Good books about music

Dark Stuff has got to be one of my favorite books ever. Brilliant.

Ned Sublette book reccommendations in his e-mail

Thomas Brothers’s Louis Armstrong's New Orleans (from 2006) might be the best music book I read this year. It contains as good an attempt as I’ve seen to reconstruct – albeit with a certain amount of necessary speculation – the social milieu and the process by which jazz emerged, with a coherent account of the uptown-vs.-downtown interplay. It’s a richly detailed portrait: “New Orleans during Armstrong’s childhood was overflowing with African-American venues for music. By one count there were ten to fifteen dance halls uptown alone; between them they produced a function every night. A step or two below the dance halls were the ubiquitous honky tonks. Then there were the outdoor venues of lawn parties in the city and dancing pavilions at Lake Pontchartrain, where, on Sundays, up to twenty bands took position for daylong performances.”

I also got around to Rick Coleman’s Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll (from 2007), an essential work of rock and roll history that fills in some necessary gaps in reconstructing the emergence of that other great music that came out of New Orleans.

Co-sign on Louis Armstrong's New Orleans - although should be read in conjunction with the James Lincoln Collier Biog. for a real sense of LA as an 'Artist'.

Turn the Beat Around - Peter Shapiro
Words and Music - Paul Morley

did anyone read the willie mctell book? i started it in the lrb shop once and it looked great.

Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes - In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray does look good

that's the one. the prologue or first chapter is mctell stumbling around a parking lot/makeout spot serenading teenagers for change, as a prelude to being recorded again for the library of congress etc, or so i remember. it read really nicely too - the guy says it isn't a muso biography about the ins and outs, but a portrait of him as a man, for people who'd never heard of him. i'm sure this thread is full of guralnick love, but it's definitely nice getting the whole portrait of a place, social context kinda thing, like in dream boogie.

Chic and the Politics of Disco.
Turn the beat around.

Both get under the surface of Disco. The Second one has a great discography of obscurities that I'm steadily working through.

Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective

This is both hilarious and informative.

has anyone read "appetite for self-destruction," steve knopper's book on the decline of the music industry? i'm asking cause they interviewed him on lol pitchfork today and i'm intrigued.

No recommendations on this thread, but I know the ILM massive has been loudly proclaiming their love for Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise and after finishing it last night I have to join the chorus. Such a well written exploration of the 20th century composers. Outside of my love for Reich, I had very little interest in the subject, but it kept me engrossed from start to finish and left me with a long list of composers to check out.

I do think he's absolutely right about what hip-hop's significance is (paraphrasing, renders African-Americans "all but invisible" in a cultural sense)

^deej on tate upthread. anyone know where i can read more on this? i'm quite intrigued.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-12-28/news/hiphop-turns-30/3

Greg Tate's article (he is/was a longtime Village Voice writer). Google "Tate and 30th anniversary hiphop" and you'll find others at other sites commenting on Tate's article. As far as background, you might also want to read Tate's book "Flyboy in the Buttermilk"

xpost - Wow thanks for the tip on the Alex Ross book. I'll be picking that one up today.

There's a thread on just that book (the Ross one)also

cheers curmudgeon :)

i'm surprised no one's mentioned eno's "a year with swollen appendices" which is as odd, cerebral and interesting as his music. also "the manual: how to have a number one the easy way" is, as it states, a manual (rather than a book) but it's still a great read - even better if you're actually want to have a number one hit, as it really does tell you exactly how to go about it.

"the manual" is by the klf btw

"A Year With Swollen Appendices" is fun. There's a new book about Brian Eno, "On Some Faraway Beach," which I just ordered so I'll try and remember to discuss it after it's been read.

Read On Some Faraway Beach recently. Good, although focuses on the well known/critically aclaimed period a lot which is what you'd expect. Read shortly after Remake/Remodel so it was interesting to see the same events overlap in the two books. Not any real differences in the facts which made me think both authors had done their research well.

i looked at that knopper book at barnes and nobel and was hesitant to pick up because there's like 600 rushed-out books on how downloading killed the music industry. Is his legit?

from the pitchfork interview, it sounded like it. he interviewed a lot of ppl

well, i own it now so i'll let you know. apparently he did a ton of interviews (like 200+) so it should be well-researched if nothing else.

I recently came across a copy of Music for Vagabonds - The Tuxedomoon Chronicles. It's quite chunky, and even though I only know a few assorted tracks by them, I was tempted by what looks to be a good overview of the SF scene at the time, so probably a fair bit about the Residents, Factrix, Patrick Miller aka Minimal Man, etc.

Anyone read it??

Oh, and I have to recommend Diary of a Punk by Mike Hudson of the Pagans.

From Ned Sublette's e-mail newsletter:

elijah wald will be appearing monday (22) at bookcourt in brooklyn, 163
court street, http://www.bookcourt.org/ to promote his fine new book with
the bait-and-switch title of "how the beatles destroyed rock and roll: an
alternative history of american popular music." earlier this week, elijah
was a guest for what turned out to be one of the livelier episodes of john
schaefer's "soundcheck" on wnyc-fm. you can hear it at
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2009/06/17

Elijah's book sounds interesting even though some of the non-rock that he's writing about from the 50s and stuff doesn't interest me alot.

