Books by musicians

How about one of Johnny Cash's Westerns (He wrote two, I think: "The Man In Black" and "The Many In White". Seriously!)?

Open City Press (who published D.C. Berman's "Actual Air") recently published a book by Sam Lipsyte---a short story collection called "Venus Drive." It's a bit self-consciously grotty and confrontational, but I think it's quite worthwhile, in the end. My question is this: Lipsyte is said to have been the frontman for an American noise-rock band---does anyone here know of him? I've been trying to track this down for a while, just in case the band is one of any small consequence.

I don't know if its in bookstores (kinda doubt it), but I've seen it advertised in back of No Depression magazine. Also, he's got a website where you can order a copy from him.

BTW, his solo albums are pretty kick ass, kinda like Highway 61-era Dylan without the mind-altering substances. (seriously)

The Jayne County book is pretty awesome. I love the part when, as a little kid, he tries to lure the local boys in his Georgia neighborhood by putting a sweater over his head with the arms dangling down on either side to affect a kind of Liz Taylor in Cleopatra look. And it worked!

in the former category, word to mark: chuck berry is the coolest ('cept i'm looking fwd to reading the ramone book). as they haven't yet bin mentioned, i'd also rate "walk this way: the autobiography of aerosmith" (presuming that ghost writing counts?), and for all time sleaze, "c'mon, get happy" by david cassidy (as highly rated by "rollerderby" magazine) (occasionally kick myself for not buying the second hand copy i saw a few years ago, tho' i understand it is back in print). if it was stuff "packed with ideas" that you were after tho', billy, this may not be quite your thing .

as for the more 'creative' stuff, hmmm. maryann knows i'm on the record for dissing that pitiful thing the royal trux guy wrote. nick cave also sucks. so does leonard cohen. in general a bad idea: like celebrity painters (paul mcc etc)... but, i do have fun with richard hell's "voidoid" book - great drunken d.i.y. teenage surrealism from the '70s. and hell, what about patti smith? doesn't she make some sort of case for there being a special category for rock-poetry?

oh, anyone sticking up for "tarantula"?

I *did* read Caves 'And The Ass Saw The Angel'. A long time ago now, it seems. It was a struggle, and one that I thought wasn't quite worth it.

I used to like John Lennon's 'In His Own Write' and "A Spaniard In The Works'. Though I fear I would be embarassed by them now.

I'm glad RDD left a lot of things unanswered while still giving us some sense of background to a lot of the songs - especially liked his descriptions of his childhood and adolescence. I haven't read "Kink" yet - I want to, but am afraid that it will turn out to be that other type of autobio.

Secondly because it has excellent bits like this:

"On Monday morning, Karen went round to see how [Geri's father] was, but got no reply from his flat. She called the police and a young constable arrived. They managed to get the door open and found Dad lying naked on the floor with a nicely wrapped present beside him. He'd been getting ready for the party when he'd had a heart attack. He was seventy-one I went to see him at the hospital; I suppose I wanted to say goodbye. He lay there, with his face sunken and purple and his nails blackened. He looked like Danny de Vito playing the Penguin in the second Batman film"

I think that is one of the funniest things I've ever read. Does this make me a bad person?

Re Zappa: his own book is pretty good, but I like more the books written about him to be more fascinating. And one of the weirdest books I've ever read is The Negative Dialectic of Poodle Play, where a British academic tries to integrate Marx, Freud and Adorno into Zappa's oeuvre and even goes so far as to compare Zappa to James Joyce. It's a bit much even for a big-time Zappa-head like myself, and it's mostly bullshit, but it's fascinating and well-executed bullshit.

I presume that's for the best, yes?

John Cale: What's Welsh for Zen?

If I were to recommend a book by a musician...probably Stravinsky's Poetics of Music, or the writings of Debussy ("Monsieur Croche the Dilettante Hater") or Satie, or maybe a collection of Morton Feldman's essays that I once read. Composers often make each others' best biographers, too (i.e. George Perle on Berg). The only other book written by a pop musician I can think of, besides The Horse's Neck, that I've read was John Lennon's Skywriting by Word of Mouth, which was an amusing trifle with a few cute bits. Oh, and I also have a used paperback of Jim Morrison's poetry, which I'm glad to have (thanks, Mom) but I've never even tried to read -- why would I, when I could read something good instead? And now that I think about it (ah, the truth comes out), I have a book of Jimi Hendrix's poetry and fragments (Cherokee Mist) and a Jerry Garcia book stashed away somewhere; both were gifts, and neither were particularly compelling/memorable.

a great book but a truly asd tale of a very talented musician. I like the original large paperback layout better than the recent smaller paperback editions...

books by Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch should be avoided at all cost.

