Good books about music

The best music book I've ever read was a list of the 100 "best" rock singles by Paul Williams, the one who ran rock zines in the '60's, but it seems to be long out of print. I disagree with his taste in many places, but the prose itself is awesome.

(if that hasn't been mentioned yet)

"New Orleans Rhythm and Blues" by John Broven is another great one, you'll learn everything you need to know about all those guys and then some.

As I did discuss somewhere else, Castro's book on bossa nova is magnificent. From the same publisher/editor, it's a long 'un but it's equally magnificient, Sublette's "Cuba and Its Music" is just essential, as a history of the island and as a much-needed corrective to the conventional "origins of rock and roll" theory you always hear...

I've been re-reading Alma Guillemoprieto's "Samba" recently too--fine reportage on the samba schools in Brazil. I'm a fan of her work.

Whatever it's called these days--"Rock from the Beginning" or "Awopbopaloobop"--by Nik Cohn, is still to my mind the single best and most stylish book ever written on rock up until 1968 or so.

David Henderson's "Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age" (may have a new title by now, I have an old edition) is still probably the best book on Jimi Hendrix.

I second the above recommends on Guralnick, and yeah, his Elvis bios, while evenhanded and thorough, are actually...a bit boring somehow...something missing there...altho the bit on EP recording with Chips Moman is one of the best pieces of writing on Presley I know.

Steve Calt's book on Skip James, now OP and probably impossible to find, is certainly worth tracking down...as is his book on Charley Patton. Wrong-headed and cranky as they can be, they certainly are a nice alternative look at blooze culture and its discontents. (Steve's a friend of mine, and ailing these days, so help him out...)

Rob Bowman's book on Stax is exhaustive and very well done.

I also recommend, for lite reading that's of very high quality (and I generally don't like police/crime/novels), anything by George Pelecanos, who writes about D.C. Great fiction in the crime/police vein, very hip, uses music as reference/culture extremely well. I mean, "King Suckerman" is one of the few novels I know that references, intelligently, both "Clear Spot" and Big Star's "Radio City," so of course I like.

My fave Tosches is "Hellfire," his Jerry Lee bio, and second is "Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll." I think he lost the beam a bit with "Where Dead Voices Gather," ostensibly a book about Emmett Miller but really a Tosches-ean screed agin the modren world or something...nice bits but self-indulgent in a bad way.

And of course Meltzer's "Aesthetics of Rock" and his Da Capo reader "Whore Just Like the Rest," which is some of my favorite stuff ever. The man sets a bad example and I'm glad of it.

I'd think either of their final two albums would make a dynamite edition in the 33 1/3 series

I was skeptical about the premise of "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk" by Steven Lee Beeber, but the book won me over. Interesting stuff on NY and the Jewish cultural backgrounds of Joey Ramone, Tommy Ramone, Lenny Kaye, Chris Stein, Richard Hell, Alan Vega, manager Danny Fields, Lou Reed, members of the Dictators, Jonathan Richman, Hilly Kristal, various photographers, and others (plus some Jews from elsewhere including Malcolm McClaren). Not in total agreement with his descriptions of punk elsewhere, but otherwise pretty impressive. I'd think some of the childhood background stuff would be interesting to any fan of the music even if they're not a member of the Jewish tribe.

I meant his descriptions of "punk elsewhere from NY"

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Zhn1Q8Y%2BL._AA240_.jpg
^^^
that realness

“Brian Coleman’s writing is a lot like the albums he covers: direct, uproarious and more than six-fifths genius.”
– Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop and editor of Total Chaos

“Check the Technique is a truly essential rap history… epic, enthralling and long-overdue…”
– Ronin Ro, author of Raising Hell and Have Gun Will Travel

“That realness“
– BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, internet personality

It is a pretty awesome book. Raw he gives it to you, plenty of trivia.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Bill Graham Presents...he's a real SOB but the book is hilarious.

