Good books about music

Please kill me.

Oh well. Read it anyway. It's amazing. And Our Band Could Be Your Life. If you're interested in criticism, check out Psychotic Reactions and Carbeurator Dung or anything by Lester Bangs or one or two Greil Marcus books (The Basement Tapes). I'd stay away from Camden Joy, contrary to popular opinion.

I need something that doesn't take too long to get into

But you're going to college, man! Just buy Adorno's Essays on Music and accept that the next 4+ years of your life are going to be like that mwahahaha...

I also enjoyed Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and there's the ever-classic Generation Ecstasy.

I had never heard of Tate until I saw him speak not long ago. He is a BAD. ASS. Does he still write for The Voice? I feel like I never see him in there. Does he have a blog?

I'm mostly interested in reading a book of his since his prose is fairly magnificent.

If you want a cracking funny read on hip-hop, though, pick up The Rough Guide to Hip-Hop by Peter Shapiro, which has just been updated and enlarged (it was a pocket-size the first time, now it's 8 x 10). Best line goes to the Bad Boy Records writeup, when he notes that Puff Daddy, having been responsible for 40% of all 1997's number ones, moved to the Hamptons "so he could live by the sea, just like his magic dragon namesake."

Same here! (Of course there's also the Led Zep bio.)

Next week on "The O.C.": Seth and Ryan get into a fatal disagreement over "James Taylor: Marked For Death," while Summer meets a new hottie who shares her disgust of Nick Hornby.

Dino by Nick Tosches (about Dean Martin; as deep as Catch a Fire by Timothy White, as entertaining as that Motley Crue book)

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

We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen (better than Please Kill Me, kind of like L.A. punk itself)

I was torturing this guy in the garage of my mom's house in this nice suburban neighborhood with my whole family inside eating Easter dinner... and I'd got this guy tied up in the rafter with a rope around his legs and I'm beating him with a two-by-four. I said, "Hang on a minute," and put the two-by-four down and walked into the house and kissed my aunt and said like, "Oh hi, how you doing?" I grabbed a deviled egg, told them I'd be back in a minute, and I went back out, grabbed the two-by-four, and kept workin' on the guy. I finally had to get out of Vicious Circle 'cause of the violence. There were constant stabbings and beatings and people cruising by my house at night, shooting up the neighborhood....

I did something pretty bad to somebody and they retaliated with guns. It was a big deal, I had to split to Alaska for a while, they cut the lines on my car, blew up my car... fuck...I don't wanna say who they were, but they weren't punks... boy, they were pissed off.

i went on holiday with the Deborah Curtis book and the Nick Drake biography once. happy times, let me tell you.

if you ever find dave rimmer's "once upon a time in the east", abt berlin east and west b4 the fall of the wall, i utterly UTTERLY recommend it: tho it's only somewhat abt music - unlike his earlier (and also good) "like punk never happened"

Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic is being reissued sometime this year.

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.

the rest is noise is fuckin' phenomenal btw

Amen to that!
xpost Sorry for the typos, which are from my hasty paste, although the reviewer and/or his copy editor are responsible for conflation of John Hammond Sr., who signed nerdy little against-the-grain Bobby D. (AKA "Hammond's Folly") to prestigious Columbia, with blues-singin' Jr.(some of the Hawks, inc. Robertson, played on some of his tracks).

Wondering about this---anybody read it?

Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, Vol. 1: 1957 - 73
Clinton Heylin

A leading expert on the life and work of Nobel laureate Bob Dylan—most notably the author of the often-updated Dylan biography Behind the Shades—British music writer Clinton Heylin here begins his two-volume analysis of Dylan's songs. We learn that the middle verse of "Blowin' in the Wind" was written much later than the first and third verses, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" was based on a complete distortion of the facts of the case, and "Fourth Time Around" was a direct response to John Lennon's "Norwegian Wood."

