad and lucky i got to work w/him.

i came away from 'going into the city' liking christgau much more than i went in. it reminded me a lot of donald fagen's 'eminent hipsters' and i wasn't surprised one bit when he quoted himself and his wife carola dibbell at length reviewing steely dan

pairing 'going into the city' with james wolcott's 'lucking out' fleshes out the 'voice' during its 70s heyday a little better

robertchristgau.com has a good amount of his 60s writing (incl mid-60s Times account profile of a young woman, known for being an early adopter, way before that term was coined, who starved to death on a groovy diet; ends with a speculation that she may have suffered from something called anorexia nervosa---italics his, I think---a condition then mostly known, as such, by medical professionals---it's a time trip). Also in the stash:many other longform pieces,from the 60s, 70s, later, mostly on music, where he has to develop his themes more than in the Guide, with various results (but always thought the 70s and 80s Guide entries hit the peak of compressed insight).
His joint review of the Ellen Willis and Paul Nelson collections is astute, re the achievements and limitations of those writers, ditto the first decades of rock writing.

Ellen Willis' Out of the Vinyl Deeps is sooooooooooooooo good

I've also been reading Ian MacDonald's The People's Music, which is not nearly as good.

Can anyone here recommend any good books about classical harmony/harmonic analysis etc? Finished a music degree eight years ago and would now like to brush up/expand on my knowledge as I haven't looked at that stuff much since. Any books with interesting analyses of composers/works?

Turn back, you poxy fule!

Charles Rosen - the classical style
Same author - the romantic generation

Hm. Had seen those books before and was intrigued but never investigated further

Rosen is amazing

Actually now I remember, this book is pretty good, I came across it last year: Revisiting Music Theory: A Guide to the Practice, by Alfred Blatter

Is the David Byrne one worth reading?

someone gave it to me as a gift so i guess i'll find out soon enough (once i read the million other books i wanted to read first)

I didn't enjoy the Byrne book at all. IIRC there is a glaring error in the first chapter which put me off completely.

I finished the Byrne one to make sure it was as awful as I thought halfway through. it was.

Ah that's a shame, I like the idea of a music theory book written by David Byrne.

I enjoyed it, especially the first few chapters. Maybe it depends a bit on whether you find the ideas he presents about music's relative value etc banal or relevant. There's also a fair bit of autobiography so added value if you care about byrne/th and don't know his bio by heart.

I came it with relatively little in the way of preconceptions about Byrne (I consider myself a modest fan of the Talking Heads). After finishing it though that minor fandom was considerably diminished by the overall arrogance. who knows, maybe that's the Asperger's. But within this broad category of good books about music, probably the ones I have disliked most have been memoirs (Joe Boyd, Dean Wareham, Byrne), with the Levon Helm book being a notable exception.

I tend to like critical/music history books more, so to be a bit more positive, I loved The Chitlin Circuit by Preston Lauterbach. It starts off a bit dense, setting up the major management groups/crime bosses in Indiana, but by the time it weaves in Texas blues joints with everything that was happening in Memphis and eventually Macon, I was hooked.

After finishing it though that minor fandom was considerably diminished by the overall arrogance. who knows, maybe that's the Asperger's

His Asperger's is self-diagnosed, thus perhaps non-existent, and further evidence of arrogance.

The first chapter seemed a bit stiff, though maybe because he was self-consciously trying not to turn out yet another ageing white rocker memoir (as he declared up front), but soon took off, once he got into got into describing the experience of recording and performing live--from middle school on---and how these were affected by changing biz models (about production, distribution, developing an image) and venues (the Heads dropped out of art school and moved into a friend's apartment, almost directly across the street from CBGB, and he analytically recalls the whole thing, but still wonders why that music-friendly setting become a Scene, when others didn't?). Also, for instance, describes an early solo tour, with the players teaching the dancers how to play, and the dancers teaching the musos how to dance. And the ending is great edutainment, as he sympathetically goofs on and celebrates man's quest to get in tune with the music of the spheres, from ancient times til Now.

Chris Richards in the W. Post likes Houston rapper Scarface's new autobiography "Life of A Madman"

The book also is filled with laugh-in-disbelief anecdotes; illuminating notes on craft; meditations on the molten intersection of race, class and hip-hop; and a few juicy loose ends, including claims of a lost trove of Scarface tunes produced by Kanye West. If you love rap, you’ll devour this stuff — meaning, you still have time to add it to your summer reading list.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/going-out-guide/wp/2015/08/27/mr-scarface-goes-to-washington/

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-best-music-books-of-2015-20151221/the-underground-is-massive-how-electronic-dance-music-conquered-america-by-michaelangelo-matos-20151218

I want to read the Grace Jones book and the Charles Hughes Country soul one. Maybe some others too

thanks for posting that-really want to read the 'Country Soul' book. There's a new Preston Lauterbach that I need to get as well. His 'Chitlin Circuit' was amazing.

