33 1/3 Series of books

I like his writing...I love the album.

Wasn't it Zappa who said this?

i think it's pretty well accepted that (a) both frank and elvis said this, (b) but various others (charles mingus, for example) said it way before they did, and (c) trying to figure out who exactly thought of it first is kind of like, ya know, dancing about architecture.

Hey, when will Douglas Wolk's book be out then?

Right now I'm writing a sequence about a bear that climbed a fence in Duluth right about the time James Brown was singing "I Don't Mind" and thereby came yay-close to starting World War III.

I can't WAIT to read Matos on Prince and Elisabeth Vincentelli on ABBA.

:::drool:::

http://33third.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

I'll probably read the Entroducing book.

I also got the feeling (primarily from the VU book) that the writers were getting their one and only chance to write about a particular passion and as a result I felt like there was this barely constrained urge to branch out beyond the scope of the single album in question. Maybe my personal expectations for this type of book were off base but I think that for example the artist's personal life should barely if at all come into play.

I might be more interested in reading one by a writer who had already done a full biography of the artist in question so that the standard gossipy stuff and most common observations would already be out of the way. Maybe then the author would be forced to focus more deeply on the music in abstract terms and not worry about some of the more mundane details. But these criticisms are all very nitpicky and I'm sure I'll be ordering another batch soon.

The Armed Forces one? That's definitely on the top of my list. I'm optimistic because it's a pretty interesting choice out of the early Costello albums so I'm guessing he'll have something unique to say. A lot of the other picks are very classic-rock-y but maybe once those are out of the way the series will get more interesting.

Just out of curiosity, could you tell me what you think is the difference between turntablism and scratching?

Turntablism is the description of scratching that’s supposed to make people who don’t listen to hip-hop, sit up and go “Hmm, maybe it is real music.” Scratching, to me, is just what it is. Turntablism has this virtuosic aspect to it, and to me, that’s when things start to turn jazzy. And I’m not a huge fan of when things turn jazzy. Because when I think of jazzy, I think of Wynton Marsalis.

i saw Douglas's book in the shop the other day. Looked a bit dauntingly 'conceptual' on a quick flip through, what with all the headings and shit. But I'm sure it's a good read and i'll probably buy it. Anybody else read this?

I should really put together a proposal for "Return to the 36 Chambers".

Songs in the Key of Life, by Dave Hesmondhalgh
Parallel Lines, by Elisabeth Vincentelli
Three Feet High and Rising, by Brian Coleman
Tusk, by Stephin Merritt
Computer Love, by Michael Bracewell
Marquee Moon, by David Keenan
Master of Puppets, by Tom Bissell
The Basement Tapes, by Damon Krukowski

The editor/creator of the series, David Barker runs a blog about the series. Email him directly if you like:

http://33third.blogspot.com/

I finally read one of these. I think I picked a great place to start, Douglas Wolk's Live at the Apollo. It was really really good.

also got the ABBA one, which i devoured in a day. twas OK, wish Ms Vincentelli had spent fewer sentences justifying (or having to justify) the book's very existence. also i'm not sure she cracked the problem of how to order the narrative, though I accept it's a toughie.

These are a few of the projects that - for various and sometimes complicated reasons - never made it to fruition. Some came very close to happening, others less so; but they all would have been fun.

Songs in the Key of Life, by Dave Hesmondhalgh

Why not?

Matos' Sign O'The Times book's prince has been slashed (on Amazon at least) to $4.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0826415474/qid=1122928710/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-2999298-5726417?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

This has been a difficult process: we received dozens of very strong proposals from dozens of very good writers and it's a shame to have to turn down so many of you.

