33 1/3 Series of books

nvm i misread, 22 before may 2016! i'm way old man

Well I was under 22 before May 2016.

Someone got me the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack one, it is so good! I have been waiting my entire life to read this book!

The thing I've been wondering regarding that one is how different it is from the the previous book he wrote on the subject, Maestro Mario.

Just read the brand-new Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables one. I'm kinda blown away by how this is essentially "Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables: The Early Years" by Alex Ogg (which was just published LAST YEAR ferchristsakes) with an added sheen of (non-musical) historical colour. It's quite shameless. Unless there is something connecting the two works which I don't know about. It's just a complete rip-off! Plus Ogg's book has tons of artwork, labels, Winston Smith art etc. Don't get this 33 1/3 book - get the Ogg.

iirc when you pitch something you have to say how your work will differentiate from any other books/documentaries on the subject. so obv bloomsbury knew about the similarity and it didn't bother them.

i have something i might be interested in pitching this time out, but little-to-no-advance and a percentage of royalties on a smallish run with a limited audience, for all the effort that would go in? not that appealing tbh.

Finished another one that just hit the stands: Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy. Nice to get some background on Devo without the usual faux-corporate trappings. The only criticism I have is that the book operates on the principle that this was Devo's creative peak and that what came before and after was lacking. The portrayal of Duty Now For The Future as their nadir is baffling.

i have something i might be interested in pitching this time out, but little-to-no-advance and a percentage of royalties on a smallish run with a limited audience, for all the effort that would go in? not that appealing tbh.

same here, unfortunately i have an idea i really believe in

i really love duty now. that album has a ton of punk cachet, maybe even more so than the debut. and new traditionalists and oh no! are no slouches either. i know the band doesn't rate duty now -- the songs were leftovers, they were all fighting, they hated the producer. but bands can be wrong about their best work.

(full disclosure: i worked on evie's book, doing the interview transcriptions.)

also i remembered last night that the day i got my 33 1/3 rejection last year was the day i was having major surgery -- the message hit my inbox as i was lying there in a hospital gown, waiting for the morphine drip to kick in. not my least vulnerable moment!

Yeah, the book contains interviews with the band where they express disappointment with Duty Now. But they are also on record as being regretful about aspects of the first album too. And the later ones...even the last one which you'd think it would have been created with zero expectations and with full creative control yet they still had a bad experience with Warners. My theory is that they strived more than most to control everything, but their career 78-84 proved to be extremely challenging and uncontrollable. Their critical and commercial fortunes fluctuated wildly. So that the only era they appear to not be regretful about is the brief flash of widespread popularity (Whip It and FoC) and the 74-77 period. No surprises they have specifically focused on revisiting and repackaging those periods more and more to that over the last decade or so.

I had no idea the band didn't like Duty Now; I love it to bits.

http://333sound.com/2015/06/01/open-call-for-33-13-proposals-2015/

everyone who can be bothered to pitch to these people is independently wealthy, yes? still never encountered any publisher as up itself as them

well i have pitched to them and i am not quite begging on the streets but i have a few bills i'm definitely sweating rn, so "independently wealthy" hahaha no. the proposal does seem like it'd be a big time suck for me this year, though.

that's big time-suck, not big-time suck.

a Tom Waits 33.3 about why Big Time sucks

the world needs a 'celebrity skin' one.

oh my god yeah

yeah, i'd have written about that or POTI over live through this.

Just read the brand-new Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables one. I'm kinda blown away by how this is essentially "Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables: The Early Years" by Alex Ogg (which was just published LAST YEAR ferchristsakes) with an added sheen of (non-musical) historical colour. It's quite shameless. Unless there is something connecting the two works which I don't know about. It's just a complete rip-off! Plus Ogg's book has tons of artwork, labels, Winston Smith art etc. Don't get this 33 1/3 book - get the Ogg.

does it seem like a "derivative work"? that is, does it follow the ogg closely in what it says/structure even if it doesn't directly plagiarize the word choice, etc.? because ogg might have a lawsuit, frankly.

on another note: if i knew more about music i'd love to write a little book on "she's so unusual."

has someone written about the saturday night fever soundtrack? that'd be a good' un.

the movie and the bee gees and mainstream disco in general have been written about extensively, but i'd want to know more about the lesser-remembered stuff on that album like ralph macdonald's "calypso breakdown"

Seriously considering doing an Erotica pitch.

! ! !

it's probably the alcohol speaking but i'm thinking of pitching the indigo girls.

I'd want to do Blackout if it was even remotely worth it

Has Aaliyah's S/T been done. You could sneak that through under the Trojan Horse of "favourite album of every female indie artist or singer in an indie band."

yes but i don't want to pitch ANYTHING to them

Considering a pitch for the Fania All-Stars' Live at Yankee Stadium. Not because the album itself is world-shakingly great, but because a broader overview of 1970s New York salsa would be a lot of fun to write.

What were the successful pitches last time? I seem to recall the chosen books were a lot safer and more Mojo-esque than had previously been the case.

I would read the Fania book in the blink of an eyelid.

This was the final list from last time:
http://333sound.com/2014/06/03/14-new-33-13-titles-coming-2015-2016/

I was gonna say, I remember there being some weirdo titles in there last time. I mean, yeah, you got Metallica and Bitches Brew and Workingman's Dead and Psychocandy, but Hangin' Tough and Super Mario Bros are hardly the stuff of Mojo!

you know what i'd read --but which 33 1/3 is unlikely to ever publish? -- gary giddins on that bing crosby christmas LP.

never read any of these - which would y'all recommend? (definitely getting the Super Mario Bros. book)

whiney's Public Enemy and Doug's James Brown and Elizabeth's Abba are all good.

Would love to do one on Bill Dixon's Vade Mecum, seen as a game-changer in some circles, but those circles are likely too tiny to support/justify such a publication.

really? Bill Dixon less justifiable than Madness or J Dilla or Sigur Rós or fucking Elliott Smith?

Madness sold a lot of records and still play to big rooms

also they were great

Madness are great, but I think a book on Bill Dixon would be way more interesting!

that is probably true

i didn't mean to lump Madness & J Dilla in with the likes of Sigur Ros & Elliott Smith. just saying all these people are not necessarily more deserving of a book than the crew on Vade Mecum.

in my heart of hearts, if i could do anything i wanted, i would do a book on the history of the house sound of chicago box set and the book would just be reviews of each song. but i don't think these people do box sets.

i think it's a question of sales, no? sadly i imagine that only a tiny number of people are familiar with the music of bill dixon, esp. compared to the many people familiar with sigur ros etc. and the people who /are/ fans of bill dixon's music probably don't have huge overlap with the sort of 'indie' crowd that likely presents the main audience for these books. (that isn't to say that publishing a book on dixon wouldn't expose some people to his music who would otherwise be ignorant of it. but i doubt the numbers would look good enough for the publisher to take the risk.)

xpost

i could totally see them doing a 'canonical' box set like maybe james brown's 'star time'. but in the era of the "vinyl revival" i don't think that sort of thing has the same romance as a proper LP.

That was what I meant, yeah. Every Dixon fan would buy it, and a significant number of fans of that area of music in general would buy it, but those numbers probably aren't large enough for the publisher to consider it.

xp

(fwiw, there is a tremendous Dixon book out, Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon, but it's fairly pricey.)