"Prolific Dylanologist Heylin makes his arguably greatest contribution with a painstakingly researched consideration of every song Dylan is known to have written. Drawing from manuscripts, studio logs, concert recordings, and other sources, Heylin traces Dylan's career by listing the songs in order of writing rather than public presentation. This first of two volumes collects everything from juvenilia predating his 1961 arrival in New York to his 1974 comeback album, Planet Waves. Even songs that were never recorded or performed are noted, but the major ones receive multipage write-ups that are, in essence, insightful, revelatory mini-essays. Documenting the mercurial performer's transitions from Guthrie-influenced folkie to raging rocker to laid-back country singer, Heylin, who appears to have heard virtually all of the concerts Dylan has performed during the past 20 years of what has come to be known as the 'Neverending Tour,' reveals how vintage songs take on new meanings as they're recast by their author on stage decades later."—Booklist

Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise? That one IS very good. Haven't read Listen to This yet. For a somewhat more academic look at modern compositional music, Joseph Auner's Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries is excellent imo. I used it as a textbook.

yes! i've been moving through it very slowly bc i often want to stop and familiarize myself with some of the more major pieces he talks about, but the quality and depth of the writing never flags and it's a million pages long, what an achievement

Recently bought a couple of others, Music After the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture Since 1989 by Tim Rutherford-Johnson and Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century by David Metzer, but haven't done much more than leafing yet*. I have Listen to This and erm think I've read it, but don't get much recollection -- was that more of a loose essay collection than The Rest Is Noise or something?

*) oh and The Spectral Piano: From Liszt, Scriabin, and Debussy to the Digital Age by Marilyn Nonken, but there I'll really have to do some active immersion work to get anywhere I guess; I find the premise fascinating but am not an extremely big fan of piano music per se (which in this case may possibly not be a bad thing).

bitten-off nipples (word to the wise: Don’t “taste her milkshake” while traversing bumpy terrain in the back seat of a car)

why include this

lamonti, thanks for the reminder on the Tweedy memoir, been meaning to read it. how much is Jim O'Rourke in it?

The book on bad taste/celine dion by wilson was written for me. Resonates so deeply.

Attali's Noise was amazing as well. Read that over a decade ago.

tweedy's book was entertaining — he pretty much covers everything a fan would be interested in. a fair amount of o'rourke!

I have that book on the spectral piano, have not read it yet. Title was designed to grab me though, I eat an drink solo piano stuff.

haven't read it but this sounds interesting: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/making-music-american-9780190872311?cc=us&lang=en&

Page not found

That sounds really interesting. Just requested a review copy.

Okay, now I see

That looks awesome

Oh yeah, I need to find some recordings of James Europe's orchestra (for instance!)
Here's one I read last year:
Edd Hurt aside, I mostly occasionally skim country music writing for info these days---but did fairly recently read Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz (handsome trade pb w good pix, Routledge, 2003), by Rick Kienzle, who also contributed to the useful Country Music Magazine (RIP). Apparently 0 copy editing in early chapters, but then it's smooth or smoother sailing.
He doesn't just enthuse, he describes what made and still makes the heyday of Western Swing so musically gratifying, and isn't shy about detailing how and when and sometimes why (increasingly desperate attempts to biz-adapt) the recorded offerings of his protagonists, incl. heroes, turned to shit.
It's kind of Four Lives In The Be-Bop Business in reverse, with questing young musos from hither and yon peaking early in California, then scuffling, going back to the boonies and/or hitting a wall re The Nashville Sound and Countrypolitan.
Although there are exceptions! To any predictable arc, anyway--for instance, one of these guys got to play on Frank Sinatra & The Red Norvo Quintet: Live In Australia, 1959, which deftly demonstrates how to perform depresso classics when you're happy and you know it, without lapsing into cheesy Rat Pack mannerisms. On another curveball, Ray Price went to honky tonk with a strong beat, drawing the livelier geezers and some youngsters, without actually playing that rock&roll stuff---then he decided he *did* want to do the genteel Nashville thing, not only on record but replicated live, challenging his carefully established audiences and hardened swing-to-tonk road dawg band---never mind we don't have no orkystraw or choir, just do it. And you out there, you better like it.
And the saga of impressionable former teen swing fan Willie Nelson, whose vocal timing (also some of his lyrics) broke the tried & true Hit Factory assembly line, as far as the suits and producer Chet Atkins was concerned--well, you've heard about that, but maybe not in such telling detail (come to think of it, maybe he was influenced by the tenacity of Price, an early employer).
Very handy discography of reissues too.

