Good books about music

i heard him talking about it in a radio interview a few weeks ago
it was pretty shocking and not related to scient0logie

http://www.richieunterberger.com/wordpress/top-twenty-rock-history-books-of-2014/

Barry Mazor provided a very appealing description of Eric Weisbard's Top 40 Democracy in last Saturday's Wall Street Journal. The online review isn't available now to non-subscribers, apparently (WSJ's inconsistent w that), and I don't know how Salon manages such things, but just in case this link
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/07/your_music_snobbery_is_all_wrong_how_top_40_radio_made_the_mainstream_as_interesting_as_the_margins/?utm_content=bufferff0a2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer stops working, here's an excerpt of their excerpt:

Formats let music occupy a niche in capitalism and—as with Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, with its monologue and interviews structure and MOR appeal—connect music to other show-business realms as well. Genres are different. Ordinary people don’t proudly identify with formats, but some do identify with genres. One can have a hit song that goes “I was born country”; probably not “I was born adult contemporary.” Music formats like MOR, AC, and Top 40 were crossover spaces, with no single dominant genre. A trickier category is music, like country, with both format and genre identity, making for something more porous in definition than honky-tonk, soul, or that Bruce Springsteen fans might prefer. Black-oriented pop divided between rhythm and blues (R&B), a format, and soul or hip-hop genres. Rock, in its 1970s form, was the Uncola of formats: a lucrative format posing as a rebel genre. Music genres, more inherently ideological, chafe at formats, with their centrist, commercial disposition.

Yet the very commercial tendencies that made radio formats, and the music they implanted in our consciousness, suspect aesthetically also made them trailblazers for the sounds, artists, and listeners left out by all that genre certainty. Formats, radio, and pop music deserve a much bigger place in the history of American culture than accounts rooted in genre and isolated records have afforded them. Their homogenizing tendencies popularized and routinized each eruption from the countercultural 1960s and 1970s and MTV 1980s to the grunge, gangsta, and new country 1990s. But equally important was this center’s ability to redirect music as a social force: from “serious” fans who were often straight, white, male, and affluent to listeners less vocal and coherent but no less invested in what they heard. That tension structures this book. The safe radio pop that so many commentators have reviled for so many valid reasons opened as many doors as it closed.
I probably won't agree with all of this, but wanna read it. (Mazor said it also traces the careers of the Isley Brothers and others, adapting to their audiences' changes.)

Don't know that country ever was a format---"countrypolitan," sure, and now the national Nash FM chain incl. Nashville Idols, basically a Gen X Hat oldies format, maybe complicated by the return of Garth, though probably not---but why does he say that country is both format and genre, but rock and R&B are not? Oh well, like I said, I'm more interested in the historical road maps, but hoping to learn something conceptual as well.

this year has been great for music books.

That big Beatles book
Bob Stanley's 'Yeah Yeah Yeah'
Viv Albertine's book
Simon Napier Bell's one about music publishing machinations
Was that Jesus and Mary chain book this year? If so, that even if they didn't cite (or use) my old article
I almost bought the Scott walker book, and may yet. It looks good but I can't nom it until I do.

Anyone read Stephen Hanley's book yet?

Need to read Viv's and Hanley's tbh

Read/am reading:

No Wave, Marc Masters
People Funny Boy, David Katz
Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon, Michael E. Veal

xpost thanx brio2 for posting:

http://www.mojo4music.com/18055/viv-albertine-book-of-the-year/">Mojo interview: http://www.mojo4music.com/18055/viv-albertine-book-of-the-year/

NPR's Ken Tucker put it on his '14 Best Music Top Ten: 9 albums, this book

Want to read the Albertine book. Skimmed it in a bookstore. She chose to write it all in the present tense.

Curious about this Richie Unterberger faves:

Ain’t It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones on the Road to Exile, by Robert Greenfield (Da Capo Press). This has the feel of a toss-off, as it’s the third book Greenfield’s written on the Stones in the early 1970s, and at least some of the stories and quotes appear in his Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones. I kind of like it anyway

