help me curate: 500 dollars worth of music books

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there is a possible grant at the nearby small liberal arts college library. say you got 500 dollars to spend on books about music. (15 or 20 books). what do you reccomend? its pretty slim pickens right now. there is a couple simon frith books and loves saves the day, weridly. good call whoever ordered that one!

feel free to email me off board w/suggestions too. i know there are some librarians around here...

― artdamages, Monday, 26 February 2007 18:17 (eighteen years ago)

is this just popular music?

― Frogman Henry, Monday, 26 February 2007 18:36 (eighteen years ago)

Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music (Wire compendium)
Bad Wisdom - Bill Drummond & Zodiac Mindwarp
Krautrocksampler - Julian Cope
Philosophy of New Music - Theodor Adorno
Head On - Julian Cope
Songs in the Key of Z - Irwin Chusid

― emil.y, Monday, 26 February 2007 19:25 (eighteen years ago)

A few obvious picks and some less so.

The Recording Angel - Evan Eisenberg
Poetics of Music - Igor Stravinsky
Four Lives in the Bebop Business - A.B. Spellman
Visions of Jazz - Gary Giddins
Please Kill Me - Legs McNeil
Rip It Up and Start Again - Simon Reynolds
Our Band Could Be Your Life - Michael Azerrad
Can't Stop Won't Stop - Jeff Chang

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 26 February 2007 20:22 (eighteen years ago)

bangs - psychotic reactions & carburteror dung

― ian, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

troof!

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:55 (eighteen years ago)

acid archives

― electricsound, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:56 (eighteen years ago)

Reynold's Energy Flash/Generation Ecstasy, perhaps? Have there been any other book-length treatments of rave? Excuse my ignorance if so.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:01 (eighteen years ago)

Two good ones not mentioned:

The Old, Weird America - Greil Marcus
Haunted Weather: Music, Silence & Memory - David Toop

― Mark Rich@rdson, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:08 (eighteen years ago)

cuz if it isn't: The Classical Style and The Romantic Generation both by Charles Rosen.

― Frogman Henry, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:17 (eighteen years ago)

This is Reggae Music - Lloyd Bradley
From the Velvets to the Voidoids - Clinton Heylin
Perhaps a few Rough Guides for reference

― TRG, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:49 (eighteen years ago)

The Aesthetics of Rock - R. Meltzer

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:59 (eighteen years ago)

Russell Sanjek American Popular Music And Its Business: The First Four Hundred Years

― m coleman, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 00:13 (eighteen years ago)

Stairway to Hell: the 500 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe by Chuck Eddy

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 00:16 (eighteen years ago)

Timbo, is Aesthetics a good read? I've heard such wildly varying opinions on it (it's an elaborate unreadable joke, it's an incredible and essential rockcrit text, etc) I never know whether to pick it up or not!

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 00:16 (eighteen years ago)

The Recording Angel - Evan Eisenberg -- like this book a lot

Music, Society, Education - Christopher Small

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 00:29 (eighteen years ago)

is Aesthetics a good read?

It is easily the most interesting book on rock music yet published that I am aware of. That said, about half of it is pointlessly meandering and often impossible to decipher. That's all part of the experience, though. If you read it, I'd say stick with it because I don't think the first part is the strongest.

― Tim Ellison, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 01:36 (eighteen years ago)

England's Dreaming - Jon Savage
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter
Great Jones Street - Don Delillo

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 01:50 (eighteen years ago)

David Brackett's Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader (http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Music/PopularMusic/PopRockPopularCulture/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTEyNTcxOQ==?view=usa&sf=toc&ci=9780195125719) is the single best overview I've ever come across.

― Matos W.K., Tuesday, 27 February 2007 02:34 (eighteen years ago)

Derek Bailey - Improvisation
Arcana - John Zorn, ed.

― WilliamC, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 02:38 (eighteen years ago)

Mr. Jelly Roll - Alan Lomax
Deep Blues - Robert Palmer
The Boy Looked At Johnny - Julie Burchill & Tony Parsons

― bendy, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 02:51 (eighteen years ago)

The Aesthetics of Rock - R. Meltzer

Tim Ellison on Monday, 26 February 2007 23:59 (Yesterday)

i checked this out over the summer and couldn't get through it, but i might give it another go sometime. its filed with history stuff though. some of these suggestions are books i already have which i might give to the library if the grant goes through.

thanks everyone. i'll have to look into some of these. that pop rock and soul reader looks fantastic! aren't most of the david toop books out of print? i love rap attack!

i think krautrocksampler is out of print too and i think i'd want mostly more general interest stuff, but i dunno. i've never been to a library that had much for books on music and i always look!

