Oral Histories S/D

the oral history of MTV ("I Want My MTV"). it's pretty good but not as good as the oral history of grunge i read a couple of weeks ago ("Everybody Loves Our Town"). i like oral histories. the best parts of the MTV book are people's stories about prince being weird. i LOLed at one on the train yesterday.
― congratulations (n/a), Friday, November 18, 2011 4:24 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

Good oral histories:
George, Being George (about George Plimpton and NYC cultural/literary stuff)
Live from New York (SNL)
Bird, Kansas (not a history as much as a collage of interviews with most everyone in a small Kansas town)

"Working" by Studs Terkel is the high bar in this category that few if any have ever reached

yeah, or his world war II one, or his depression one

love oral histories quite a bit

There was an extended Vanity Fair piece a few years ago that was an oral history of the making of The Godfather--really good.

duh "please kill me" is the best

i like oral histories because you don't have to read an author's prose or opinions, it's pretty ideal

Sly & the Family Stone oral history is the best bio about rock music ever

i like oral histories because "oral"

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/11/07/110711-arts-music-oral-histories-1-6/

this put the oral in oral history:

http://cache0.bookdepository.co.uk/assets/images/book/medium/9780/0600/9780060096601.jpg

lol @ the oral history of oral histories, but they coulda done better with the headline imo

like, you coulda gone with "an oral history of oral histories" and you chose "From the AIDS crisis to the birth of punk, to tales from the set of ‘Transformers,’ little of our modern culture has escaped the form"??

currently reading this

http://www.amazon.com/When-Mines-Closed-Stories-Struggle/dp/0801484677

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41TBB73APXL._SS500_.jpg

'blown away' by a.e. hotchner is a decent one about the stones. some terrific stuff -- ian stewart calling the beatles one of the worst bands ever, anita pallenberg on her triangle with keith and brian, even some random ppl like mary quant.

the story of elektra records one, "follow the music", is pretty good

one of my favorite parts: The way Bread went about recording was so civilized it attracted attention. Most groups would shuffle into the studio, if you were lucky, in the late afternoon, and nothing would happen until seven, and then you'd work until two in the morning. Bread would arrive in the morning at nine sharp, David with his attaché case, as if he was off to a downtown bank or Pacific Bell. They would record till lunch, break for an hour, work all afternoon, and David would go home to his family at five.

i'm reading "detroit rock city" by steve miller right now, it's about detroit's rock scene from the '60s on up. it's pretty good in that gossipy, trashy way that music oral histories excel at but seems focused on a very narrow spectrum of "detroit rock" e.g. nothing about parliament-funkadelic at all. basically seems very white male oriented