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.

With musicians you gotta read the memoir AND the biography.

He's written books (or at least they have the grain and aroma of his words and music and oh yeah voice), and materializes memorably in xpost Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz (handsome trade pb w good pix, Routledge, 2003), by Rick Kienzle and Michael Streissguth's Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville, but you might start with daughter Susie Nelson's Heart Worn Memories, which, despite its title, has a lot of spark and rueful humor, often at her own expense (in the church where she's about to marry Mr. Wrong, Willie observes that there's probably a back door to the joint). No scandal-mongering, but she lifts the lid of the Nelson Tennessee family complex, and cogently contextualizes, distinguishes the path of her short-lived brother Billy. Also good stuff about music (Dad climbs into the tent on her teen bedroom floor, smokes a joint with her while they listen to Hendrix).

Anyone read Tricky's autobiography yet?

No want to get it though.
Was looking at it in foyles yesterday.
Saw they had the Debbie Harry and Flea memoirs at half rrp if anybody needs them.
Think I will see what Waterstones has at post xmas cut price later this afternoon.

Oh yeah Foyles had signed copies of the Tricky.
My Defying Gravity is signed too which I hadn't noticed when I was looking at what I assume was the same copy on the shelf this time last week.

Waterstones has the new prince book on half price as well as the 2 I mentioned from Foyles.

Enjoyed the Jeff Tweedy book

I think Joe Nick Patoski’s book on Willie Nelson is supposed to be good.

Agree about the Tweedy book. He has a great way with a story.

I've waited years for a Todd Rundgren memoir, and it finally came out last year. The Individualist. He's also a good storyteller, very efficient with the written word, and it has plenty of the wry aphorisms you'd expect. But it has been poorly (i.e. not) edited, typos flying off the page everywhere. Looks like it came right out of his computer, first draft and autocorrected. (The Monkeys?!) Good read but frustrating as well.

I just got reminded that there is a book on Italian Prog and has been for the last few years. ItalianProg by Augusto Croce.
There is a Look Inside feature on Amazon that looks good.
But that's all I've seen on it. I have also seen mention that the translation is a bit rough and clunky etc.
Anybody got it and had a better chance to look at it?

the translation is a bit rough and clunky etc.

no it's actually like that in the original. author was really keen to capture the essence of the music in writing

I'd also be interested in finding out how good the Vernon Joynson book on punk/postpone etc etc is.
Just got the one by him on Latin America and Canada at the time of psych and prog . Somehow missed hearing it was around though did get the one released a few months earlier which was initially an expansion on part of the same book. Covered Asia the antipodes and Africa.
Got the book slightly used for a pretty decent price.

So yeah this Mike Barnes book on 70s UK prog is pretty great.

Rob Sheffield's 50 best rock memoirs:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/books-greatest-rock-memoirs-of-all-time-161198/

I've only read #1--my pronounced preference for biographies over autobiographies extends to music, baseball, everything.

jeez, I've only read 5 of these, and I thought I played a pretty good rock memoir game.

I've read seven, and there's one or two others on that list I might want to read. Slash's book was one of the dullest things I've ever read; 400 pages of lorem ipsum would have been more diverting.

The Peter Hook blurb mentions the Bernard Sumner book, but not the recent one from Stephen Morris, which I found to be a decent read (also author seems like a genuinely good guy).

Good revive, I could use a good rock memoir right now

Don't know why I picked Don Felder's Between Heaven and Hell for latest victim of my totally unfair Random Read Test, but it passed and I spent the day at the library going through the whole thing, which never happens. No regerts---detailed rave here:
A Good Day In Hell - The Official ILM Track-By-Track EAGLES Listening Thread

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81x1VKPA2mL.jpg

We might should have more cover art on this thread---or would it be distracting. irrelevant?

Groupie memoirs are a booming industry, from Pamela Des Barres’ classic I’m With the Band to Pattie Boyd’s fab Wonderful Tonight. But the tiara goes to hair-metal video vixen Bobbie Brown, who contributed precisely zero to music history, yet became a star by shaking what mama gave her in Warrant and Great White clips.

yuck

The top 3 wouldn't load for me, if anyone can paste?

