Rate End Of Year Music Books As: Worth Buying, Worth Taking Out Of Library, Worth Browsing in Store, Wouldn't Touch With A Tenpole Tudor

yea i'd like to take a look at Ross's book. i've always enjoyed his writing in the new yorker, and i don't even really listen to that much classical. i bet reading his book would be a decent way to start learning about it.

(xposts)

Oh I think you still should read the Joe Boyd book, Mark. On the radio, did he mention Dick Clark or Coleman Hawkins?

haha, yeah, the coleman hawkins stories in Boyd's book were some of the best parts! Awesome descriptions of how the Hawk was the slowest walker in the world and would constantly get lost (perhaps on purpose) in airports.

and I'm also interested in that Alex Ross book ... sounds great, though i'm not sure how he's going to cover such a wide range of stuff without resorting to generalizing ... we'll see!

I took that Laurie Lindeen book out of the library yesterday and leafed through it: looks like a potentially an interesting story of Person With MS Who Rocks but the writing seemed pretty flyweight. See the negative review in the LA Times.

Just got the Veal book from the library, will check it out over break. So far it's kinda heavy on the "I remember the first time I heard the dub music" though.

just got the Warren Zevon bio from the library ... looks to be pretty in depth. Funny pics of Waddy Wachtel.

yea that's mostly limited to the introduction. xpost

The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross

^^ Bought it but haven't read it.

Saw the Ben Ratliff Coltrane book at The Strand last night and picked it up. So far so good.

finish that ross book yet, three handclaps?

I think maybe he doesn't want to have to officially deal with more contemporary times. Same way Peter Guralnick can't answer simple questions that anybody could have seen coming a mile away without getting defensive at a Q&A- some people are happier in the library, with the ghosts of yesterday.

-- James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, November 19, 2007 4:16 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

I haven't read the Sublette book yet, but a drummer friend of mine was saying that it's pretty amazing, and even though he is covering shit 400 years ago he's drawing a lot of lines to contemporary times.

Yeah, that's certainly true.

I was just having a bit of fun- it's probably for the best that he doesn't publicly involve himself in contemporary squabbles.

Anyway, I came back to post that I started the Coltrane book, which is fine, but got distracted by reading one of the best pop music books ever, which doesn't seem to have been mentioned on this board, Always Magic In The Air: The Bomp And Brilliance Of The Brill Building Era, by Ken Emerson, from 2005. I only became aware of it by seeing it on] the shelf in the library. Seems to be right up the alley of a lot of people around here.

that Emerson book is superb. I need to read his Stephen Foster book, which I've been told is even better. I believe it.

That one's on my list.

The Clapton one was unfulfilling I thought. If you're a musician of any rank yourself (as I imagine most people who would pick this book up would be) you'll find yourself disappointed by the lack of discussion about what made the guy famous in the first place -- his music!

the rest is noise -- OMG the best book on music -- any kind of music -- I've read in years. it's probably works best for people like me who aren't familiar w/the classical tradition but wow! ross describes highly technical music in terms a layperson can fully grasp w/o patronizing and seamlessly connects music to then current events, explicating things I've always half-understood like the connection between Wagner and fascism. right now I'm slowly working my way through the recommended listening at the end, and so far enjoying what I'm hearing and understanding it too -- the highest recommendation for a book like this.

right now I can't think of a pop music book that ever affected me like this. and I'm not one for hyperbole.

Another book now on my list: Lonely avenue : the unlikely life and times of Doc Pomus,by Alex Halberstadt. I'm going to hold off on that Alex Ross book for another few weeks.

The common thread being that both are about composers who wrote songs for Elvis Presley.

Oh wait, maybe not.

By some paradox, the slightly rough treatment Bacharach got in the Brill Building book has allowed me to be more interested in his work, as opposed to, say, the sycophancy of his number one demon seed, Elvis Costello.

Not Christgau though- he loved this book and said of Emerson "He's blunt about the pretensions of late Leiber-Stoller and the vapidity of most Bacharach." The Bacharach box remains a B- in the CG.

I don't know what my favorite moment in that book was. Was it?

1) Non-musician producer Don Kirshner in the control booth saying "Something's not working but I don't know what it is!" Songwriter Jack Keller thinking fast and saying "It's the guitar player- he's holding it too tight! He's gotta let it ring!" and then running out and back to tell that guy.

2) Non-singer non-musician songwriter Gerry Goffin shaking Bob Dylan's hand and saying "You've get every right to be proud of yourself" shortly before sliding into a drug-fueled Dylan obssessed freakout of tragi-comic dimension.

3)Mort Shuman: Francophile.

Or maybe one of dozens of others I can't remember right now

I vote for 2. That whole section is really haunting.

I got a hold of a copy of the recent Tearing Down The Wall Of Sound: The Rise And Fall Of Phil Spector by Mick Brown- there are 99 other copies in the NYPL not being read- and there is some interesting info now and then but on the whole it is pretty badly written, lots of eye-glazing background stuff "Rock and roll blah blah.. Elvis Presley burst blah blah.. the Beatles blah blah" and dimestore or armchair pyschoanalysis "that thing he could not name was without a doubt blah blah". Maybe the Ribowsky book is better, or maybe they're all a bummer?

