Good books about music

from David Byrne's newsletter:
Over the last few years I wrote a book that McSweeney’s is publishing in North America and Canongate in the UK. It’s called How Music Works and that’s what it's about. It examines how music is affected by a multitude of contexts—financial, technical, social, and architectural. There are personal anecdotes and pictures and some pie charts, as well.
This book in all its formats—physical, enhanced eBook, eBook, and audio book—will come out on September 12 in the US (and September 13 in the UK). The physical book is truly a lovely object—the McSweeney’s folks are known for this—so if you like to touch things, this is your best option. It’s large and slightly squishy. I gave my mom my advance author's copy for her birthday. The enhanced eBook has short audio snippets embedded to help you understand the kind of music played at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, for example… but you can’t touch an eBook. Each format caters to different senses.
David Byrne
Western Chelsea

Publisher's Weekly gives the advance word:
How Music Works
David Byrne. McSweeney’s, $32 (352p) ISBN 978-1-936365-53-1
In this fascinating meditation, Talking Heads frontman Byrne (Bicycle Diaries) explores how social and practical context, more than individual authorship, shaped music making in history and his own career. Touching on everything from bird-song and mirror neurons to the scene at CBGB, his wide-ranging treatment analyzes the effect of music venues (he theorizes that terrible stadium acoustics bias arena-rock bands toward plodding anthems), technology (sound recording induced opera singers to add vibrato), finances (he proffers balance sheets for two of his albums), and much else on the music we hear. He draws extensively from his own experiences, as his music shifted from the minimalism of early Talking Heads (“no ‘oh, babys’ or words that I wouldn’t use in in daily speech”) to complex theatricality; his chapters on Heads recording sessions are some of the most insightful accounts of musical creativity yet penned. The result is a surprising challenge to the romantic cliché of musical genius: rather than an upwelling of authentic feeling, he insists, “making music is like constructing a machine whose function is to dredge up emotions in performer and listener.” Byrne’s erudite and entertaining prose reveals him to be a true musical intellectual, with serious and revealing things to say about his art. Photos. (Sept. 21)
Reviewed on: 07/23/2012
Other Formats
Hardcover - 978-0-85786-250-1
Mo

hmmmm. Wonder if he has any catty comments about his former bandmates

He was the worst part of the band, by far.

At least as a performer.

http://i55.tinypic.com/fu9mqf.gif

lol! byrne was a pretty amazing performer imo.

Just reading the Pete Brown autobio White Rooms and Imaginary Westerns which is pretty interesting. Even if he does dismiss punk wholesale and Keith Richards too.
Have always enjoyed the music PB made at the turn of the 70s with Battered Ornaments and Piblokto! not heard the rest.

Oh yeah , neglected to mention that main reason I was looking at this list was to see waht had been said about Bob Mould's autobio which i just found a cheap hardback copy of. Thought I'd seen it slagged elsewhere but I do like Husker du's psychedelic era at least.
Funny sat down to read the intro/1st chapter while I had to wait somewhere earlier and wound up with Husker Du coming on my walkman as the next track on its random playlist.

Bob Mould comes off as the biggest dickhead in the universe in his autobio

hmmmm. Wonder if he has any catty comments about his former bandmates

― curmudgeon

I was referring to Byrne once saying that getting the Talking Heads back together would be like a high school reunion, and he doesn't like those. I don't think he was too crazy about Frantz and Weymouth touring as "The Heads" . They made fun of he and Eno once upon a time too for dressing alike or something.

“making music is like constructing a machine whose function is to dredge up emotions in performer and listener.”

this quote doesn't exactly sell me on his prose

Definitely would not make me want to check out someone's music either. I don't think I've ever had the feeling of emotion being dredged up from within me, while listening to music, and it doesn't sound appealing.

xpost Mould's autobiography does him no favours at all. Completely humourless and always seeking to lay blame.

Just read two forthcoming ones: Peter Hook's Joy Division memoir, and Barney Hoskyns' Led Zep oral history. Too much of the latter relies on secondhand quotes sourced from other interviews, which means you can never quite trust the context in which he's using the quotes (for instance, a section of Plant on Richard Coles comes from a 1985 interview in which he's been asked about Cole's co-operation with Hammer of the Gods). What comes out of it most plainly is what a revolting man Jimmy Page must be. And for all that Plant is the de facto good guy, he still colluded in all the awfulness. Lots of stuff about the "light and dark" of Led Zep, but the darkness really means there were a load of wankers in the Zep camp, not that Page made a pact with Satan.