The Hughes book very good. Own a copy of the latest PL book but have not sat down and read it properly. Went to high school with a descendant of the main guy he talks about.

20 jazz funk greats by drew daniel. 33 1/3 series

The latest Preston L book is less music-focused but still an interesting read.

Here's author/critic Richie Unterberger on his fave 2015 books about musicians (mostly rock and soul from the 50s and 60s to early 70s). A few are from 2014

http://www.richieunterberger.com/wordpress/top-twenty-rock-history-books-of-2015/

Thanks!

Now I want to read Unterberger's book on unknown legends!

I like it, although I think there are some folks here who dislike his writing.

He has certain blind spots. But he is usually very good on the stuff he likes.

At the risk of damning with faint praise: he does a lot of research, takes pains to organize it properly, and doesn't rely on bombast to convert the unbelievers.

Anyway, just now skimming the first few chapters of the Johnny Rogan Ray Davies bio and I am hooked.

Anyone plunked down for this epic looking Hawkwind book The Spirit of Hawkwind? It's expensive...

I'm wondering about that Suicide bio from 2015. "Dream Baby Dream: Suicide: A New York Story by Kris Needs

Kris Needs is a former NME journalist and Zigzag editor. He has written several rock biographies about Blondie and George Clinton (both published by Omnibus Press), Joe Strummer and the Legend of the Clash, The Scream: The Music Myths and Misbehaviour of Primal Scream and Trash! The Complete New York Dolls. H. He is a regular contributor to Record Collector and Mojo.

xgau re recent books by Patti Smith and Carrie Brownstein, one of his best on books: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/lives-saved-lives-lost

Another fave: "PIoneer Days," on Paul Nelson and Ellen Willis (I still need to get the Willis collection Out of the Vinyl Deeps):
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bn/2011-11.php

Evis Aron Presley, by Alanna Nash with the Memphis Mafia

Currently reading Unterberger's very technical ( and therefore heaven for me ) book on the making of The Who's "Lifehouse"/"Quadrophenia". It basically asserts the genius of Pete Towshend, Solo Auteur.

xxxpost I've read the Suicide bio. It's excellent. Recommend it!

Gathering oF promises about psychedelia in Texas is pretty great.

& Always in Trouble the Oral History of ESP-Disk is great too. would like to read an lp by lp overview but what's here is very interesting.

Facing The Other Way on 4Ad by Martin Aston is very interesting too. I haven't read any other histories of the label if there are any so I don't have anything to compare it to. & I think the authopr said a couple of things on the Birthday party that i wouldn't agree with

Recommending a
collection put out by a friend, Jeff Pike's Index. (Long-distance friend--we've never met.) Jeff wrote for my fanzine 20 years ago, and also put his own, Tapeworm, where people were invited to make a mixtape for Jeff and send in some writing on whatever was on there. The book's about half music, with the rest split between movies and books. Novels--I vaguely remember what they are.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dAwLZ7sQHrM/VuleNlyNd0I/AAAAAAAAJs0/jt7c2VBdqYw5ZFc_urA2cRPduOFHefV7g/s400/INDEX.jpg

The audiobook of Miles Davis' autobiography is currently blowing me away. It's like he's in my car next to me discussing all of the jive motherfuckers he dealt with

à propos miles davis, "miles ahead", the new film by and with don cheadle about two days in his dark period in the arly 80s when he was lost in drugs and stuff is pretty good. it comes over really authentic and the music is of course excellent. there is a young trumpet player in there incarnated by keith stanfield who literally blows away miles davis who then wakes up and plays again.

the kindle version of viv albertine book is £1.09 on amazon.co.uk at the moment

Still slowly working my way through David Whiteis Southern Soul-Blues

Just read that Viv Albertine book over the weekend. I liked it a lot.

We briefly crossed paths back in her film-making days and I completely mis-read her, thinking she was a posh privileged person slumming it just from her appearance and manner. What a complex person she is.

This book sounds interesting to me.

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1281-tracing-the-rock-and-roll-race-problem/

That does sound like it could be worth a read.

finally got around to finishing the chrissie hynde book. her perspective is…different! it got kinda lite toward the end, skimming over what i imagine is a lot of time and information after the first pretenders album took off. her vision of akron isn't much like mine at all, that was kind of interesting. can't recommend it in the same way i'd recommend the viv albertine book.

xpost yeah I want to read Hamilton's book too. I hope that his referenced pointing out that Smokey Robinson couldn't be a "precursor" of Lennon (since they were the same age) doesn't incl. dismissal of possible influence---"If you can want, you can care" seems like a line that Lennon would dig---in terms of compression, if nothing else, but probably something else as well---and Dylan, who is a little over a year younger, declared Robinson "our greatest living poet" in the 60s. But that's another thing that makes me want to read it; the interview is pretty good too.

Billboard published a list of the 100 best music books ever. Unsurprisingly, 95 percent of them are about rock and pop music, and I think all of them are from the 20th or 21st Centuries.

