Good books about music

I'm wondering about that Suicide bio from 2015. "Dream Baby Dream: Suicide: A New York Story by Kris Needs

Kris Needs is a former NME journalist and Zigzag editor. He has written several rock biographies about Blondie and George Clinton (both published by Omnibus Press), Joe Strummer and the Legend of the Clash, The Scream: The Music Myths and Misbehaviour of Primal Scream and Trash! The Complete New York Dolls. H. He is a regular contributor to Record Collector and Mojo.

xgau re recent books by Patti Smith and Carrie Brownstein, one of his best on books: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/lives-saved-lives-lost

Another fave: "PIoneer Days," on Paul Nelson and Ellen Willis (I still need to get the Willis collection Out of the Vinyl Deeps):
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bn/2011-11.php

Evis Aron Presley, by Alanna Nash with the Memphis Mafia

Currently reading Unterberger's very technical ( and therefore heaven for me ) book on the making of The Who's "Lifehouse"/"Quadrophenia". It basically asserts the genius of Pete Towshend, Solo Auteur.

xxxpost I've read the Suicide bio. It's excellent. Recommend it!

Gathering oF promises about psychedelia in Texas is pretty great.

& Always in Trouble the Oral History of ESP-Disk is great too. would like to read an lp by lp overview but what's here is very interesting.

Facing The Other Way on 4Ad by Martin Aston is very interesting too. I haven't read any other histories of the label if there are any so I don't have anything to compare it to. & I think the authopr said a couple of things on the Birthday party that i wouldn't agree with

Recommending a
collection put out by a friend, Jeff Pike's Index. (Long-distance friend--we've never met.) Jeff wrote for my fanzine 20 years ago, and also put his own, Tapeworm, where people were invited to make a mixtape for Jeff and send in some writing on whatever was on there. The book's about half music, with the rest split between movies and books. Novels--I vaguely remember what they are.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dAwLZ7sQHrM/VuleNlyNd0I/AAAAAAAAJs0/jt7c2VBdqYw5ZFc_urA2cRPduOFHefV7g/s400/INDEX.jpg

The audiobook of Miles Davis' autobiography is currently blowing me away. It's like he's in my car next to me discussing all of the jive motherfuckers he dealt with

à propos miles davis, "miles ahead", the new film by and with don cheadle about two days in his dark period in the arly 80s when he was lost in drugs and stuff is pretty good. it comes over really authentic and the music is of course excellent. there is a young trumpet player in there incarnated by keith stanfield who literally blows away miles davis who then wakes up and plays again.

the kindle version of viv albertine book is £1.09 on amazon.co.uk at the moment

Still slowly working my way through David Whiteis Southern Soul-Blues

Just read that Viv Albertine book over the weekend. I liked it a lot.

We briefly crossed paths back in her film-making days and I completely mis-read her, thinking she was a posh privileged person slumming it just from her appearance and manner. What a complex person she is.

This book sounds interesting to me.

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1281-tracing-the-rock-and-roll-race-problem/

That does sound like it could be worth a read.

finally got around to finishing the chrissie hynde book. her perspective is…different! it got kinda lite toward the end, skimming over what i imagine is a lot of time and information after the first pretenders album took off. her vision of akron isn't much like mine at all, that was kind of interesting. can't recommend it in the same way i'd recommend the viv albertine book.

xpost yeah I want to read Hamilton's book too. I hope that his referenced pointing out that Smokey Robinson couldn't be a "precursor" of Lennon (since they were the same age) doesn't incl. dismissal of possible influence---"If you can want, you can care" seems like a line that Lennon would dig---in terms of compression, if nothing else, but probably something else as well---and Dylan, who is a little over a year younger, declared Robinson "our greatest living poet" in the 60s. But that's another thing that makes me want to read it; the interview is pretty good too.

Billboard published a list of the 100 best music books ever. Unsurprisingly, 95 percent of them are about rock and pop music, and I think all of them are from the 20th or 21st Centuries.

Here are the titles I think should have been included, but weren't:

Joe Carducci, Rock and the Pop Narcotic and Enter Naomi
Albert Mudrian, Choosing Death
Charles Shaar Murray, Crosstown Traffic
Henry Rollins, Get in the Van
Valerie Wilmer, As Serious as Your Life
Michael Veal, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae and Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon
Peter Doyle, Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900-1960

Oh, and Greg Tate's Flyboy in the Buttermilk, of course (and probably Flyboy 2, though I haven't gotten a copy yet).

Need to have a proper read through, but I'd also add David Keenan's England's Hidden Reverse, Paul Bracewell's England is Mine and Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful.

And Billboard neglects Meltzer's first book, for chrissake, Frank Kogan's, Nik Cohn's Rock from the Beginning, Albert Murray's Stompin' the Blues, A. B. Spellman's Four Lives in the Bebop Business, Jack Chambers' Milestones, Robert Gordon's It Came from Memphis, Rob Bowman's book on Stax. I thought Keith Richards' book wasn't all that. But they did pick some good ones--Xgau's '70s book, Marcus' first one, of course, Girls Like Us, a fine bio of Carole King-Joni Mitchell-Carly Simon. But why no Stanley Booth? And why Tosches on Dean but not on Jerry Lee....?

http://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Claude-Rains-Casablanca.png

Ian Carr's bio of Miles and Nik Cohn's Awopbopaloobop. Lloyd Bradley's Bass Culture is a bizarre omission.

Yeah, Carr's book on Miles is good--hard to choose between it and Jack Chambers', though. Actually, Awopbopaloobop is Rock from the Beginning, just retitled and slightly rewritten (to no great effect if you ask me). Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta and Yuval Taylor and Hugh Barker's Faking It come to mind too.