― artdamages, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 03:11 (eighteen years ago)

wait i redact my comment about aesthetics of rock. for some reason i always get metzler confused with another guy. i meant that book about the sex pistols and the situationaists. that didn't do much for me.

― artdamages, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 03:41 (eighteen years ago)

Marcus's Lipstick Traces? Funny, that's one of my favorite music crit books. Also, Adorno on Mahler is classic. Also, Bronner's stuff on Frankfurt School is great (esp. Critical Theory + Society), though I don't remember off-hand how much is general pop culture critique and how much is specifically music. Ditto to Martin Jay's stuff (Songs of Experience = Vital).

Oh, and Real Punks Don't Wear Black is one of my favorite books ever. Let alone music crit.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 08:35 (eighteen years ago)

ugg i can only take so much critical theory or whatever you wanna call that stuff. i do want to check out some Adorno. i haven't got a chance to read Real Punks yet.

― artdamages, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 13:35 (eighteen years ago)

Andre Millard America On Record: A History of Recorded Sound

Anthony Heilbut The Gospel Sound

― m coleman, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 14:49 (eighteen years ago)

Theodore Gracyk - Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock

analytic philosopher does rock. sort of anti-reynolds approach.

― acrobat, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

I was about to say that I feel lonely in liking some critical theory with my rockcrit, then I remembered there's this chin-scratchy place called Dissensus that I stay here to avoid (brief visits are like staring into the abyss or trying to start a psych collection, I could stay for months).

But I got love for you Dissensus cats! No lie!

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 14:58 (eighteen years ago)

I'm thinking this list needs more history and biography, gotta have something to theorize about

― m coleman, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:05 (eighteen years ago)

ILX fave books 2004

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)

yeah good call m coleman. i like your suggestions. i know there are other book threads that i should probably trawl through, but i thought this was a different thing than just listing books you think are good. as i said above the library inexplicably has Love Saves The Day which is a great oral history.

does anyone know about this sociology professor in Florida I think who has an enormous compendium of music criticism? i can't remember his name. i may have heard about him via ilx.

― artdamages, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 01:00 (eighteen years ago)

does anyone know about this sociology professor in Florida I think who has an enormous compendium of music criticism?

That book is called Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay, edited by William McKeen. I dislike it a lot--it's stultifyingly obvious, its narrative line is totally received, it's stuffed with excerpts from books worth reading (and you should be considering) on their own. The Pop, Rock & Soul Reader does the same sort of overview thing only about 100 times more interestingly and entertainingly, and has loads of stuff you won't find anywhere else.

― Matos W.K., Wednesday, 28 February 2007 10:32 (eighteen years ago)

This - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192853821/ref=sr_1_1/202-1855647-9383050?ie=UTF8&s=books - is refreshing, if occasionally run by an agenda beyond it's title, and is unlike any other book on music that I've encountered.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 11:06 (eighteen years ago)

Has anyone read Running With the Devil? It's a very well written sociological examination of metal, written by a sociology prof who's also a practicing heavy metaller! there are some musicological bits that go over my head, but apart from that it's a great read.

― Neil S, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 11:07 (eighteen years ago)

Nik Cohn - Awopbopaloobopawopbamboom is a mix of history, journalism, and theory, and written early enough (1969) that it's got a freshness and clarity to its perspective that later books often lack. (The downside, or 'downside' is that it's incredibly partisan. It's also very funny, though.)

You also need his "Rock Dreams" with Guy Peelaeart, which is a picture book.

"Real Punks Don't Wear Black" (Frank Kogan) and "The Accidental Evolution Of Rock And Roll" (Chuck Eddy) are the two best and most inspiring music books I've read in the last 10 years. They're both by ILM regulars, so I may be biased, but I don't think I am, especially as ILM wouldn't even exist if I hadn't read Eddy and read about Kogan.

If your budget stretches to one book on rave, Energy Flash is it. But if it stretches to two, "Altered State" by Matthew Collings, is a very readable and very interesting look at how the music and drugs hit wider culture (only in the UK though, but I thought I'd mention it anyway).

― Groke, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 11:18 (eighteen years ago)

(My bias predates ILM, is what I'm trying to say in para 3 there)

― Groke, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 11:19 (eighteen years ago)

Gary Mullholland's "This Is Uncool: The 500 best singles since punk & disco" is nicely written and well presented, although very Anglo-centric.

― Neil S, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 11:20 (eighteen years ago)

William McKeen...thanks Matos you know everything ever. Shame about the book I spose.

― artdamages, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 12:22 (eighteen years ago)

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