Other good stuff:
"Really the Blues" by Mezz Mezzrow
"Is That It?" by Bob Geldof was much better than I imagined it would be.
"Go Now" was, too! but then I promptly forgot I'd read it immediately after putting it down :/

It's an unitentional hoot...he's obsessed with proving that he's the person who introduced the short hair and skinny tie to Blondie (for the men).

The photos are a classic - "Note my short tie and skinny tie"....."Note length of hair" - next to a photo of Chris Stein.

The guy's a complete wally jumblat.

Killers, Angels, Refugees and Mirrors, Dreams and Miracles by Peter Hammill. Both have some interesting short stories alongside his collected lyrics up to 1980.

No mentions so far of David Toop (22 album credits on discogs, many instrumental/production credits dating back to 1971).

Rap Attack (1984, 1992, 1999)
Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds (1995)
Exotica: Fabricated Landcapes in a Real World (1999)
Haunted Weather: Music, Silence and Memory (2010)

I've only read Ocean of Sound which is a great book length version of what could have been The Wire magazine featurettes (he writes for them as well) on ambient music precursors and pioneers. Just learned about Haunted Weather which is apparently about 21st century laptop music, and on my wishlist.

You left off Sinister Resonance, which I just read. Lots of fascinating ideas but it was a hard slog at times.

http://kevincoynepage.free.fr/ARTWORK/Party_Dress.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51nB7Ap4IRL._SL500_.jpg

Bill Bruford's The Autobiography (2009) is rather great.
Rick Wakeman's Say Yes! is a good, if somewhat slim, read too.

Bill Bruford's The Autobiography (2009) is rather great.

i still have this lying around unread. :(

i did enjoy phill brown's "are we still rolling?" though.

also need to read that niles rodgers one.

nile

I have that Art Pepper book, mentioned upthread, lying about pretty much unread for years.
And Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers hasn't progressed further than p.80.

B-b-b-ut I've read a book of the late Kevin Coyne's short stories. What I can recall of them, the mode of a few of them was kinda sorta Kafka-esque...

Kafka meets Les Dawson

Another vote for Art Pepper.

Possible. Tho I kno nuthink of Les Dawson :(

Dennis Coffey's book was pretty good.

A GIS may suffice (xp)

??

google image search

o I did that, avtually:)

"In a BBC TV documentary about his life, he spoke of his love for some canonical figures in English literature, in particular the 19th Century essayist Charles Lamb, whose somewhat florid style influenced Dawson's own."

Neil Peart's "Ghost Rider." Found it to be, for the most part, a moving and instructional account of how to cope with profound grief.

I know Mike Nesmith's written a couple of novels, never even seen 'em tho

(Thanks, Tom D.)

I think I saw them in a bookstore between the Kinky Friedman and Jimmy Buffett murder mysteries.

Actually I recently read about half of a pretty good post-apocalyptic noir novel by a guy from Shudder To Think. Remember them? I don't. Nathan Larson, The Dewey Decimal System. Oh yeah, he is married to the lead singer of The Cardigans.

Oh yeah, he is married to the lead singer of The Cardigans

Nice for him

Enjoyed Daevid Allen's Gong Dreaming vol 2. Have meant to read vol 1.

Thought Andy Sommers One Train Later was pretty good too.
& Drumbo's book on Beefheart was very engrossing. Somebody sent me the Zoot Horn Rollo one but I've yet to read it.

Lee Underwood's Tim Buckley tome was interesting but Underwood comes off prety egotistical throughout from what I recall.

Phil Lesh's book was interesting Searching For The Sound
& the singer from The Misunderstood wrote a memoir that's available through Ugly Things that's very interesting. Think it has more on him as a monk after heading to India as a draft dodger than him on the band but very good book.