If you're interested, the 33 1/3 books we eventually decided to sign up are:

"If You're Feeling Sinister" by Scott Plagenhoef

"Aja" by Don Breithaupt

"Shoot Out the Lights" by Hayden Childs

"Pretty Hate Machine" by Daphne Carr

"Use Your Illusion" by Eric Weisbard

"Horses" by Phil Shaw

"Double Nickels on the Dime" by Mike Fournier

"Pink Moon" by Amanda Petrusich

"People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm" by Shawn Taylor

"Achtung Baby" by Stephen Catanzarite

"20 Jazz Funk Greats" by Drew Daniel

"The Dreaming" by Ann Powers

"Rid of Me" by Kate Schatz

"Another Green World" by Geeta Dayal

"Songs in the Key of Life" by Zeth Lundy

"Trout Mask Replica" by Kevin Courrier

"Let's Talk About Love" by Carl Wilson

"Lucinda Williams" by Anders Smith Lindall

"69 Love Songs" by LD Beghtol

“Marquee Moon” by Peter Blauner

“Swordfishtrombones” by David Smay

I'm definitely gonna read the Land of Rape and Honey one (the author is a friend), and I'm intrigued by the idea of books on Café Tacvba and the Isley Brothers.

Do they ever just take a regular ass person or does everyone with an accepted entry have some kind of journalistic experience?

Aside from having a blog, I was a regular ass person. My 33 1/3 book was the one and only time I ever got paid to write about music.

xp didn't hear anything. i assume they get a lot of proposals, and looking back i could have made mine more focused and less academic.

i am a regular ass person, though, so it's good to hear that they've taken from others who aren't music critics. i have written professionally about art and architecture but not music.

Just finished the Achtung Baby book, and...yeesh. Nothing wrong with having your own take on what songs mean, and obviously religion does inform a lot of Bono's lyrics, but this was basically a stealth religious tract! I would have said the writer had a very strained interpretation of the lyrics to fit his beliefs, but in honesty, from about the halfway point he barely even bothers to refer to the actual songs in any way, and instead goes on and on about this hypothetical man and woman that the entire album is supposedly about.

I bought the 33.33s of 69 Love Songs, Another Green World and Aeroplane Over the Sea on the same shopping trip, and hope they're better (how could they not be?...)

I remember enjoying the latter two a whole lot

Just discovered that there is a Brazilian equivalent, in Portuguese of course.

treeship. at 5:13 29 Jan 23

xp didn't hear anything. i assume they get a lot of proposals, and looking back i could have made mine more focused and less academic.

i am a regular ass person, though, so it's good to hear that they've taken from others who aren't music critics. i have written professionally about art and architecture but not music.

Please, someone pitch sellout jazz-funk

or microhouse

Damn, I always think about pitching one for New Orleans brass band, and the genre format would be much better than a single album (at least for wider appeal). But I'm sure it would take over my life, and pinning down all the musicians for interviews would be an exhausting process.

The one about Depeche Mode 101 looks promising..

Table of Contents
1. Live or Memorex?
2. Is “Music” Electric?
3. It's Hip, it's Totally Hip, It's the Only Thing Happening
4. Dreamboats and Market Shares
5. Uneasy Listening
6. America, Man
7. “KROQ's Woodstock”
8. No Mode, No Nirvana: 101 and its Legacy

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/depeche-modes-101-9781501390326/

Missed a trick by not having it as #101 in the series.

That wouldn't bode well for a book about Yes' 90125

I started to put together a genre pitch back in the initial round but then realized I’d much rather just write about one album.

other than an ilxor writing about dolly parton i don't recognize the names of anyone writing new books. (not that i ever read them. i never see them anywhere anymore! i think i would have to live in a city to see them...or be an internet shopper...)

RC, you should do a wolf eyes book. has anyone done one? or a noise book!

Who knows, man? Who knows…

I would read Jordan on New Orleans brass !

Pulp’s This is Hardcore coming next year by Jane Savidge.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/pulps-this-is-hardcore-9798765106952/

Nice.

The Dead C’s Clyma est mort

wow!

ooh nice

!

Just a warning--the Dead C's one is in 33 1/3 Oceania which I learned, on buying two of the books in that series yesterday, is a completely different size to the rest of the books. This is aesthetically maddening.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0K_qQoaIAEfvmw?format=jpg&name=large

This one just came in at the library. Looks interesting:

https://333sound.com/vopli-vidopliassovas-tantsi-excerpt/

oh, excellent. one of the best post soviet bands and one of the best post soviet albums. i still remember seeing the Tantsi video when it was first broadcast.