*were* concerned dang it

To any predictable arc, anyway--for instance, one of these guys got to play on Frank Sinatra & The Red Norvo Quintet: Live In Australia, 1959

haven't read it but this sounds interesting: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/making-music-american-9780190872311?cc=us&lang=en&

― tylerw, Saturday, 9 February 2019 23:18 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks for the heads-up, this is of interest.

Don,
Jazz GUITAR poll

Wow, great post on a great thread that I'd never seen---thanks, James! Please do write more about him whenever so inclined. I'll prob comment there on Dennis Coffey when Live At Baker's comes out March 1.
Despite the sharp profiles of ornery individualists, My favorite parts of Michael Streissguth's Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville are the aerial views, especially the intriguing 60s mix of Vanderbilt's periphery dwellers with increasingly restive Music Rowers, especially after Mr. D. kicks off his Nashville visits with Blonde On Blonde. The saga of Exit Inn, a musical convergence point for various mainstream and counter-cultural and other factions (somewhut like Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters) is illuminating---I've got tapes from there, incl. one-night-stands of knowns and unknowns, but here we also get bands I'd never heard of, appealingly described as they live out most if not all of their lifespans together at this joint.
He briefly mentions star studio rats/Nashville Cats-as-Outcats who got to make their own albums, mainly Barefoot Jerry and the sometimes audacious Area Code 615. But I want a lot more of this, like we get re Memphis, in furious.com's Insect Trust archives and Robert Gordon's books.
Anyway, he makes good use of Kristofferson as tracking device through this era, and further inspiration to it, as Willie already is, going from suits-persecuted studio hopeful to the Entity sometimes descending from his Bus in a cloud of green smoke and adoring songwriters.
Kristofferson comes off as the L. Cohen of Nashville, with an even/much more limited voice, as he knew, and colors himself astonished, if not appalled, when Fred Foster insists on signing him to a performing contact and a writing contract. Foster evidently knew that instant cornball classic "Help Me Make It Through the Night" was an anomaly, and that the growly epics Foster favored were unlikely to be covered (this was before K came up with "Sunday Morning Coming Down," I think and def. before "Me and Bobbie McGee," which would be inspired by La Strada and the name of one of Foster's other employees, it says here.)
We also get the influence of fuckin'-finally affordable and widely available cocaine (esp. after the War on Drugs made it more practical than bulky etc. ol' maryjane). Influence incl. on Waylon, who was already driven and drivin', with much more of the earlier zig-zag career than I'd realized (had the big country version of "MacArthur Park"!) Also quite the appetite for pinball and good cover material, which he could find even or especially on the shittiest-sounding demo tapes. Thought, as the author depicts, that the Outlaw hype was a crock, and of course he did sound more like a big ol' teddy bear, even then.
A bunch more characters I'd heard much less or nothing about; it's pretty good overall. (Although, come to think of it, he completely leaves out the alkyhaul factor re KK's showbiz trajectory, despite the star's own candor elsewhere, starting way back.)

Furious.com's *Insect Trust* archives, of course, sorry.

Has anyone read "this is your brain on music?"

I did. It ended up annoying me for some reason, can’t remember exactly why.

Will give it a try. (It was mentioned in Carl Wilson's book on bad taste.)

Has anyone read "this is your brain on music?"

― nathom

yes, it's fucking awful. author lost me forever when he bald-facedly asserted that van halen's "you really got me" made an uncool song cool.