George Clinton w/Ben Greenman Brothers Be Like Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You

even casual fans of of the pfunk should find this illuminating. George is so smart, sharp and perceptive about music, musicians and the music business. coming up he studied how his peers and influences played and presented themselves and also how the record companies marketed them. he's insightful into the working of his own empire (and failings), offering fascinating insights on leadership, collaboration and cooperation within an unwieldy musical commune. generous and perceptive assessments of the wildly diverse personalities he's worked with over the years. despite his business acumen he does get bogged down in shady publishing rip-offs and the last third of the book drags through tortuous legal wrangles. his self-admitted 25 years + crack habit doesn't help the 80s, 90s and 2000s but he's refreshingly uncliched and frank about drug use. Ben Greenman's hand is evident in the clear readable prose though George's earthy interjections "keep it real" as they say. "The church ladies pitched a bitch because we were singing about pussy." At the end of a rapturous review of Vanilla Fudge concert: "Of course I was tripping my ass off." And after explaining his message of tolerance handed down to children, grandchildren and musicans regarding sexual preferences: "I've seen motherfuckers fuck radiators."

i am so excited to read top 40 democracy :X

(xxpost) I mentioned this on another thread a while back: Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones is surprisingly awful. (I seem to recall that someone else chimed in in agreement.) It's got this unrelenting you-won't-believe-the-depths-of-depravity-we're-going-to-explore tone, and the depths turn out to be that the band used drugs frequently. Glaring factual errors are mixed in.

i gave my brother the george clinton book for xmas. half wanted to keep it for myself

regarding all the new beatles books, what could possibly be revealed in a new one? honest question

I read that Road to Exile book (I put out a book through Da Capo years ago and they continue to send me ARCs of all their music stuff). It was boring.

xpost

not so much new but really wonderfully integrated with cultural/music/social history and with a level of care & enthusiasm rarely seen. dude wanted to give the best possible history of the beatles & truly succeeds

I mentioned this on the Canterbury Scene thread, but I was disappointed in the new Robert Wyatt bio.

I enjoyed the McCartney In The 70's book very much.

the Weisbard book is excellent -- I finished it a few days ago.

haven't read the lewisohn book yet but while there are a lot of beatles bios there hasn't really been one that i'd feel totally comfortable recommending, that feels definitive and objective and well-written in the way that the guralnick/elvis or jon savage/sex pistols books are. so even if there's nothing groundbreaking it feels like there's still space for someone to come along and do the job right, quietly correcting all the misconceptions and adding balance and context.

i think lewisohn definitely fills that gap

Seconded. And I'd argue that Lewisohn's writing style is less dry/clinical than Guralnick's, while providing an incredibly vivid sense of detail that is as intriguing as it is necessary (speaking as someone who thought, before I read it, "Pfft, I already know about these so-called 'Beatles'!").

Viv Albertine book is great, as direct and immediate in its way as the Charlie Louvin book.

ohhh the charlie louvin book
so good

Like driving in an air-cooled Franklin.

Speaking of which, I just came across a book that looks interesting with a chapter on Charlie: In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music, by Nicholas Dawidoff.

been working on Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. It's been interesting to learn about the hits from the 50s and early 60s that I wasn't very familiar with, but some of the chapters read a bit like big lists of songs. Been listening along to this playlist that painstakingly organized the songs from the book in order of mention:

http://open.spotify.com/user/unterwasser/playlist/6Yn3GrP6D6dOSfKFfpzAiC

Need to get back to that book. Thanks for teh link.

May still have a few clippings, but really want to find a copy of his whole run (also, still need to check his own music!) He was really good, on so many things: got me to look for The Plastic People of Prague's secretly recorded, transcontinentally mixed, pressed and smuggled Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned---and I found it, on a Tuscaloosa side street in 1985. Also, as he so cruelly informed Charlemagne Palestine, "It doesn't matter who did it first, but who does it best."

Oops, meant to post this

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6dY0qwIUAAf_e2.jpg:large

Enjoyed this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515RPMIdAYL.jpg

MTV wasn't available up here (not on regular cable, anyway), so I saw almost nothing of it in the early years--a couple of times visiting a friend in Illinois and that was it. I read the book through the filter of Toronto's Much Music, which I can now see very meticulously assembled its VJs to match MTV's: Erica Ehm = Martha Quinn (that one I already knew about), Jeanne Beker = Nina Blackwood, J.D. Roberts = Mark Goodman, Michael Williams = J.J. Jackson, Steve Anthony = Alan Hunter (that one's probably a little iffier).

Two funniest parts: 1) Blackwood telling some story involving somebody from Billy Vera's backing band, and referring to him at least six or seven times as "the Beater"; Dylan, being interviewed by Quinn in the mid-'80s, saying he liked the Police video where they jumped around and wore hats.