Also, next to impossible to find, but these days I'm sure someone will find it, John Mendolssohn's The Kinks Kronikles, a breezy and very funny self-deprecating look at the Kinks.

And though I haven't read it in years (and therefore don't hold me completely accountable), England's Dreaming by Jon Savage.

I also second, third, whatever we're up to...on the Julian Cope Head On and Possessed. And Nick Tosches' Dino, Hellfire and Country...(for fiction people, his In the Hands of Dante was bizarre...the half that dealt with Nick as Nick was fascinating, whereas I couldn't follow the other narrative that was going on...either because I'm simple or because it didn't capture my interest...)

the updated rockcritics.com website now lists a bunch of books

In The Country of Country
Songwriters on Songwriting

Rate End Of Year Music Books As: Worth Buying, Worth Taking Out Of Library, Worth Browsing in Store, Wouldn't Touch With A Tenpole Tudor

Backbeat: Earl Palmer's Story, by Tony Scherman (oral history/autobiography of the New Orleans drummer; had me at "Louis Armstrong was a pimp"...)

Finally read this. Very entertaining although frustrating as well. Palmer very casually and hurriedly describes his efforts behind the kit for Little Richard, Fats Domino and other early rockers. He's much more proud of his time playing jazz or doing movie and cartoon soundtracks.

Dark Stuff has got to be one of my favorite books ever. Brilliant.

Ned Sublette book reccommendations in his e-mail

Thomas Brothers’s Louis Armstrong's New Orleans (from 2006) might be the best music book I read this year. It contains as good an attempt as I’ve seen to reconstruct – albeit with a certain amount of necessary speculation – the social milieu and the process by which jazz emerged, with a coherent account of the uptown-vs.-downtown interplay. It’s a richly detailed portrait: “New Orleans during Armstrong’s childhood was overflowing with African-American venues for music. By one count there were ten to fifteen dance halls uptown alone; between them they produced a function every night. A step or two below the dance halls were the ubiquitous honky tonks. Then there were the outdoor venues of lawn parties in the city and dancing pavilions at Lake Pontchartrain, where, on Sundays, up to twenty bands took position for daylong performances.”

I also got around to Rick Coleman’s Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll (from 2007), an essential work of rock and roll history that fills in some necessary gaps in reconstructing the emergence of that other great music that came out of New Orleans.

Co-sign on Louis Armstrong's New Orleans - although should be read in conjunction with the James Lincoln Collier Biog. for a real sense of LA as an 'Artist'.

Turn the Beat Around - Peter Shapiro
Words and Music - Paul Morley

did anyone read the willie mctell book? i started it in the lrb shop once and it looked great.

Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes - In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray does look good

that's the one. the prologue or first chapter is mctell stumbling around a parking lot/makeout spot serenading teenagers for change, as a prelude to being recorded again for the library of congress etc, or so i remember. it read really nicely too - the guy says it isn't a muso biography about the ins and outs, but a portrait of him as a man, for people who'd never heard of him. i'm sure this thread is full of guralnick love, but it's definitely nice getting the whole portrait of a place, social context kinda thing, like in dream boogie.

Chic and the Politics of Disco.
Turn the beat around.

Both get under the surface of Disco. The Second one has a great discography of obscurities that I'm steadily working through.

Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective

This is both hilarious and informative.

has anyone read "appetite for self-destruction," steve knopper's book on the decline of the music industry? i'm asking cause they interviewed him on lol pitchfork today and i'm intrigued.

No recommendations on this thread, but I know the ILM massive has been loudly proclaiming their love for Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise and after finishing it last night I have to join the chorus. Such a well written exploration of the 20th century composers. Outside of my love for Reich, I had very little interest in the subject, but it kept me engrossed from start to finish and left me with a long list of composers to check out.