Here are the titles I think should have been included, but weren't:

Joe Carducci, Rock and the Pop Narcotic and Enter Naomi
Albert Mudrian, Choosing Death
Charles Shaar Murray, Crosstown Traffic
Henry Rollins, Get in the Van
Valerie Wilmer, As Serious as Your Life
Michael Veal, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae and Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon
Peter Doyle, Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900-1960

Oh, and Greg Tate's Flyboy in the Buttermilk, of course (and probably Flyboy 2, though I haven't gotten a copy yet).

Need to have a proper read through, but I'd also add David Keenan's England's Hidden Reverse, Paul Bracewell's England is Mine and Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful.

And Billboard neglects Meltzer's first book, for chrissake, Frank Kogan's, Nik Cohn's Rock from the Beginning, Albert Murray's Stompin' the Blues, A. B. Spellman's Four Lives in the Bebop Business, Jack Chambers' Milestones, Robert Gordon's It Came from Memphis, Rob Bowman's book on Stax. I thought Keith Richards' book wasn't all that. But they did pick some good ones--Xgau's '70s book, Marcus' first one, of course, Girls Like Us, a fine bio of Carole King-Joni Mitchell-Carly Simon. But why no Stanley Booth? And why Tosches on Dean but not on Jerry Lee....?

http://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Claude-Rains-Casablanca.png

Ian Carr's bio of Miles and Nik Cohn's Awopbopaloobop. Lloyd Bradley's Bass Culture is a bizarre omission.

Yeah, Carr's book on Miles is good--hard to choose between it and Jack Chambers', though. Actually, Awopbopaloobop is Rock from the Beginning, just retitled and slightly rewritten (to no great effect if you ask me). Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta and Yuval Taylor and Hugh Barker's Faking It come to mind too.

An easy choice between Chambers and Carr's, for me - Chambers completely loses his shit when it comes to anything after Bitches Brew, and just hates all the '80s music flat-out. Carr doesn't love it all, but he gives it a fair shake at least.

Agree on Escaping the Delta. Wald's book on narcocorridos is great, too.

Just noticed - no David Toop! Haunted Weather at the very least should be on there.

At some point I'll stop whining and talk about what is on there.

"95 percent of them are about rock and pop music"

and written by u.s./u.k. people. about music from u.s./u.k.

also, as i mentioned on facebook, what i read from that seabrook book was sooooooooooooooo bad. like really bad. did the billboard people even read it?

also their blurb for hammer of the gods was gross. there was a lot of that kinda thing. dude, the crue were outlaws! such a dude-friendly list in general with a few exceptions that really do seem like they were put there so they could be the exceptions. not that they aren't worth putting there. probably. i don't read many music books....

(it is kinda more like one of those Esquire *music books every guy should own* things...)

OTM on all counts.

I like Ocean of Sound more than Haunted Weather, but yeah, Toop is unfairly overlooked in general, I think.

The Fred Goodman book, which does contain a handful of not-uninteresting anecdotes, is a fucking joke. The Springsteen sections read like Goodman never got over that one time Landau and Marsh left a flaming bag of poop on Goodman's doorstep.

No Whitney Balliett on jazz seems weird too. But I tend to honor the idiosyncratic-cranky, as in Stephen Calt on Skip James or Charles Keil's Music Grooves, which can be too much for a lot of people. And there are just a ton of great jazz books beside Art Pepper's autobio, like Count Basie with Albert Murray and David Rosenthal on hard bop and John Szwed on Sun Ra, it's almost like there should be a bunch of different lists that give you the picture of how diverse things really are. And no one remembers Mark Shipper's Paperback Writer, still the best book on the Beatles outside of Aesthetics of Rock.

I think an edition of Cook & Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz ought to be on that list.

Could someone do a poll on here?

I think an edition of Cook & Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz ought to be on that list.

Definitely - that or the Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley 'Jazz: The Essential Companion'.

No Hear Me Talkin' To Ya seems like a glaring-ish omission.

And no one remembers Mark Shipper's Paperback Writer, still the best book on the Beatles outside of Aesthetics of Rock
I remember loving that when it came out and wish I still had my copy! Trying to remember some of the songs from the reunion album "Disco Jesus"? "Captain Take Her To The Altar"? And then there was this running joke that went something like this: "In 1972, Ringo enjoyed a string of hit singles. First he enjoyed 'Rocket Man' by Elton John, then he enjoyed 'Mother and Child Reunion' by Paul Simon." Maybe I should just track down a copy.

Wondering if ilxor clemenza remembers this book as well.

Meanwhile I just got an email recommending I watch Ron Howard movie Eight Days A Week on Hulu.

I do (only book I ever remember Sedated getting compared to)--as I mentioned on another thread, I had a copy and, foolishly it looks like, gave it to a friend's brother who'd been trying to get hold of it. Copies in good shape are a little pricey on abe.com. (Never read it, by the way.)

My favorite title from the Mark Shipper Beatles book: "Yoko's Gone Broke-O."

http://rockcriticsarchives.com/bookshelf/shipper04.jpg