Have to say the upcoming Erotica book sounds fascinating

Everyone wanted Madonna’s Erotica to be scandalous, even pornographic. In the midst of the early 1990s culture wars, conservatives wanted it to be proof of the decline of family values. The target of conservative loathing, gay men reeling from the AIDS epidemic wanted it to be a celebration of a sexual culture that had rapidly slipped away. And of course Madonna herself, who released the album at the same time as her actually pornographic coffee-book table simply titled Sex, knew sex sells. But Erotica is more sentimental than sexual. At a time when sex was deadly, this sentimentality was not kitsch, but a way of sustaining a sexual culture. In this book, Michael Dango shows how Erotica marks an inflection point in multiple narratives. It is the album in which Madonna began more directly addressing her gay audience, at the same time that gay politics was transitioning from a sexual liberation framework to a rights-based framework that would ultimately culminate in same-sex marriage. To tell this story, Dango draws on his own experiences positioned between two generations of gay people―between a generation decimated by AIDS and a generation that grew up assuming they would be able to get married―as well as works of queer theory, which emerged in the academy at the same time as Madonna emerged on the music scene.

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/michael-dango/madonnas-erotica-33-13

I expect nothing less than one of this series’ finest moments from that entry

I sometimes daydream about which album I would write about were I to ever send in a proposal.
And I think I've worked out that it would have to be Confield by Autechre.
Partly because I've already written a good 3 or 4 articles about them in the past and I'm a big nerd; but specifically this album because while it is likely their most well-recognised album, it's also the one I've had most trouble getting to grips with. And it's precisely this "thorniness", with 22 years' hindsight, that I'd like to make peace with. Whereas I could probably wax lyrical about LP5 or Sign or Oversteps, it's Confield that I think would yield the most interesting writing

I would love to read that.

I daydream about writing one on You and Your Sister by the Vulgar Boatmen.

It looks like two really great ones are out this month and next month; Erotica and Ingenue, good timing too considering they’re both from the same year.

Open call for Proposals for 2024, deadline is March 29th.

https://333sound.com/33-1-3-open-call-for-proposals-2024/

Saw some grumbling on Facebook that 33 1/3 books are avoiding reggae and dancehall and have turned down pitches in those genres

Here is link to proposals they just accepted and will be published in 2026

https://333sound.com/announcing-the-newest-33-1-3s-2024/

Moss Icon’s Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly

I think this is the first title in this series where I have absolutely no idea who, what or why. Don't tell me, let the knowledge slowly seep into my brain by osmosis.

Guessing I should give up on the idea that Agata Pyzik's Tin Drum book from 2015's list will ever come. :(
Possibly torpedoed due to the two fairly comprehensive Japan books that came out right after? Ho hum.

ngl but a few of these records seem like grasping at straws to me but what do i know

I think a compelling book could be written about any of them, but overall the series is so patchy

"I think this is the first title in this series where I have absolutely no idea who, what or why. Don't tell me, let the knowledge slowly seep into my brain by osmosis."

its a really good album!

Except for Woodie Guthrie and maybe Cher the list is just decent enough Us and Uk rock and r& b but with no dancehall, reggae, afrobeats/ afropop, blues, jazz , South Asian or Latino sounds .

Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach by Ihor Junyk
Interpol’s Antics by Gabriel T. Saxton-Ruiz

lol ok

I guess I’d be interested to hear about the guests on Plastic Beach - DLS, Reed, Ryder, Smith all used very well I think.

Incoming asshole post: imagine reading a whole book on a gorillAz album let alone writing one

I swear I try not to be a snob but man some people are really missing out on… how good and wonderful music can be

moss icon album is patient zero the biggest subgenre of american hardcore. will be happy that book exists if it comes out

its a really good album!

OK, but this is the same publisher that turned down Carl Wilson's proposal on an album as foundational as Dub Housing because it was too obscure. But maybe Moss Icon are a bigger deal than Pere Ubu ever were, I honestly don't know.

Chris Richards of the Washington Post has been doing deep dives into mid-80s and later onward hardcore and post-hardcore and wrote a big 2023 article about Annapolis hardcore band the Hated. The article briefly mentions late 80s /early 90s Moss Icon. There seems to be a bit of a renewed interest in that era, but yea is it bigger than that into Pere Ubu Dub Housing

The Hated were so great, got to see them twice