Favorite Books about music 2004

I think there's a 3rd book out about Cuban music as well.

Is Douglas Wolk's James Brown book(part of the 33 and a third series) out?

I was going to list Sublette's Cuba and Its Music and say, "But I haven't read it yet." It does look really good, on my shelf. Did Cubano Be Cunbano Bop come out this year or is that from a year or two ago?

I liked Sonata for Jukebox by Geoffrey O'Brien a lot, but I'm not sure how ILM-friendly it is. It's just as much about memory and ageing and grief and the essayistic as it is about 'music'.

That should say Eugene WALD up there...

Eric Weisbard, of the Seattle EMP and a Voice contributor said:

"Elijah Wald's ESCAPING THE DELTA: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (Amistad) is a gentle wake-up call, and by far the best of the three books on the Johnson myth published this year. The author, a longtime folk guitarist and journalist, grew up on the myth, but couldn't help noticing when he went to the South that few African-Americans actually knew who Johnson was. The performers remembered from the 1920's and 1930's were the ones who'd been on radio, including the blues queens and such hitmakers as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson. For that matter, Robert Johnson himself, when Wald analyzed his recordings, was at least as concerned to quote and rework the jukebox hits of his day as to up the ante on weirder characters like Skip James."

Uh, Elijah Wald...

Wilco: Learning How to Die was a better read than I expected, especially coming from Greg Kot.

What about the following novels that i think all involve music:

Helena McEwen's "Ghost Girl" (about 2 sisters in 70s London) or Adam Langer's "Crossing California" or Joe meno's "Hairstyles of the Damned" (the latter two are based in Chicago)

Steve, we got the James Brown Live at the Apollo book here at the library. I browsed through it and it looks riveting. Like some of the other titles in that series. We also just got a book called BRITPOP!:cool Britannia and the spectacular demise of English Rock by John Harris. It looks...comprehensive. 426 pages. Da Capo press.

The Fortress of Solitude -- Jonathan Lethem

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1594480125.01._PE25_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg
This is a (mostly) fascinating look at hip-hop around the world (Africa, Brazil, Japan)

I was eyeing that international hiphop book in Tower but didn't pick it up. I guess i should.

There have been a couple threads on Lethem's writing:

Geeky Dylan and hip Mingus and hiphop on a block in Brooklyn

"But Is It Garbage? On Rock and Trash," by Steve Hamelman.

yeah Lethem's the best music writing I've read this year aside from maybe everything SFJ's done.

Caetano Velosa's TROPICAL TRUTHS might've been mentioned on ILM before, but still one of the best of any year. A multi-dimensionally lucid Brazil through lens of Tropicalia and vice-versa. I'll chekc the Wald, but thought re-working earlier songs was pretty much a commonly-recognized blues (folk, pop) practice.

"Veloso," of course; sorry. Good to know about the Wolk too. he's one of the best.

I read part of Dylan's auto-bio in a store. He was once quite a pro-wrestling fan.

That Christopher Ricks book on Dylan's lyrics sounded too hi-falutin for me. Matos reviewed some of the Dylan books for the Seattle Weekly (see his blog).

Don:

While "re-working earlier songs was pretty much a commonly-recognized blues (folk, pop) practice," the mass media mythological image of Robert Johnson never conveyed that he was part of that practice. Francis Davis critiqued the myth in his blues history, but Wald has now added to it.

Escaping the Delta is awesome and essential (though a bit tedious for the casual fan when it devotes a few chapters to Robert Johnson's recording sessions and studio output.) This book is masturbatory material for anti-rockists.

The Pavement book is a letdown, though well-intentioned.

Learning How To Die is excellent.

Howling at the Moon, the book by Walter Yetnikoff was a huge letdown.

I liked So You Wanna To Be a Rock-n-Roll Star, the book about Semisonic's rise and fall, quite a bit. It's really entertaining, although I would suspect most around here detest the band.

I never get that much out of the Da Capo Best Writing books and this year was no different.

I like "Closing Time," or whatever Semisonic's one hit was called. But yea, most folks here probably detest 'em.

Semisonic were awful but Jacob Slichter's book is classic.

how is that *house on fire: rise and fall of philly soul* book?