I guess that last sentence sounds idiotic- how could such a book not be a bummer?

I read the Ribowsky a couple years after it came out. Believe it or not, it's actually best when he sticks to music, e.g. the recording of "I Love How You Love Me." But on the whole, I found it a bit empty. Towards the end of the book, the accrued horrors become more preposterous than harrowing, never achieving a necessary distance from the American obsession with psychos.

Working my way through the Emerson Brill Building book now. But already there's no way it matches Doo-Dah!, one of the finest biographies I've ever read. Make that meta-biographies since much of it is about the process of writing one. Given the relative lack of primary materials (I hate that term but...) on Foster, Emerson turns to profiling many of Foster's contemporaries. And from that setback, he wound up with a much more compelling book than he probably would have written with an archive of letters fortifying his arguments. A very American (that word again!) achievement.

And insights? Please! He brings the music of the 19th century alive so vividly that you'd think you were tracing Soulja Boy viral videos on youtube with each page turn.

John Mowitt

guy is way ahead of the competition
eg http://www.amazon.com/Percussion-Drumming-Striking-John-Mowitt/dp/0822329190/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201909422&sr=8-1

Started the Doc Pomus book. Pretty good so far- Doc left a lot of journals to be drawn from and a lot of friends to be interviewed and the author is pretty sympathetic. What with Ken Emerson blurbing his blessing on the back and passing along his sources and leads, it's kind of a follow-up to his Brill Building book.

The one story that is told in all of these books is the one about Phil Spector and Doc Pomus at the Spindletop restaurant.

Ben Ratliff Coltrane book was annoying, I guess I should read the Lewis Porter book get the bad taste out.

Ned Sublette New Orleans book is reviewed in Times Book Review, apparently has been out since January. Love to read it, but probably should finish the other one.

I haven't finished the other Sublette one either. I took forever finally reading the excellent Elijah Wald Robert Johnson book. He goes beyond just discussing Johnson to examine why (white) blues collectors celebrated certain artists and not others (kind of a rockism v popism thing).

I was just reading a Washington City Paper blog thing that took Ratliff to task for his kinda snobby and ocassionally wronghead critique of the Grammy album of the year award to Herbie Hancock. Why was Ratliff's Coltrane book annoying?

Because it degenerated into the whole Wynton Marsalis vs. Free Jazz thing, which is someplace I didn't need to go. And, according to Ratliff, the blame for that whole mess rests squarely on the shoulders of John William Coltrane.

I came across some musicians message board called organissimo or something where people recommended the Porter book on Coltrane as being a lot more about the actual music, with actual musical examples, rather than the sociology of the music. I think some people around here have read the Porter book as well.

took Ratliff to task for his kinda snobby and ocassionally wronghead critique of the Grammy album of the year award to Herbie Hancock

where can a dude read this critique

I'll bet it's this right here

Ha, BR brings up Getz/Gilberto as another example of a lightweight, easy-on-the-untrained-ears not-really-jazz album that won.

Note: I never had any beef with him until I read that book. In fact, once at Jazzfest I shared a crawfish beignet with somebody having exactly the same name.

Thanks James Redd. Ratliff seems to be giving the Grammys a lot more consideration as a marker of a particular sort of taste than they deserve? To whom do they really matter, these days?

I don't really want to go to this place either, but there is a certain type of New York Times reader who wants to, if not exactly keep a finger on the pulse of the, um, cultural Zeitgeist, at least throw it a passing glance in the Arts and Leisure now and then.

of course

To whom do they really matter, these days?

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, February 17, 2008 4:27 AM

vs.

River: The Joni Letters performed by Herbie Hancock

Did this win this year? That's awesome.

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, February 17, 2008 4:02 AM

All the HOOS that's fit to print.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/blackplasticbag/

In a February 14th posting Michael J. West says in part : “Inasmuch as it is a jazz album, it is precisely the kind of jazz album that would win this award,” Ratliff says. “It is soft-edged and literate and respectable. It seems, at least, intended as an audience bridger.”

In other words, it’s not really jazz enough to count.

The authenticity debate never dies (Thanks, Wynton), but come on. The musicians who’ve made this “soft-edged,” crossover-friendly album include Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland, and Vinnie Colaiuta (not a big name, but a musician’s musician–cited by Modern Drummer as “the most important drummer of our time”). You couldn’t get a higher pedigree if you resurrected John Coltrane.

Resurrecting Coltrane would apparently have been a problem too.

He would have been viewed as a "free jazz casualty" who had been forced to dumb it down after all the damage sustained by all the overblowing.

(Sorry I confused Oregon with Washington State with D.C.)

Will Hodgkinson's Song Man recently made it over here to the states. I bought it, and would heartily recommend it. Aside from having a couple of fascinating chapters dealing w/Lawrence from Felt, he interviews Hal David, Arthur Lee, Andy Partridge, Chan Marshall, Lamont Dozier, Chip Taylor, Bridget St John...

I have no complaints with the book whatsoever.

Good books about music