Somebody has presumably mentioned Miles Davis autobio by now too,
& the John Einarson expansion on Arthuir Lee's notes Forever Changes is a must read if you like Love at all.
Just been reminded Jeffrey Lee Pierce's Go Tell The Mountain is very readable if possibly not the most reliable of sources.

Drumbo's book on Beefheart

Didn't even know this existed till I read it on ILX a coupla weeks back!

read about it, not read it, as it's allegedly a doorstopper

Reading "Just Kids" right now even though I never liked Patti Smith. I think it's pretty much as good as anyone can expect from a musician who isn't a professional writer

More books on this thread:

Good books about music

Another vote for John Cale's What's Welsh For Zen.

drumbo's book is enjoyable but needs severe editing. lots of repetition throughout.

but as the story of what it was like being in the magic band it's amazing.

lots of repetition throughout

Oh, the irony!

Ha

haha

to expand on that: anecdotes get repeated often ... it's obvious no editor worked on it. i have no problem with reading 800 pages on beefheart, just that this book was a bit messy.

That and The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick are next on my list.

No mentions so far of David Toop (22 album credits on discogs, many instrumental/production credits dating back to 1971).

Rap Attack (1984, 1992, 1999)

The first part of Rap Attack (the part published in 1984, the current print edition combines the 1984 and 1992 volumes and add a long prologue written in 1999) is the best, most essential history of rap's roots and its early development that I've ever read. The 1992 part has some good observations too, but in the 1999 text he doesn't manage to capture the state of rap that in that year as acutely as in the other parts. Still, I would strongly recommend this on the strength of the 1984 part alone.

Robert Fripp is supposed to be writing some kind of book detailing his various run-ins with the music industry. Should be a corker, if it ever appears.

― ban this sick stunt (anagram), Tuesday, February 28, 2012 10:15 AM (2 weeks ago)

Fripp has withdrawn the book from the university press that wanted to publish it, because he didn't like the contract terms. http://www.dgmlive.com/diaries.htm?entry=21262

"How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life" by John Fahey is a great book, really entertaining (and funny) on many levels. Can't recommend it enough.

the drumbo bk is more than a 'bit messy' - it's p much a disaster, unfortunately. the text switches between meandering first person narrative (three pages on the kind of trousers john french and pals wore back in the 1950s etc) that's interspersed w/ chunks of seemingly verbatim interview transcripts that almost never offer any additional insight or coherence. admittedly i haven't made it to the 'good stuff' yet (ie 'my years in the beefheart cult'/what a bad bad person uncle don was), but i sorta lost the will to live after the first 100 pages or so. i'm not exactly a beefheart novice, but i easily got lost in all the different names and places that flit in and out of the narrative and which a decent editor - ANY kind of editor - would've helped organise in a much more reader-friendly fashion. the mike barnes and bill harkelroad bks are def less comprehensive - and props to drumbo for trying to nail down so many of the vliet-myths and boasts - but so much better reads-as-reads

I'm really curious about this book by Alice Bag, recently published.

http://alicebag.com/sitebuilder/images/ViolenceGirlPoster-408x600.jpg

Anyone here read it yet? I love The Bags, and that whole early LA punk scene is fascinating.

Anyone read Lenny Kaye's book about crooners in the 1930s? I've had it on my shelf for years but haven't read it, and I'm thinking about putting it in the cull pile.

i read that kaye book a while back. don't recall *too* much about it, but it was entertaining in a nick tosches-kinda way. some interesting stories about the time period.

really need to read "How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life"

Fripp has withdrawn the book from the university press that wanted to publish it, because he didn't like the contract terms

oh ffs

There is another Fahey book as well, but I haven't read it yet. Gotta find it, as if it's anywhere near as enteraining as "How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life" then it promises to be a real treat.

Jonathan Meiburg out of Shearwater is an ornithologist, and he has written a book about the striated caracara:

https://media.s-bol.com/36J12qyjNGnA/550x803.jpg

the guy behind Ant-Bee put out some books on early 70s rockers including Grand funk Railroad (which I think I have but haven't looked at much)

.....apparently dude from Cromags has written a self help book....

books by Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch should be avoided at all cost.

― end of time, Thursday, January 29, 2004 10:08 AM (twenty years ago) bookmarkflaglink

can't say for sure about lydia but i wouldn't avoid nick's books. the sick bag song!