An easy choice between Chambers and Carr's, for me - Chambers completely loses his shit when it comes to anything after Bitches Brew, and just hates all the '80s music flat-out. Carr doesn't love it all, but he gives it a fair shake at least.

Agree on Escaping the Delta. Wald's book on narcocorridos is great, too.

Just noticed - no David Toop! Haunted Weather at the very least should be on there.

At some point I'll stop whining and talk about what is on there.

"95 percent of them are about rock and pop music"

and written by u.s./u.k. people. about music from u.s./u.k.

also, as i mentioned on facebook, what i read from that seabrook book was sooooooooooooooo bad. like really bad. did the billboard people even read it?

also their blurb for hammer of the gods was gross. there was a lot of that kinda thing. dude, the crue were outlaws! such a dude-friendly list in general with a few exceptions that really do seem like they were put there so they could be the exceptions. not that they aren't worth putting there. probably. i don't read many music books....

(it is kinda more like one of those Esquire *music books every guy should own* things...)

OTM on all counts.

I like Ocean of Sound more than Haunted Weather, but yeah, Toop is unfairly overlooked in general, I think.

The Fred Goodman book, which does contain a handful of not-uninteresting anecdotes, is a fucking joke. The Springsteen sections read like Goodman never got over that one time Landau and Marsh left a flaming bag of poop on Goodman's doorstep.

No Whitney Balliett on jazz seems weird too. But I tend to honor the idiosyncratic-cranky, as in Stephen Calt on Skip James or Charles Keil's Music Grooves, which can be too much for a lot of people. And there are just a ton of great jazz books beside Art Pepper's autobio, like Count Basie with Albert Murray and David Rosenthal on hard bop and John Szwed on Sun Ra, it's almost like there should be a bunch of different lists that give you the picture of how diverse things really are. And no one remembers Mark Shipper's Paperback Writer, still the best book on the Beatles outside of Aesthetics of Rock.

I think an edition of Cook & Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz ought to be on that list.

Could someone do a poll on here?

I think an edition of Cook & Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz ought to be on that list.

Definitely - that or the Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley 'Jazz: The Essential Companion'.

No Hear Me Talkin' To Ya seems like a glaring-ish omission.

And no one remembers Mark Shipper's Paperback Writer, still the best book on the Beatles outside of Aesthetics of Rock
I remember loving that when it came out and wish I still had my copy! Trying to remember some of the songs from the reunion album "Disco Jesus"? "Captain Take Her To The Altar"? And then there was this running joke that went something like this: "In 1972, Ringo enjoyed a string of hit singles. First he enjoyed 'Rocket Man' by Elton John, then he enjoyed 'Mother and Child Reunion' by Paul Simon." Maybe I should just track down a copy.

Wondering if ilxor clemenza remembers this book as well.

Meanwhile I just got an email recommending I watch Ron Howard movie Eight Days A Week on Hulu.

I do (only book I ever remember Sedated getting compared to)--as I mentioned on another thread, I had a copy and, foolishly it looks like, gave it to a friend's brother who'd been trying to get hold of it. Copies in good shape are a little pricey on abe.com. (Never read it, by the way.)

My favorite title from the Mark Shipper Beatles book: "Yoko's Gone Broke-O."

http://rockcriticsarchives.com/bookshelf/shipper04.jpg

lol at "Ken Percent."

clemenza's pal weighs in

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F0JZ90BAAVI/UQ7PgWyIzzI/AAAAAAAAGog/X7uD7E8NhDU/s400/meat%2Bthe%2Bbeatles.tiff

This book sounds interesting to me.

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1281-tracing-the-rock-and-roll-race-problem/

Made it through this in about one day - definitely worth a read. It's interesting on Sam Cooke and his chameleon-like career, pointing out that in newspaper reports of his death he was called a "rock 'n roll singer" whereas by the time Hendrix died a black rock star was considered a strange anomaly. The book's good on the double standards applied to black musicians in the '60s - accusations of selling out, not being black enough, while no one said white musicians weren't being white enough, and so on. Also, the coverage of the trendy arguments over the meaning of the word "soul" in the late '60s is fascinating stuff. There are musicological comparisons of, for example, Erma Franklin's "Piece of My Heart" vs. Janis Joplin's version vs. Dusty Springfield's (I hadn't even known Dusty did the song), and Dusty's "Son of a Preacher Man" vs. Aretha's. The author seems to treat the matter of the white co-opting of rock 'n roll from blacks as a matter between musicians, their stylistic choices, and the reaction to those by critics/media. Which leads to what I think is missing from the book - discussion of the business side of the equation. I would think record company execs, A&R people, promoters, and even record sellers had a lot to do with how rock became white. The author includes telling quotes from Wilson Pickett about his music first appearing on Top 40 radio but later segregated on soul stations, and another quote from Miles Davis about record companies preferring to promote white faces, but these leads aren't explored by the author. Maybe I was expecting a bigger-picture study of segregation within the pop music business whereas this book has more of a narrow focus on matters of rock aesthetics and cultural give-and-take

"I would think record company execs, A&R people, promoters, and even record sellers had a lot to do with how rock became white."

i think it was just $$$. white kids loved R&B and they loved it even more when paler people sang it.

https://petegrafton.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/elvis-bb001.jpg

this page REALLY wants you to know that elvis was not a racist, but i do love the pictures and some of the old quotes.

http://photos.elvispresleymusic.com.au/images/50s/1956-july-1-leaving-the-hudson-theater.jpg

http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvis-not-racist.shtml

Ah, Elvis and B. B., they both bought their clothes at Lanksy's near Beale Street.