Another recommendation for Escaping The Delta.

"Haunter Weather : Music, Silence, and Memory" by David Toop

I liked the Pavement book even though it was a little lightweight.

HAUNTED WEATHER,yeah. Although the accompanying CD of the same name (which I micro-reviewed for Voice) is even better; I suspect compilation is his greatest (and rarest) talent. (See robertchristgau.com for previous comps, esp. SUGAR & POISON, there's been at least one thread to mention it too) The more quotes I see from Dylan's book the more I want to read it. Yeah, I guess Johnson's ebing in the tradition of process and process of tradition doesn't go very conveniently with "when he came back, he was so good cos he sold his soul to the devil," etc. etc. (actually I always heard he came over here to Alabama and took guitar lessons)

Dylan's Chronicles is thrilling.

I like a lot of the Weisbard-edited This Is Pop and Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus' The Rose & the Briar (the s/t to the latter is excellent as well, on Columbia/Legacy). Wolk's 33 1/3 is the absolute best of the series; Elisabeth Vincentelli on Abba Gold is also fantabulous. Kristine McKenna's Talk to Her isn't all music but is heavily slanted toward it and is a terrific compendium of Q&A's.

haha - matos i was just about the e-mail you about the rose & the briar. to the extent john leland's 'hip' is about music it deserves a shoutout here. and 'love saves the day' was last year but late enough to still deserve high praise to the heavens - such a great book.

damn you all to hell
now I have to buy these books
(AND JUST WRITE MY OWN)*

*(i got some okay news today oh boy but nothing will come of it probably but still)

xpost Robert Johnson's bluesfolkpopart: yeah, this might be where I first saw it described, in the "Mojo Hand" chapter of DEEP BLUES, published in 1981.(Got the Alabama guitarist, Ike Zinneman, in there too, but in Hazlehurst MS; since he never recorded, can't trace his influence, other than that after meeting him, Robert played better and in a more fluid style, what I guess is more of a "songster" appraoch. Says that Robert's borrowings and influeces were much more wide-ranging than say Son House and Willie Brown--stop me before I read this whole book again!!) But as you say, the *mass media* image is something else (not to diminish his art; RP sure doesn't).

I'm making progress in the Sublette book and it's really good, really really good. I might start a thread about it. I don't think you have to be that interested in Cuban music to enjoy it. It is partly about the relationship between musical cultures and their meeting in the New World (and other places). It's full of quotable one-liners, too, but they all further the discussion.

Did anyone read Colin Meloy's Replacements book?

No. I just picked up the Wald Robert Johnson book, and am adding the others to my gotta read list. Thanks...

I was looking for reviews of books from the 33 and a third series(Douglas Wolk's James Brown book and Michelangelo Matos Prince one) and didn't see many. I wonder if that's a bias against books on popular music or too many books out there to review and too little space or the publisher didn't get enough press copies out or some other reason (or some combination of the above)...

Time for a Jimmy Page expose maybe

Is the story about groupies and shark meat true?

Steve, I once looked up the thirty-three-and-a-third series at amazon (might've had to use numerals) There were editorial and readers' reviews for several; this was just a few months ago, so might be fairly current (and villagevoice.com has reviewed some)

I was more curious why many daily newspapers were not reviewing them. I see on Matos' blog that Matos and Wolk are doing instores in Seattle and Portland in January.

Wow - JtN's review of Sonata for Jukebox sounds just as good (for the right reasons) as the one I read in the LA Times a while back.

janice galloway, "clara"

Sonata for Jukebox
I've got this book and will venture to say that it is pretty great even though I haven't finished reading it yet. I have read several other books of his - The Phantom Empire, Hardboiled America, The Phantom Empire, parts of Dreamtime and can tell you that the guy is a master at discussing but at the same time demonstrating how people suck up cultural artifacts like books, movies and music, and then use them to form their thoughts, thinking by recombining the various absorbed elements. A common technique for him is to focus on a particular genre of say, film, and/or a particular decade, and then write a whole chapter from within that perspective, which is essentially the plot of an "überfilm" containing every possible element within the confines of the chosen world. Sounds like a trick a lot of people might try, but the density, ease, authority and accuracy which with he does it is amazing.

not to be a party pooper, but that patrick neate book "where it's at" is really quite boring and self-indulgent (and kinda directionless - too conversational and structureless for my liking) and janice galloway's "clara" is so boring that it made me realise that life is actually too short to read an interminably long book you shelled out $30 for when there are so many better unread books out there.

