Good books about music

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.

http://photos.elvispresleymusic.com.au/images/celebrities/rufus-thomas-singer-comedian-elvis-presley.jpg

I want to read this

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1338-curtis-mayfield-finally-gets-a-definitive-biography-what-took-so-long/

written by Curtis' son Todd, with writer Travis Atria

and this too, someday:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/10/shock-and-awe-glam-rock-and-its-legacy-simon-reynolds-review-magic-of-the-popular

new Simon Reynolds book on glam rock and its legacy

Was wondering about that Curtis Mayfield book when I saw it out of the corner of my eye and couldn't figure out how I had missed it as surely it must have existed before.

Loved James McBride's Kill 'Em and Leave on James Brown. Chuck Eddy's Terminated for Reasons of Taste is worth it for his excellent Billy Joel piece, Oneida profile and his obit on Mindy McCready, all good. Plugging Ed Ward's Michael Bloomfield bio The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero, which I did the revisions and new material for, and the first volume of his history of rock 'n' roll, which is out in a couple weeks.

Thanks, Edd. Will check those out.

http://nodepression.com/article/who-was-james-brown-inside-james-mcbrides-kill-em-and-leave

Here's a review of the McBride book that also mentions the earlier RJ Smith bio, and notes how they are different, and both worth reading

this seems like it could be interesting

http://uprootbook.com/assets/images/uproot-book-3d-crop.png

Bought a cheap ebook of Delta Lady by Rita Coolidge and read through it quickly on Sunday. Well done, I recommend.

Tim Lawrence's brand new Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983 is excellent (so far), very dense with facts. While I was already familiar with most of the names of the main scene-makers involved, the author really gets deep into how exactly everybody met each other and how each big event inspired the next one. He glues the story together really well.

It's particularly interesting on how & when the formula of "DJs + MCs + breakers + graffiti = hip hop" got established (it was later than you would think, and probably not where you would think)

Really want to read Shock & awe by Simon Reynolds.

Leave us not forget this 'un: http://www.timlawrence.info/love-saves-the-day

Or this, which I didn't know about: Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92 http://www.timlawrence.info/hotyd-home

Speaking of Reynolds, has anyone read Retromania? Is it any good?

Retromania: Pop culture's Addiction to its Own Past. (New Simon Reynolds book).

Welp, I'm lazy. But thank you!

Shock & Awe is the first Reynolds book that I'm kind of "eh" about reading. Just don't see what could be added to the wealth of information about glam that's already out there.

it's good so far, but I've never read an entire book about glam so ymmv. it's a nice mix of history and criticism, certainly not as heavy on the latter as Retromania from what I recall, for better or worse. but it's interesting for instance to see Reynolds chart Bolan's transformation from woodland hippy to glam progenitor, and then step outside the narrative to ruminate on whether Bolan was just cynically faking the hippy thing before T. Rex or if he just happened to get really swept up and committed to these different styles as they emerged.

hold onto your dreams is a very good, very full, very entertaining bio. (with some flaws. lawrence has a tendency to drop large chunks of studio/personnel/recording date info into the main body of the text instead of footnotes/endnotes.) if nothing else it enlarges and complicates the picture of russell as an actual (sometimes petty, usually flawed, often inscrutable) human being who happened to make (very good) music, versus the deified portrait of a cipher/savant that's come to define him during the whole 21st century reissue/documentary/hagiography deal.

Thanks! Will def get that. This AR documentary is really good too; the basic movie is on youtube at the moment, I think, but DVD is worth getting for the bonus material etc. (trailer etc here)
http://www.arthurrussellmovie.com/

AR book is good and Strongo otm but Love Saves the Day is on another level and probably my favourite good book about music...in the end it's just a better story.

Just picked this up. Anyone read it yet?
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1280_720/images/live/p0/49/cf/p049cf74.jpg

Reallly getting in to the Flying Nun memoir In Love With these Times by label head Roger Shepherd.
Just read the chapter on the Fall record In A Hole which was released without full approval by the band since the test copy never made it over to the UK. So Shepherd got hit with a cease and desist when mark E Smith started seeing expensive import copies appearing in Manchester.

I need to grab the Gordons lp, had the e.p a long time back and it was great. Also finally need a physical copy of the Clean's Anthology. Will probably need other stuff as I go on.

Pretty good:

http://03fcd67fd51850d3ba6b-6cb392df11a341bce8c76b1898d0c030.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/large/9780/5930/9780593074862.jpg

(North American cover's slightly different.)

1972's always been my favourite year for pop music, but Hepworth makes a good case for '71 as the peak year for albums, starting with Never a Dull Moment, Riot, Who's Next, Tapestry, Sticky Fingers, and Hunky Dory. He has a habit of doubling back again and again--"Wasn't that already covered?" I'd catch myself thinking throughout--and I didn't like it as much as David Browne's 1970 book, Fire and Rain. Good bit near the end, something worth taking note of and thinking about:

"Most of the musicians who became superstars in 1971...were slightly older than rock and roll itself, and therefore they could remember a world before it existed."

Try that again (North American cover):

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/never%20a%20dull%20moment_zpssn2s9zga.jpg

Don't know about 'good' but Peter hook's new order book is 99p on Amazon today

^ uk

NB Kindle not paper

sorry, yes. it's a kindle daily deal.

He's dislikable and candid in equal measure, of course it's 95% contrarian against everything to do with Barney who is the focus of most of the ire, however it's not a bad read for all that.

https://www.palazzoeditions.com/psychedelia
this just got released psychedelia by Richard Morton Jack.
Looks like it should be pretty interesting. That website has extracts you can look at.
But I think Amazon currently has it cheaper.

https://www.press.umich.edu/23532/before_motown

^this book really is good, although I think I found a mistake in it

What mistake?

Says Paul Chambers and Doug Watkins were cousins. Seems like they only pretended to be.

Although some say cousins by marriage

It's no secret that Nile Rodgers' autobio is good stuff but I was still surprised, not by the tons of interesting anecdotes but by the generosity of spirit, this Zen like gratitude from an artist who had such a tragic childhood

Not out till October, but will read this for sure.

http://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51UmoDX0Z1L.jpg

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/sticky%20fingers_zpsymwf2una.jpg

uh the title

I don't get that either--just creates confusion (should have lifted a line from the Dr. Hook song). Don't know how accurate it was, but I liked Robert Draper's Rolling Stone history from many years ago.

I'm kinda curious about Shake It Up, the new Library of America collection co-edited by Jonathan Lethem. It does look a little too canon-heavy in its subject matter for my tastes, and they are definitely trying to cover all the bases in terms of (American) names, but I trust that I good number of these pieces are at least worth reading:

https://www.loa.org/books/544-shake-it-up-great-american-writing-on-rock-and-pop-from-elvis-to-jay-z

man Lethem is so useless these days

David Weigel's book about prog, The Show That Never Ends, is a lot of fun. Out next month.

Scott Miller, the late frontman for Game Theory, compiled his personal best-of singles lists from 1957 to 2011 into a book called Music: What Happened that is pretty slight, but really struck me at the time i bought it on a whim and has stuck with me for the past few years. great, kind writer, even though his and my tastes don't align that much.

I'm in the middle of reading that Scott Miller book. Still in the 60s but I like the focusing on the ten-songs-a-year aspect of the book's structure.