Argh. Good god. Think I'll skip.

xp @flappy bird, tweedy doesn't bother with an entire chronology but like someone said above he hits all the bits you'd ant to read about. i thought the bits about his health and his parents were moving. i haven stopped listening to wilco since either after a few years off

i would say there's some o'rourke in it, nota huge amount. some on the start of YHF era Wilco/Loose Fur/Kotche/Bad Timing's influence.

nice, i keep forgetting to check the book out, thanks for the reminder

Aaron Copland's 1939 book, What To Listen For In Music is a really good all-round read concerned with breaking down/listening to modern classical music.

Just got first few chapters into the Sylvain Sylvain memoir There's No Bones iN Ice Cream. Seems pretty great so far & ghe's still a kid in Paris.

Jesse Locke's Heavy Metalloid Music is really great on Simply Saucer

I am about one third of the way through Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD. Enjoying it very much, but it's pretty much for completists like me who bought every release back in the day. Lots about Vaughan Oliver and the artwork. Lots of input from a very forthright Robin Guthrie. Loved the label at the time, but never knew this stuff.

i also read this is your brain on music. it was a long time ago but i nearly threw it across the room when i was done. the author is really a pompous asshat and can't seem to resist the temptation to drop anecdotes about how he's friends with and/or respected by well-regarded musicians and scientists

i also read that copland book! it was enjoyable tho certainly not earth-shattering.

Facing The Wrong Way was a great read. It was around as a 2 for £5 in FOPP for a while

Can't praise 'Facing the Wrong Way' enough, really eye opening about the 4AD family. Conversely I was disappointed about his history of LGBTQ music 'Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache', felt just a bit too episodic.

The music writing of Ted Gioia has been vigorously criticized on this board, but I'm 1/3 into his new book Love Songs: The Hidden History and it's loaded with info and ideas to grapple with. As the title suggests it purports to be a history of the "love song" form since the earliest traces of it in antiquity. Clearly a ton of research went into this, although it's cut with a hell of a lot of speculation too. There's a basic underlying thesis, which is that the innovations in the form have tended to come from women or marginalized groups, the names of these innovators often not recorded. Fwiw Gioia claims he didn't set out to write a book with a pc/revisionist angle, but the research led him there.

Thanks for the 4AD history headsup, I had no idea this existed! The writing annoyed me very occasionally, especially when committing classic music-crit sins such as propagating stock phrases inappropriately (no, the video for "Dig for Fire" cannot have been "prohibitively expensive"; if it were, it would not have existed), but the research, scope, depth and detail are astonishing, and the enthusiasm both of author and quoted subjects has set me on an extended retro bender on Spotify here. (Damn, how insanely solid is the 1986 chapter of the catalogue?)

Ha, I found Donald Fagan's Eminent Hipsters at Dollar Tree! What the fuck, it was a buck, it's short so I bought it. I do see music books there from time to time - especially memoirs, so check the shelves.

bumped the Blonde on Blonde thread for this but Daryl Sanders' That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound is really good if you're into books that exhaustively detail every hour of the recording of an album.

Just came on to ask about that--was thinking about buying it. Great cover and title.

Mark Stryker’s Jazz From Detroit is an excellent overview. Tons of profiles of brilliant players from the 50s to the present, and lots of recommended albums. It’s amazing how many jazz legends came out of Detroit to make it in NYC or LA or elsewhere.

how many pages does he give to tribe ?

or Strata in general...

Hope Dennis Coffey's in there (will check thx)!

Detroit is where the very underage Sheila Jordan heard Bird live, a life-changing experience duh:
https://www.npr.org/2014/11/30/366792416/at-86-a-jazz-child-looks-back-on-a-life-of-sunshine-sorrow

Re Strata and all that, there's an entire section - roughly 30 pages - called Taking Control: Self-Determination in the 1960s and '70s, which includes the Detroit Artists Workshop, the Detroit Creative Musicians Association, Focus Novii, the Contemporary Jazz Quintet and the Strata Corporation.

Like that Sheila Jordan book, although I never know exactly who to recommend it to.

xp thanks, will check that out