That's me not Ned talking about the 50s pop that is covered in part in Elijah's book.

i looked at that knopper book at barnes and nobel and was hesitant to pick up because there's like 600 rushed-out books on how downloading killed the music industry. Is his legit?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, May 27, 2009 9:35 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

just finished it and the answer is....sort of. i think he needed about 200 more pages (book is like 250). he's torn between writing a serious history of the music industry between 1980 and the present, and more of an entertaining, you are there, storyteller approach. the latter is obvs attractive to him 'cause he interviewed all these dudes who i'm sure are interesting and charismatic as hell, but it means he has trouble tying everything together. it's more choppy than it needs to be. i would've preferred something more along the lines of "love saves the day" which was also exhaustively researched (to the point of information overload), but presents a much more compelling and coherent history.

knopper can't do this for a couple reasons. first, several dudes who are still in the industry refused to talk to him, and second, napster and ipod/itunes, which are two of his key chapters, were already gotten to in a more complete way by other books, which he leans on heavily for narrative. that would be ok if his own book was more substantial.

all that being said, it's an entertaining read and i'd recommend as a paperback or library book. but it will not go down as the definitive work on this topic.

has anybody read greg kot's ripped: how the wired generation revolutionized music? guessing it's similar to knopper's book.

If Elijah Wald is doing for the Beatles what he did for Robert Johnson, I say thanks but no thanks.

something about the title of wald's latest makes me laugh, like oooh how provocative

Yes exactly. The Johnson book was the same. Theory went something like "Blues was an artificial construct of the recording industry, because in fact these guys sang all kinds of other songs that were not the blues. Robert Johnson was an artificial construct of the recording industry because back in the day no rural black people actually listened to his records- he only became popular after Eric Clapton came along. Therefore Robert Johnson is a doubly artificial construct and should be shunned by all authentic lovers of real blues music. Such as myself. By the way I play the guitar as well as write books, so I know whereof I speak."

QED

Exactly. I love the QED genre.

It's not that what he's saying is completely off-base but it's the enfant terrible agent provocateur watch-at-me-while-I-overturn-the-received-wisdom attitude that's annoying. In the matter of the blues, others such as Francis Davis and Ted Gioia have dealt with the same issues with a more even hand.

"The Beatles were an artificial construct of George Martin and the British Record Industry who had already tried and failed to get the Shadows a hit in the US. They watered down the purebred New Orleans out-of-Africa-by-way-of-Cuba rock and roll beat with their halfwit hillbilly harmonies and their Music Hall mumbo-jumbo thereby ruining rock and roll radio forever. Therefore they should be shunned by all authentic lovers of real blues based rock and roll music such as myself."

"... and that is all that the people need to know."

Looking forward to his next book Livin' In Shame: How Berry Gordy and Motown Records Destroyed Jazz

Not that this makes complete sense either, but isn't Wald actually trying in the new book to say "Lotsa people were listening still to Sinatra and Lawrence Welk and other 'older adult' singers and whomever was also on the pop chart then and not every one was listening to either country, rockabilly, or r'n'b before the Beatles came along." I think he's trying to parallel this with the way he would describe his Robert Johnson book--Johnson was a very good, albeit,not popular country blues guy, however more people were listening to Ma Rainey, Ida Cox and Bessie Smith, but hailing them would not fit into the Crossroads myth." It's an attempt to be populist in some sort of demographic way and not musical elitism. But yeah, the title seems generated merele to sell copies.

But yea Wald did say that Johnson sang all kinds of other songs.

I recently read last year's Can't Buy Me Love Beatles biography. You'd think the world doesn't need another but I think it deals with the history and the sociology with in depth research and plenty of hindsight in a way that is genuinely effective. The only failure is that it doesn't really discuss any of the music or songs in depth... but that may be for the best.

Seems to me that the big Beatles Anthology book (told in their own words), Can't Buy Me Love (the outside-in view), and a box set of the music might be all you need (besides Love, right?).

So maybe the gimmick is that we thought all along that the Beatles were destroying Tin Pan Alley and Johnny Mercer, but in fact it was rock and roll they were destroying?

This is reminding me that I need to keep making my way through those 9 CD Allen Lowe compilations.

Yeah you do (although I have braved That Devilin' Tune yet).

That's what I got, the four volumes of That Devilin' Tune. I couldn't get a hold of American Pop.

yeah Devilin' Tune is awesome, so much good music, and the liners are great as well. i only have vols. 2-4, though. Is the American Pop thing in print?

Don't think so, at least not the CDs. I got the book by emailing Allen Lowe.

In fact maybe we don't even have to have this discussion, we can just read the organissimo thread, since both of those guys have showed up on it.

yeah i actually got my copies from Lowe via the organissimo board ... have been meaning to get the first one from him, wonder if he still has copies?

Nick Kent's "The Dark Stuff" is epic. "Our Band Could Be Your Life" is great too. I also like Chuck Klosterman's "Killing Yourself to Stay Alive", which is very funny.

I just dug out AL's email from when I ordered that stuff and contacted him. He told me that American Pop was out of print but he was working on a new project that was coming out this year that sounded good.

I've been reading Michael Moynihan's Lords of Chaos and definitely have mixed feelings about it. I'm not sure I totally accept his thesis that the rise of violent Satanism, Paganism, and Black Metal is some Hegelian rebellion against the Scandinavian social welfare state. All I got is that guys like Varg were gaping sociopathic assholes long before they got involved with Black Metal. Varg, in particular, was game for any ideology that allowed his atavistic desires to run free. If not Black Metal, then radical environmentalism, fascism, anarchism, or some other cause would’ve been used as justification for his crimes. And that seems to be true of almost all the other sensational acts that Moynihan covers in the book. If you peel back the layers of myth and bullshit, most of the crimes had more prosaic causes than Satanism or Paganism, more like drunken teenage stupidity, dude owns me money, and petty jealousy.

I really want to check this one out.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1576874354/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books