Good books about music

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

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

ikr and when he manages to tear himself away from his relationship w/ellen willis and condescend to consider journalism in the mid/late 60s it's pretty interesting like you're at ground zero for the establishment of well, rock criticism. too bad he goes into this "then i reviewed that and it was good if i say so myself and i do" mode for the rest of the book - an insider's overview of the village voice during its 70s heyday would've been something. what the old boy's book totally lacks is any larger perspective/longview on the revolutionary times he lived through. like all those years of micro-reviewing ruined him for macro analysis. he's a good guy for all his quirks, though, reading this made me feel glad and lucky i got to work w/him.

i came away from 'going into the city' liking christgau much more than i went in. it reminded me a lot of donald fagen's 'eminent hipsters' and i wasn't surprised one bit when he quoted himself and his wife carola dibbell at length reviewing steely dan

pairing 'going into the city' with james wolcott's 'lucking out' fleshes out the 'voice' during its 70s heyday a little better

robertchristgau.com has a good amount of his 60s writing (incl mid-60s Times account profile of a young woman, known for being an early adopter, way before that term was coined, who starved to death on a groovy diet; ends with a speculation that she may have suffered from something called anorexia nervosa---italics his, I think---a condition then mostly known, as such, by medical professionals---it's a time trip). Also in the stash:many other longform pieces,from the 60s, 70s, later, mostly on music, where he has to develop his themes more than in the Guide, with various results (but always thought the 70s and 80s Guide entries hit the peak of compressed insight).
His joint review of the Ellen Willis and Paul Nelson collections is astute, re the achievements and limitations of those writers, ditto the first decades of rock writing.

Ellen Willis' Out of the Vinyl Deeps is sooooooooooooooo good

I've also been reading Ian MacDonald's The People's Music, which is not nearly as good.

Can anyone here recommend any good books about classical harmony/harmonic analysis etc? Finished a music degree eight years ago and would now like to brush up/expand on my knowledge as I haven't looked at that stuff much since. Any books with interesting analyses of composers/works?

Turn back, you poxy fule!

Charles Rosen - the classical style
Same author - the romantic generation

Hm. Had seen those books before and was intrigued but never investigated further

Rosen is amazing

Actually now I remember, this book is pretty good, I came across it last year: Revisiting Music Theory: A Guide to the Practice, by Alfred Blatter

Is the David Byrne one worth reading?

someone gave it to me as a gift so i guess i'll find out soon enough (once i read the million other books i wanted to read first)

I didn't enjoy the Byrne book at all. IIRC there is a glaring error in the first chapter which put me off completely.

I finished the Byrne one to make sure it was as awful as I thought halfway through. it was.

Ah that's a shame, I like the idea of a music theory book written by David Byrne.

I enjoyed it, especially the first few chapters. Maybe it depends a bit on whether you find the ideas he presents about music's relative value etc banal or relevant. There's also a fair bit of autobiography so added value if you care about byrne/th and don't know his bio by heart.

I came it with relatively little in the way of preconceptions about Byrne (I consider myself a modest fan of the Talking Heads). After finishing it though that minor fandom was considerably diminished by the overall arrogance. who knows, maybe that's the Asperger's. But within this broad category of good books about music, probably the ones I have disliked most have been memoirs (Joe Boyd, Dean Wareham, Byrne), with the Levon Helm book being a notable exception.

I tend to like critical/music history books more, so to be a bit more positive, I loved The Chitlin Circuit by Preston Lauterbach. It starts off a bit dense, setting up the major management groups/crime bosses in Indiana, but by the time it weaves in Texas blues joints with everything that was happening in Memphis and eventually Macon, I was hooked.

After finishing it though that minor fandom was considerably diminished by the overall arrogance. who knows, maybe that's the Asperger's

His Asperger's is self-diagnosed, thus perhaps non-existent, and further evidence of arrogance.

The first chapter seemed a bit stiff, though maybe because he was self-consciously trying not to turn out yet another ageing white rocker memoir (as he declared up front), but soon took off, once he got into got into describing the experience of recording and performing live--from middle school on---and how these were affected by changing biz models (about production, distribution, developing an image) and venues (the Heads dropped out of art school and moved into a friend's apartment, almost directly across the street from CBGB, and he analytically recalls the whole thing, but still wonders why that music-friendly setting become a Scene, when others didn't?). Also, for instance, describes an early solo tour, with the players teaching the dancers how to play, and the dancers teaching the musos how to dance. And the ending is great edutainment, as he sympathetically goofs on and celebrates man's quest to get in tune with the music of the spheres, from ancient times til Now.

Chris Richards in the W. Post likes Houston rapper Scarface's new autobiography "Life of A Madman"

The book also is filled with laugh-in-disbelief anecdotes; illuminating notes on craft; meditations on the molten intersection of race, class and hip-hop; and a few juicy loose ends, including claims of a lost trove of Scarface tunes produced by Kanye West. If you love rap, you’ll devour this stuff — meaning, you still have time to add it to your summer reading list.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/going-out-guide/wp/2015/08/27/mr-scarface-goes-to-washington/

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-best-music-books-of-2015-20151221/the-underground-is-massive-how-electronic-dance-music-conquered-america-by-michaelangelo-matos-20151218

I want to read the Grace Jones book and the Charles Hughes Country soul one. Maybe some others too

thanks for posting that-really want to read the 'Country Soul' book. There's a new Preston Lauterbach that I need to get as well. His 'Chitlin Circuit' was amazing.

The Hughes book very good. Own a copy of the latest PL book but have not sat down and read it properly. Went to high school with a descendant of the main guy he talks about.

20 jazz funk greats by drew daniel. 33 1/3 series