Good books about music

Electronic and Experimental Music by Thom Holmes
also; Wireless Imagination (d kahn / g whitehead)
Paul Griffiths - A Concise History of Avant-Garde Music
Paul Griffiths - Modern Music And Beyond
Curtis Roads
William Duckworth : Talking Music
Cage: Silence / A Year From Monday
Cage / Feldman: Conversations
James Tenney : Meta / Hodos
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stockhausen on Music (Compiled by R Maconie)
Sound By Artists (ed. Dan Lander)
Chris Cutler - File Under Popular
Attali - Noise
Russolo - The Art of Noises (get a hold of a copy any way you can)
Trevor Wishart - On Sonic Art
Douglas Kahn - Noise Water Meat

i think the attali book is lousy at book length—it's a good short polemic idea bulked out to a contradictory nonsense schema—and wireless imagination is patchy (which is a pity, cz it's a great idea for an essay collection)

The Elvis Guralnick books - again, you don't have to care about the subject matter to enjoy them (personally, I was so-so on Elvis before readin' 'em, am now an unabashed fan), and the second one is one hell of a car wreck: the descent starts like twenty pages into it, and by the end of the book you can't even feel sorry for the guy anymore, you just wonder why he hasn't kicked the bucket already.

"Where Did Our Love Go?" by Nelson George has some nice anecdotes, and is probably the best book on Motown around, tho to be frank I didn't learn all that much from it.

"The Heart Of Rock & Soul" seconded, and throw in the "New Book Of Rock Lists" too, if only for the sheer joy of reading the sentence "Tragedy The Intelligent Hoodlum Lists..." over and over again (not that book of rock jokes, tho, that was awful.) And also "Fortunate Son: The Best Of Dave Marsh", great stuff on Elvis, Muddy Waters, latino rock, etc.

I remember reading Maryiln Manson's "The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell" in my early teens and being surprised by how good it was (I'd always loathed the guy's music.) Dunno if it holds up.

"Sweet Soul Music", hell yeah.

I've read the entirety of Christgau's consumer guide online, and there's some great, great stuff there. So the books are recommended, too.

yay I've been wanting to read that one for a while!

adding to my prev post here leroi jones 'blues people' which I just finished this morning: most gd bks on music accept that they aren't just abt notes and chords.

You mean it's not long enough? I loved the book. Should re-read it...

I also loved the Lexicon Devil (bio on Darby Crash) though it's certainly not essential...

the ONLY thing wrong with JMC's line is that he somewhat slightly seems to accept the assumption that the social dimension—the "dance"—isn’t also always part of all music in the West (though he does this in the context of getting ppl to see/hear/look for the fuller sense of the meaning of music): taking his insights abt Africa (Ghana, to be more accurate) and applying them everywhere else is revelatory

Most of it is a charming telling of him learning African drumming in Ghana

And I hope someone someday undertakes a lengthy Sabbath bio.

Also, the massive "The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes are Hungry for the Prize" by David Cavanagh would certainly be interesting to anyone with a major Creation bent. If you aren't down for hundreds of pages detailing the exploits of Biff Bang Pow and The Orange Juice, skip to the midsection for a compelling account of the Loveless miracle/ catastrophe.

The book works as both:

a) an academic (in content, but not in style) explanation of sampling in recorded music (Beadle devotes a chapter each to the careers of PWEI and The KLF),

and

b) an extended thinkpiece on pop music, dance music, and the populism that bridges both.

It's aged fairly well, having been written in 1993, and Beadle's tone is that of scholarly but uncondescending curiousity - a curious granddad who enjoys this newfangled music and wished to legitimize it to his peers. I've almost worn my copy out.

As noted, "The Dark Stuff" and both Lester Bangs anthologies are both totally essential reading.

milton, has "modern music and beyond" been updated at all?:

yes, there's a new version that tackles the 80's/90's and it's not bad, for him Boulez is the culmination so his take on post-1970 is a bit weird. but good. the early to mid 20th century sections remain the best, brought me up to speed on a lot of the basics very quickly. he writes clearly, you don't need to agree with him to figure out which pieces you're interested in actually hearing.

the second edition of Electronic and Experimental Music by Thom Holmes -- I was blown away by that, a fantastic overview. A great reference book. Though again, rocky once it gets to the 90's and interesting work starts to happen in pop.

Audio Culture is more of an epiphany-prompter, the number of ideas per page in that book... most of the featured texts are from the musicians. not the musicologists.