Big influence on D's ace "Must Be Santa" vid (incl. much jumping around, wearing of Santa cap & wig); also we know he's a longtime hat fan (Superfly hat in The Last Waltz, more of a Western-associated hat in Renaldo and Clara, but not a Stetson: those are the earliest stage hats of his I can remember)

Has anybody read Kim Gordon's new book? Generally not big on memoirs and mildly ashamed that I mostly just want to hear her bash Thurston.

Not read it but I would totally read a memoir in which Thurston bashes Kim.

Here's a fucking great book about the Who i just read

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11166707/pretend-youre-in-a-war-the-who-and-the-sixties-mark-blake.html

I've been meaning to check that one out!

Things that look interesting:
Cowboys and Indies, a history of the recording industry from the point of view of "Record Men," label owners and moguls

Recent history of music industry by Simon Napier-Bell. Looked at first few chapters, a ton of detail about early history of publishing.

Recent Barry Mazor bio of Ralph Peer looks to be a must read.

Has anyone read "Pigs Might Fly", the Pink Floyd book mentioned in the Who book review?

Not a bad list:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/26/musicians-writers-choose-favourite-books-music-brian-eno-beck

Interesting. Eno goes for an Alan Lomax book

I think I mentioned elsewhere that I want to read the below book by a professor/author who has spoken at several EMP Pop events. The below is an interview with him in which he both praises Peter Guralnik and expresses disagreeement with him and others

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/author-charles-l-hughes-takes-a-swing-at-conventional-wisdom-about-country-soul-and-race/Content?oid=5228976

Viv Albertine's book is so so so so great -- loving every single minute of reading it. Some of the stuff about her early life was so resonant to me that I want to write her a letter. Same with Kim Gordon's book, only the part that resonated was about Coco. Really enjoying getting some inside scoop, would recommend either.

Want to read Viv's book. Just learned from a Joe Strummer movie doc, that Strummer used to live with Viv's bandmate, drummer Palmolive (aka Paloma)

ok i am finally almost done with her book
it's really raw and grueling! so glad she didn't agree to a ghost writer.

i recently read two books by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka which I would highly recommend: Blues People and Black Music.

Blues People is just as much about sociology/history as it is about music, describing how blues developed as an expression of the traumatic displacement of slavery. he draws clear lines between the music that black people were making during the slavery and postbellum periods and the popular music of the early 20th century in America, which was interesting to me because the kinds of cross-generation connections i read about are between early 20th century blues/jazz to mid-century R&B/rocknroll.

Black Music is a compilation of his writing about jazz in the late 50s/early 60s, some of them record reviews or profiles for Down Beat and the like, others more experimental or informal pieces for lesser known publications. it's thoughtfully pieced together, though, so that musicians who are introduced as new people on the scene in the context of pieces about other musicians are later given their own feature later in the book. it's hard to explain, but the flow of the book is very organic and it makes you feel like you're gradually getting familiar with the NYC jazz scene in the early 60s (through Baraka's eyes of course) - who the most talented young players are, where the cool clubs are, why brilliant musicians are having trouble finding paying gigs, who's underachieving and who has just lost it completely. you get a long profile of someone like ornette coleman when he was first breaking in and freaking everyone out, but you also get short profiles of jazz drummers who are completely forgotten now. it doesn't come across like Baraka is sitting in an apartment listening to records and writing reviews - it sounds like he's in the middle of the scene and he knows everyone and everyone knows him and he's invested in it - it really comes through in his writing.

I half considered taking the library copy of Blues People and getting it signed by him when he did a reading at NUIG a few years ago but then didn't.
Think it was just pretty pure coincidence that I happened to have their copy of that out when I heard he was reading.

christgau's memoir 'going into the city' is way more about his love life than music but when he condescends to consider music you sorta feel like you're at ground zero for the establishment of predominant critical shibboleths

Does anyone have a shareable version of that Dennis Wilson book mentioned above?

take it to "bad books about music" xp

Those xpost Leroi Jones collections are eloquent and elegant; he really made the most of his word limit for the columns. At the same time, some of the You Are There aspect incl. settling scores with squares and worse, like the club owner who not only refuses to hire an avant pioneer, but is pissed that he can find a gig anywhere. Also the relatively mainstream star who admits just now saw the free jazz light---Jones: "That's a noble confession and all," but what took him so long? Harsh, but understandable in historical contect, and not too ranty (esp. compared to some other writing).
Think these books might have influenced young Bangs, Tosches and others.

christgau makes a thing out of how ishmael reed's 'mumbo jumbo' had a huge influence on him