I do think he's absolutely right about what hip-hop's significance is (paraphrasing, renders African-Americans "all but invisible" in a cultural sense)

^deej on tate upthread. anyone know where i can read more on this? i'm quite intrigued.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-12-28/news/hiphop-turns-30/3

Greg Tate's article (he is/was a longtime Village Voice writer). Google "Tate and 30th anniversary hiphop" and you'll find others at other sites commenting on Tate's article. As far as background, you might also want to read Tate's book "Flyboy in the Buttermilk"

xpost - Wow thanks for the tip on the Alex Ross book. I'll be picking that one up today.

There's a thread on just that book (the Ross one)also

cheers curmudgeon :)

i'm surprised no one's mentioned eno's "a year with swollen appendices" which is as odd, cerebral and interesting as his music. also "the manual: how to have a number one the easy way" is, as it states, a manual (rather than a book) but it's still a great read - even better if you're actually want to have a number one hit, as it really does tell you exactly how to go about it.

"the manual" is by the klf btw

"A Year With Swollen Appendices" is fun. There's a new book about Brian Eno, "On Some Faraway Beach," which I just ordered so I'll try and remember to discuss it after it's been read.

Read On Some Faraway Beach recently. Good, although focuses on the well known/critically aclaimed period a lot which is what you'd expect. Read shortly after Remake/Remodel so it was interesting to see the same events overlap in the two books. Not any real differences in the facts which made me think both authors had done their research well.

i looked at that knopper book at barnes and nobel and was hesitant to pick up because there's like 600 rushed-out books on how downloading killed the music industry. Is his legit?

from the pitchfork interview, it sounded like it. he interviewed a lot of ppl

well, i own it now so i'll let you know. apparently he did a ton of interviews (like 200+) so it should be well-researched if nothing else.

I recently came across a copy of Music for Vagabonds - The Tuxedomoon Chronicles. It's quite chunky, and even though I only know a few assorted tracks by them, I was tempted by what looks to be a good overview of the SF scene at the time, so probably a fair bit about the Residents, Factrix, Patrick Miller aka Minimal Man, etc.

Anyone read it??

Oh, and I have to recommend Diary of a Punk by Mike Hudson of the Pagans.

From Ned Sublette's e-mail newsletter:

elijah wald will be appearing monday (22) at bookcourt in brooklyn, 163
court street, http://www.bookcourt.org/ to promote his fine new book with
the bait-and-switch title of "how the beatles destroyed rock and roll: an
alternative history of american popular music." earlier this week, elijah
was a guest for what turned out to be one of the livelier episodes of john
schaefer's "soundcheck" on wnyc-fm. you can hear it at
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2009/06/17

Elijah's book sounds interesting even though some of the non-rock that he's writing about from the 50s and stuff doesn't interest me alot.

That's me not Ned talking about the 50s pop that is covered in part in Elijah's book.

i looked at that knopper book at barnes and nobel and was hesitant to pick up because there's like 600 rushed-out books on how downloading killed the music industry. Is his legit?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, May 27, 2009 9:35 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

just finished it and the answer is....sort of. i think he needed about 200 more pages (book is like 250). he's torn between writing a serious history of the music industry between 1980 and the present, and more of an entertaining, you are there, storyteller approach. the latter is obvs attractive to him 'cause he interviewed all these dudes who i'm sure are interesting and charismatic as hell, but it means he has trouble tying everything together. it's more choppy than it needs to be. i would've preferred something more along the lines of "love saves the day" which was also exhaustively researched (to the point of information overload), but presents a much more compelling and coherent history.

knopper can't do this for a couple reasons. first, several dudes who are still in the industry refused to talk to him, and second, napster and ipod/itunes, which are two of his key chapters, were already gotten to in a more complete way by other books, which he leans on heavily for narrative. that would be ok if his own book was more substantial.

all that being said, it's an entertaining read and i'd recommend as a paperback or library book. but it will not go down as the definitive work on this topic.

has anybody read greg kot's ripped: how the wired generation revolutionized music? guessing it's similar to knopper's book.