Have to say I've enjoyed reading the Mould so far, but he's still in Husker du.
Have disagreed with some comments and he does already seem to offload on Grant a bit & exclude Greg.

Wondering how many people would think the 1984 line-up of Black Flag was decidedly not their best line-up. I really love the Marquee set anyway.

Prose is not Byrne's first language, and "dredge" is an off-putting term, but his main point is you're not supposed to *feel* like your emotional response to music is being dredged, extracted, extruded, as so much "sensitive" music so often does make me feel. I suspect that he associates such words with his music, because that may be how he hears it, at least sometimes. An interviewer asked Plant what it was like to listen to Zep records, and Plant said he would just think about how much work went into a certain track, a certain part of a certain track. Especially likely for Byrne listening to Talking Heads albums, considering the strife with Tina--check the book The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, or any number of comments she's made elsewhere. I've gotten David Byrne's Journal as email newsletter for quite a while, so I'm pretty used to his style, but he's pretty thoughtful anyway, can see how his book might be good.

Also, not to put it all on Tina, the creative process does involve so much dredging, especially with the pressure of deadlines, money, making sense of you're trying to do--making it clear enough to yourself, and whoever is necessarily involved.

Skimmed parts of the Bob Mould and the Byrne books in a bookstore; I think I will get and read RJ Smith's James Brown bio, first.

the byrne book is such a joy to read.

got the new ted gioia book Jazz Standards from the library -- really entertaining stories behind a couple hundred classics. occasionally drifts into stuff that's more directed at musicians, but for the most part very readable.
Agreed. Loving this book. It's making me hunt down at lot of recordings I don't have, too (which is always a good sign). There's a Spotify playlist of all the recommendations here: http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/161618065.html#!page=0&pageSize=10&sort=newestfirst

"Light And Shade" - new book of Jimmy Page interviews (with oral history from assorted others including Yardbird Chris Dreja) is - so far - an entertaining and fascinating read. Just getting to the formation of Led Zeppelin part now. Lots of detail via
Page about background stuff in his session and Yardbird days (gear, context, technique) - light on rock star bs.

Jazz Standards is great. I wish I'd had that Spotify playlist while I was reading it!

New Mary Wells bio out by a guy named Peter Benjaminson (his first book?). I think it's just out in hardcover.

Guess not - he wrote a bio of Florence Ballard, too.

just saw a book called TUNES a comic book history of rocknroll. only skimmed it briefly, kind of weird selection of artists and a bit too wordy for a "comic book", but the iggy section was cool......

While finally reading Byrne's How Music Works, I just now checked robertchristgau.com for back-in-the-day descriptions of T. Heads and Byrne's albums and shows, also came across this vintage stash of succinct, substantial rock bio reviews (his recent reviews of Lennon's letters and a new Cohen bio are appealing too)http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bkrev/rockbios-83.php

As posted on the thread devoted to (mostly complaints about) Neil's Waging Heavy Peace--A Hippie Dream, I dug it (in a not entirely different way than Byrne's book, come to think about it)

Those two, plus Chronicles, are the most refreshing books by rockers I've come across (although also like what I've read of Keith Richard/Richards and Ian Hunter's Diary of A Rock Star)

just saw a book called TUNES a comic book history of rocknroll. only skimmed it briefly, kind of weird selection of artists and a bit too wordy for a "comic book", but the iggy section was cool......

The Sebastian Lumineau "Ramones" story in there is the best.

Also Veloso's Tropical Truths--here's hoping for books by Tom Ze and Rita Lee as well.

anything good about the cure? the only thing I've found that's available on nook is "Never Enough" by Jeff Apter, which looks like it's probably awful.

Just recently read The Beach Boys' bio Heroes and Villains which I've seen recommended on a couple different threads around here. Yes, it's a tabloid-style trashy tell-all, but if you have a soft spot for that kind of stuff, it's essential reading. Also if you are not aware of how fucked up these guys were, it's pretty eye-opening.