Talking Music by Duckworth -- Duckworth himself is an excellent composer. Probably the best collection of interviews with those composers I've ever read, and organized like a narrative of late 20th century musical development, especially the Young > Riley > Reich > Glass section -- those four nearly read like a soap opera

and the Cage books are just gifts. especially Silence & A Year From Monday, & Kostelanetz' 'John Cage: An Anthology' (xeroxed hand on cover) & the Feldman conversations (which are online at Internet Archive but Lovely Music is still selling copies of the book)

But on the other hand, the Clash book by their roadie, A Riot of Our Own, is a hilarious good read...

(I also enjoyed Last Gang In Town but that feels like another one for obsessive fans like myself.)

What really popped my eyes open was him and Mr Cooke having to sing naked in front of some southern sheriffs. Sad...very sad...

I never knew of this East book! I must have it.

Cavanagh's Creation book seconded. Also, Chris Heath's books on the Pet Shop Boys and Marc Almond's two autobiographical volumes.

if the new Carducci reissue has another rewrite/edit that reins it in a bit then it could be pretty great

TOTALLY AVOID the reissue of A Riot Of Our Own, all the Ray Lowry illustrations taht are at least 40% of the reason for purchase have been rendered completely illegible by editorial or pre-press morons, and look like faxes of blown-up thumbnails of low-res .gifs of the pictures as they appeared in the original

Sniffin Glue Anthology (don't know what the book is called; I have an original truncated version entitled The Bible); Brit punk fanzine '70s, interviews and rants, earnest, petulant, funny.
Francis J. Child ed. English and Scottish Popular Ballads (I've got an abridged version of which I've read 1/20th).
The Portable Ring Lardner and/or Shut Up, He Explained, for his radio reviews c. 1930. The first rock critic, proto-Meltzer.
Gene Fowler Schnozzola, bio of Jimmy Durante, haven't read this yet, but the title and blurb are promising: "The lusty saga of an uninhibited era - from the Coney Island honky tonks, through the wild and roaring twenties, to the fabulous role of clown prince of video."
Tom Wolfe The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Craig MacGregor, ed. Bob Dylan: A Retrospective, lots of early reviews, articles, interviews, love and hate, back when Dylan was the Eminem of "rock."
Charlie Gillett The Sound of the City
Bill C. Malone Country Music USA
John Morthland The Best of Country Music
Richard Meltzer A Whore Just Like the Rest
John Storm Roberts Black Music of Two Worlds
John Storm Roberts The Latin Tinge
Martin Williams The Jazz Tradition
Peter van der Merwe Origin of the Popular Style, a great book of music technical theory (like, what the musicians actually played) on the sources of 20th century popular music

Very hard to put down.

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.

Totally stoked here, I live in the states and don’t think it’s coming out here for several months but ima get it from the uk

Subject matter of no interest (shoegaze suuuuucks) but Reynolds is always good.

It seems to cast a pretty wide net, definitely not just shoegaze. Galaxie 500, Liz Phair, and...Royal Trux?

There's a neat little "fanzine" bonus that's not available with the US edition, so I'll be ordering from the UK as well.

Just got Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music by Barry Walters, saw it at the store and bands in the chapter headings made it an instant buy, but it's so big and heavy I haven't taken it to a restaurant to read it yet!

been reading it on my phone.

Just saw it on the front table at the former UWS Shakespeare & Company that is now a Strand but did not buy.

Any thoughts on Major Labels by Kelefa Sanneh? I've listened to a handful of podcasts he's appeared on and really enjoyed how he discusses music history.

"Some may be turned off by how he's seemingly able to find something to like (or at least excuse) in nearly every corner of popular music"

I've really appreciate this, in other things he's done. I'm getting old and soft but I've lost all interest in critic-as-hater writings, and his ability to communicate enthusiasm for music I don't necessarily like or that may not even be good to begin with is refreshing.

I found a discarded copy of it on the street, picked it up and read it, but frankly nothing about it stuck with me. Not that it's not well-informed, but I guess by and large the insights in it were not revelatory to me.

I enjoyed the combination of music history and personal connection in Major Labels.

maybe not "revelatory" but i still enjoyed it. i don't mind his ability to find something likable/excusable in everything tho at times it could be a bit... idk, being able to listen open-mindedly to literal neo-nazi punk music, couldn't be me. made it even funnier when someone here approvingly referred to his shrugging-off of the morgan wallen racial slur scandal in this book tho