The Sublette book is music tome of the year in my opinion, fucking awesome.

David Wondrich's "Stomp and Swerve" might've come out in late '03, but it's certainly one of the best of the year or so--I think the accompanying CD appeared in '04. Essential.

Friends tell me the Jovanovich book on Big Star--published UK only, I believe--is OK, a bit passionless though. Wasn't impressed by his Pavement book myself.

This might be '03 too, but Arthur Kempton's "Boogaloo" is a good take on r&b and such.

eddie, Have you finished it yet? I liked Stomp and Swerve to a degree, but I didn't really like the writing. Cuba and Its Music is a good example of a very readable non-academic style that doesn't draw excessive attention to itself and to the author. I think it's a model (at least, what I've read of it so far).

(I meant have you finished the Sublette book.)

Sublette proves that jazz and rock music are just bastardized Arabic music. (Well, I'm paraphrasing a little.)

I am enjoying The Who: the Complete Guide to their Music by Chris Charlesworth and Ed Hanel. Nothing too exciting, but deftly points out the differences between one reissue and another.

Modesty be darned: my favorite book about music was, ahem, the one I wrote. Playback: From the Victrola to MP3 100 Years of Music Machines & Money (da capo). It's a history of music and technology. Paperback edition with a new chapter/update comes out in February. Love it or hate it, let me know what y'all think. Thanks.

Good (well-written and favorable) review of Sonata in Luc Sante's archive at nybooks.com. He humanely disposes of Hornby's music writng too. The piece is titled "Disco Dreams," and read it for free while you still can. He was too kind to Kempton, who pisseth me off by patting Sam Cooke on the head and them making use of his deat for a show of Creative Writing.

(I meant have you finished the Sublette book.)

yeah, a while back. it reminds me of the best of Robert Palmer's stuff actually. Sublette's strong on the way politics interacts with Cuba's music, which I think is what makes the book so great. There's an obvious need to cram it *all* in there, which put me off at first, but it seems appropriate here.

"Stomp and Swerve" is a bit smart-ass, actually, but it doesn't digress, doesn't show off the ego that Tosches's somewhat similar "Dead Voices Gather" does. The companion disc is pretty great stuff, as are the Archeophone Bert Williams discs.

I still don't really like the tone of Stomp and Swerve, but the author definitely appears to have done his homework. In fact, reading it served as good preparation for reading Cuba & Its Music, since they both discuss some of the same historical background. They can almost be read together as companion books (and they both come from the same press).

When Ned Sublette goes off on a brief tangent, it's almost always interesting, and surprisingly often it somehow relates to my own personal interests. For example, the bit about the origin of bacardi rum, and its label, which I've always liked. (Also I went through a distinct bacardi phase after I graduated from college.)

He seems to become more informal after about 150 pages. He notes that he is going to take things in a less linear fashion at some point, but it seems to me that his prose style changes slightly. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or a good thing. It's not as though he is very formal in the first part of the book, but after that first section he's saying things like "You don't fuck with an Abakua." It's very helpful that he's not only done tons of book-oriented research but also has lots of first-hand experience of Cuban (and related) music, from attending religious ceremonies in Cuba to seeing Puerto Ricans Victor Manuelle and Gilberto Santa Rosa trade decmias.

And has anyone read Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 yet? It covers some of the same territory as Stomp & Swerve.

Read Tommy Lee's bio in two days. Obv crap. I do like The Dirt a LOT.

Haven't read the book on Stagger Lee yet. Don't even know if it was published in 2004 but I seem to recall a review in the Wire so it must be.

has anybody read Dixie Lullaby, Mark Kemp's book about southern rock?

Over the X-mas holiday, I read Scram's Lost in the Grooves, which read like ILX without as many typos. I'm also reading "Killing Bono" by Neil McCormick. Jury's still out on that one.

I got Joey Shithead's I, SHITHEAD: A Life In Punk, but I haven't read it yet, to be honest.