Worthless books on Music

The book is basically an immense series of band bios, meagre discussions of key works and a sentence or two in order to wedge the square peg of, again for the sake of example, Country Joe and the Fish into the round hole of ambient.

Adding annoyance to ennui, Prendergast coins the most horrendous hybrid names for specious subgenres. This book is to be avoided utterly. DUD!

Cheers!

(subthreade: I love Enya, but can't stand Pink Floyd. Whereas the rest of the universe hates Enya and loves Pink Floyd...Why is that? I have no idea.)

Rodney Breen, who wrote one of the glowing, five-star reviews you see here, designed the Ambient Century website and photographed the
author for the "Note On The Author" section of the book. I'm not much of a journalist, but even *I* know that it's not very honorable to write "reviews" of items that you personally profit from without at least admitting that's what you're doing. Shame on Rodney. And, unfortunately, shame on Prendergast. He may be a fine person-- I've not met him-- but The Ambient Century is a terrible book. The
writing is lifeless and often unclear, so much so that it doesn't even sound as if English is Prendergast's first language. Of Jimi Hendrix, we learn that "The Ambience of his tone was everything, nowhere more sucessful than on the near-seven-minute aural extravanganza 'Third Stone From The Sun.'" What, exactly, is "the
Ambience of his tone"? And surely "aural extravanganza" says nothing about the music, other than that Prendergast likes it. Then, four pages later: "Reed was awed by Cale's unpredictable spirit and his so-called playing of 'unauthorized music' on amplified viola." Prendergast never explains what he means by "unauthorized music," or even who he's quoting. Nearly every page contains at least one example of this sort of writing.

Prendergast also makes tons of sweeping claims without defending them. Sonic Youth, he says, "were the only group to elicit real Ambient beauty from the chaos of grunge rock." He never explains why he categorizes Sonic Youth as "grunge rock," nor does he ever explain what really separates them from other "grunge rock" groups.

Then there's the big problem: what is this book actually about? Practially no reasonable person would ever classify many of the artists here (including Santana, Simon and Garfunkel, Mahler, etc.) as "ambient," and Prendergast never clearly explains why expands the meaning of the term, or what that expansion is supposed to include. (How, for example, does Sonic Youth have anything to do with "Ambient beauty"?) There's no thematic link between the artists he covers. As an encyclopedia of "Ambient" music, the book excludes way too much important stuff to be worthwhile; as an encyclopedia of twentieth century music it excludes even more. In addition, Prendergast's fact checking leaves a lot to be desired-- check out the other reviews here or Douglas Wolk's excellent review
(http://12.11.184.13/boston/music/other_stories/documents/0063090
9.htm) for examples. There's more interesting and more purposeful music writing than Prendergast's available for free on the web; don't waste your money on this one. I wouldn't even advise checking it out of the library, as I made the mistake of doing.

Aside from being out of date, I never liked the essay format employed by that book. It barely provides a whit of information about albums, instead trotting out the usual cliches in describing an artist's career. Blah.

haha i reviewed MP's ambient century for wire: some of it is comic genius and don't you fergit it

• "By the last decade of the 20th century it seemed that everything possible had been achieved. Then along came Enya with a new sound."
• "Nobody could fault Tricky's rage. Even with record company support he was still angry."

I wd one day like to read Eno's aesthetic justification for the intro he wrote for it.

But Gene Simmons' new drag-those-knuckles primer, "Sex Money Kiss," owns this thread.

I stand corrected.

Now I've not read it, but surely that's got to be bollocks? Surely even the most drug-addled, crystal-wielding Deadhead isn't going to buy that.

BAHahahaha. This is great.

Fortunately, Tricky got a bit part in "The Fifth Element", and has been pretty docile ever since.

No?

Good.

"Fast And Bulbous - The Captain Beefheart Story by Ben Cruikshank is quite the most appalling piece of drivel I have ever read in my life.

The guy clearly can't spell, write in proper sentences or, I suspect, even *think* in any meaningful sense.