Ten Imaginary Years by Steve Sutherland seems to get a few good reviews on Amazon.

xp

Just finished Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor's Faking It, which I'd recommend. The premise is hardly startling--that the Grateful Dead/R.E.M./Wilco should not be accorded points for a perceived authenticity lacking in the Archies/Milli Vanilli/Carly Rae Jepsen--and lots of people have made the same argument before them (myself included, I'd like to think). But they approach it in a really evenhanded way; it's not some pleased-with-itself polemic that tries to sell you on the (equally false) idea that the Archies are inherently better than the Grateful Dead. The tone of the book gets it exactly right, I think.

I just read "Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group" by dear old Ian Svenonius. It's a set of reflections on the dynamics of rock 'n' roll groups as handed down by rock 'n' roll greats (alive & dead) in a series of seances, yes it is. Sitting somewhere in a triangle of vulgar Gramsci, vulgar Adorno and vulgar Chuck Eddy, I reckon. Siultaneously right and wrong the whole way through. I laughed and laughed.

re Never Enough, the first few pages compares a 1985 cure concert crowd to a britney spears crowd, which tells you a lot about where this author is coming from. nonetheless, i'm plodding through it since it apparently quotes extensively from Ten Imaginary Years, which is not itself available on ebook.

Just ordered Luke Haines' Post Everything after storming through Bad Vibes in about a day. Can't wait.

Been dipping into Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneers by John Broven and it is awesome. Full of great detail. Covers all the usual suspects snappily- Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, Syd Nathan, Berry Gordy etc- and lots of fresh first-hand stories of everybody else betwixt and between.

Time for new screenname in honor of Syd Nathan and the Bihari brothers.

This could be good

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/03/toure_prince_i_would_die_4_u.php

Comes out this week.

I'd like to read a really good Prince book. Ronin Ro's was strictly business and Matt Thorne's was like a printout of a tediously obsessive blog.

I have assumed that SAF publishing went under some time ago since books from the imprint turn up on Amazon etc for increasingly rising prices.
I just looked at their webbsite and they have a Copyright footer for 2007 which presumably means it hasn't been updated since then, still says there are Xmas special offers happening too.

Anyway, there were some fantastic book titles through the imprint. A lot of stuff on head type music especially from the early 70s,though some late 60s Gong, Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, Incredible String band all had titles out under the imprint as did Shilrley Collins.

I've just been thinking recently that with those great titles currently in limbo it would be great to get some other label to pick them up. Or to put that another way, one might think that there would be a market for the books so some other imprint would want to pick them up.
Just wondering what the likelihood of that happeningmight be. Anybody on here have any idea what the story actually is on these? Or does having missed them by a few years now mean they have permanently been missed unless one gets lucky with charity shop finds or possibly gets rich enough to afford the online prices?

Another book on Stax is out. Memphis writer Robert Gordon's book
Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

Been dipping into it today since it came from Memphis last night.

Ha!

Read a critic/FB friend raving positively about the Gordon Stax book, but saw someone on Yahoo southern soul email list criticizing it and saying stick with the Bowman Stax book

Just wondering what the likelihood of that happeningmight be. Anybody on here have any idea what the story actually is on these? Or does having missed them by a few years now mean they have permanently been missed unless one gets lucky with charity shop finds or possibly gets rich enough to afford the online prices?

David Keenan's C93/NWW/Coil book England's Hidden Reverse is very rare now and commands high collector prices. Strange Attractor have picked it up though and are publishing a revised version next May. The other really good SAF book is Charles Neal's Tape Delay which is a collection of interviews with various industrial and post-industrial types. That one remains out of print but can be found relatively cheaply second-hand.

currently reading love saves the day. content really interesting but dude is such an awful writer. he was a grad student when he wrote it, right? some of the moments where he piles on the puns, jeez

David Keenan's C93/NWW/Coil book England's Hidden Reverse is very rare now and commands high collector prices. Strange Attractor have picked it up though and are publishing a revised version next May.

That's great news, gonna buy the shit outta that.

Cornily enough i am now reading Victor Bockris' lou reed book Transformer and digging it a lot so far.

Haven't got too far into the Gordon but never imagined it would replace the Bowman. Just figured it would be a slightly different angle on the same materials perhaps with some more hit-or-miss forays into local color that wouldn't have made it into Bowman's book.