The concept of research is obviously alien to him and his own half-baked theories and opinions about some of the music and lyrics are often so laughable that it makes you wonder if he has any actual understanding or appreciation of his subject matter whatsoever.

For a more detailed (and funnier) assasination of this literary masterpiece go here: http://www.beefheart.com/zigzag/books/bulbous.htm

I understand Mr Cruikshank has also written books of similar quality about Bob Dylan.

Also (and I don't know what it is about Captain Beefheart that leads people to write such crap about him or Agenda Ltd to publish it) there's another book called "Captain Beefheart: Tin Teardrop" by Ken Brooks which isn't much better.

(for raving read "crying tears of laughter down the phone as he read me bits of it")

Ken Brooks is officially the worst writer in the history of the English language

You haven't read anything by Ben Cruikshank, I take it?

Don't agree with this first one at all. The author sued Young to get this published and short of having him killed, literally tried to destroy the guy! He certainly didn't kiss Young's ass either--if anything he goes after him to his face. Weird weeird book but the guys got balls

I have the '79! It's fantastic! I think after I read it I went out and tracked down all the (out-of-print) records they gave one star to!

The edition I have has a red cover.

it has a red cover

i think the new one is coming out this year. i think.And if all goes well, my T.A.T.U. entry will stand for the ages.

x

suffice to say, when i start writing books on music, they too will OWN this thread...

I respectfully non-concur. Young gets a fuckin' copyright credit for ancillary rights, and you can count the relevant references to Pegi on your nose (despite her official status as his Linda McCartney, all the way to singing backup in Crazy Horse with Neil's sister), and the author also dances over key data like the fact that Young rolled the kid dice THREE TIMES despite overwhelming evidence that his sperm was suspect (i.e. challenged children with two different mothers) among other critical moments post-1979 (i.e., post-Pegi) when "Shakey" shifts from intrepid biograph to pandering liner notes.

the blue one, which i owned then lent to some jerk, is a bit patchy, but both would have some really odd entries (given just how many records were released and thus what they left out, kept in etc..) -- having lived more through the times covered i ended up thinking the blue one went _too_ _far_ in trying to be concise, and so things were either dammned too summarily or accidentally hyped, although the blue edition still seemed to err on the side of caution, with most rock music falling into the suspect/"bad" "genre [x]" / industry standard type classification, which was at least honest, if not optimistic (Magazine seemd very harshly dismissed for instance, a 4 line paragraph and each album three stars, but "Philadelphia" was identified as their best song which cannily seems to be the consensus now)

however in 1985 John Swenson introduced the jazz guide (split from the back of the red book where it'd been) as a seperate thin volume (bright yellow !) that i found incredibly useful (in the wonder years)

all jazz records were imported into new zealand so i was at the mercy of big chain and small niche importers

jazz can be a very _sleazy_ demographic -- some people use it as an ambient (subliminal !) mood altering device, not just in restaurants and cafes but in their own lounges, and some proprietors of music stores that bothered importing jazz just _seemed_ sleazy -- they'd have imported something and just because i did the jazz show on the local student radio they'd greet me at the door of their store and say "oh, you'll be interested in this .. 'interesting piano' stuff", and 90% of the time i wasn't

this whole thing of whether music is jazzy, and if so, is it in an interesting way, or will it be interesting in five listens, will it be boring in eight listens, .. it's a real pain for people who want to buy interesting stuff but may have to pre-order it or rely on say shopkeeper-with-vested-interest and his "experience" -- well the yellow book allowed me to often quickly dismiss something that looked, oh "quirky" say and sounded innaccesible enough in the shop to maybe warrant further investigation

thinking back, that shops whole mindset seemed to be dressing to appear sexy/wealthy, music to provide non-hostile rich-wine type background whilst leaving a guest unsatisfied (and maybe groping for something else) -- maybe a problem peculiar to new zealand, but if only two stores in town bothered with jazz, you'd have to run the gauntlet of the whole jazz scene, with all the different sorts of fans and their various motives

the yellow edition informed me all about the (a.a.c.m.)chicago scene (and the b.a.b. "bag") so i found out about ecm, but also esp, india navigation, sackville, delmark, black saint etc. etc., although "european" stopped just before fmp, so there were no british independents --
ok, no derek bailey, no music from berlin

but industry chain store dumping practises meant that all those black saint lps were cut-outs in nz, stuff like julius hemphill and oliver lake, roscoe mitchell and braxton, and that great band air, and we also had all the esp stuff then being pressed in italy on the same label as rough trade bands and pere ubu, the cheap we-can't-sell-these-in-california stuff turned out to be the best -- whenever there was a stock dumping sale or a collector's estate came in, that yellow book proved incredibly useful (for instance, not just dave holland and chick corea listed, but barry altschul's stint as leader too)

yeah, the rolling stone "yellow" jazz guide in '85/'86 gave me a head start and bought me in on all the stuff that the alternative crowd moved onto and found fashionable in about 1997 -- and i can't emphasise how much "years lived with record such'n'such" makes a difference to the appreciation of some of these jazz records, records that are long term friends that still yield new musical pleasures, even if it's only "played 8 times in 15 years" -- it's so easy to be suspicious of new received wisdom on canonical "alternative" jazz (most obvious example : Sun Ra, cf: less obvious and so more often avoided stuff like the non-super-star stuff from chicago, guys that only recorded one album, unlike Abrams or Mitchell)

maybe "jazz" is a genre where "wisdom" from long term enthusiasts makes "canonical" or "consensus" albums more honest, more the editors own individual opinions, less fashion/industry -- whatever, i'm very grateful to Swenson and co. for what proved to be the only stand-alone jazz edition, the "yellow book", one of my longest serving and most reliable of friends

The Talking Heads bio This Must Be the Place is pretty crappy, too -- just really lame early-80s rockist-think. The writer actually attacks disco with the fervor of a late-70s rock DJ or something. There were actually some interesting stories told, but any enjoyment therein was marred by the reprehensible views of the author.

hmmm...well, the fact that Young screwed the guy out of ancillary rights doesn't mean he bent over, in my opinion. Young is notoriously a vicious businessman and he tried to have the guy squashed. And McDonough made a deal (with the devil, admittedly) that Young & family would have control over anything said about them. I think the wide berth cut around Pegi 'McCartney' speaks for itself. Taking into account those failings he gives him shit about everything else, ESP his post 79 output. Jesus, he trashes near everything! And just publishing Briggs excoriating comments on pg. 658 (my English paperback) --which I hear was the root of the problem--was by itself impressive to me. As far as Young's sperm count uh, YOU'D delve into that? That would earn my 18 bucks.

i love finding old rolling stone record guides. they are filled with artists who have just "slipped through the cracks" of history. they've never been reissued and never will, and these old RS guides are pretty much the only documentation of them left.

Ha! Sad, when your whole recording career can be summed up in these words, "But I was in an old Rolling Stone guide."

*A magazine I'm boycotting until they stop accepting ads from vanity publishers, incidently.

i hope that doesn't include "the manual"

except for bill drummond/jimmy cauty's the manual or whatever it's called.....

man, had i read this thread before i'd have known not to buy the ambient century. pretty cool cover, introduction by brian eno, how could that not be worth £3? well. he could at least have footnoted the good quotes ffs.

tho i'm entertaining myself by sharing terrible passages with people, so maybe it's worth it after all. let's see what i get when i open at random. "the english conductor simon rattle once said that he had no interest in minimalism until he heard the music of john adams. and it is certainly worhth hearing." okay.

"Ken Brooks is officially the worst writer in the history of the English language"

You haven't read anything by Ben Cruikshank, I take it?

Both posters were correct. Recent internet research indicates that they are the same person!

the 33 1/3 Kid A book