Top 3 memoirs on Rolling Stone list? Is that what you mean?
Dylan, Springsteen, Patti Smith

I've only read the Patti Smith one. I'm not big on bios in general; prefer critical readings of an artist, which is while I'll probably read at least a dozen more 33 1/3's before I ever get to that copy of Chronicles, Volume 1 that I've had sitting, unread, on my shelf for years.

Let me be the first to say that nothing about Chronicles, Volume is like a typical rock bio though.

I haven't read it, but I just received John Corbett's Pick Up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music today (one of the books I bought last week while trying to support one of my favorite indie bookstores). I've heard lots of good things about it.

Chronicles is one of the weirdest books I've ever read. Gorgeous George, meticulous making-of chapter on one of those '80s albums vs. hardly a word (from what I remember) on '65/66...and I realize its perverseness is why people love it, and that there's a mountain of writing on '65/66 already.

Top 3 memoirs on Rolling Stone list? Is that what you mean?

yes, ta - I got a SHOW MORE link after Questlove, that when clicked erased all the previous 47 and loaded comments instead (the first of which was raging that the list was invalid because there were books by rappers on it)

Including audiobooks, I've read (or "read") 8 from the Rolling Stone list: 6 of the top 7, plus Kristin Hersh and Kim Gordon. (I'll get to you, Questlove.) Especially recommend seeking out Viv Albertine (print) and Patti Smith (audio).

I haven't read it, but I just received John Corbett's Pick Up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music today (one of the books I bought last week while trying to support one of my favorite indie bookstores). I've heard lots of good things about it.

It's a good one. Corbett's one of my heroes. I interviewed him last year when it came out (warning: podcast - you will hear my speaking voice).

I note that David Lee Roth’s book makes the list, but Sammy Hagar‘s — which I have actually read, for some reason — does not.

David Lee Roth's book is v good.

There’s a great NewsRadio episode (“Chock”) in which Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman’s character) reads Crazy From the Heat... he keeps bringing it up, recounting anecdotes, etc.; then it turns out he has no idea who David Lee Roth is (“I think he was a singer before he turned to writing”).

ha :)

I can imagine someone reading only DLR’s book, I can imagine someone reading both DLR’s book and Sammy’s, I cannot imagine someone only reading Sammy’s

I'm not a big Dylan guy, but I read Chronicles and finished it feeling like it's pretty bad as like, A Dylan Biography. I enjoyed reading it, but it felt like I was missing a lot of knowledge that it assumed I had. What's the best Dylan bio out there?

going into that sheffield list i was anticipating responding 'no rod stewart, no credibility' but there rod is, high up there, at that. his eloquence is so surprising you can't help but admire him

Dean Wareham's book is really good, he's v frank about Damon & Naomi but doesn't let himself off the hook.

(xpost) The only one I know I've read for sure is Anthony Scaduto's, the first and most ancient--came out in the early '70s. I read it 40 years ago, so I don't remember a thing; I don't think it was all that well received, by Dylan especially. The most famous is Robert Shelton's, which was anticipated for years--it's his Times review on reproduced on the first album. I think I read that when it came out. But I'm not sure--I might have just skipped to the end, where he interviews Dylan. I think he does, anyway. My memory's terrible, as you can see.

Kristin Hersh and Viv Albertine’s books are fantastic. I’d have included Playing the Bass With Three Left Hands by Will Carruthers. And its not technically a rock memoir, but Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow (especially since Dylan took bits and pieces of it for his own memoir).

i liked the kristin hersh book about vic chesnutt too (depressing obviously)

Loved the Hersh autobiog (predictably). Have bought her Chesnutt one as well, but am stalling at diving in, possibly for reasons expressed by na there.

Dylan's Chronicles I is fantastic. It is not really an autobio though.

I want to take a minute to Stan for a very obvious choice, one that most here will have probably already read, or at least been aware of - Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business. It's the most entertaining book on the pop-music business that I ever read, and I've read it 20-odd-some years ago. There are a million other books, most of which are mentioned in this treasure of a thread, but this book explains 70s-90s major label business more than any other book. 

I read a book a few years back written by Jacob Slichter (drummer for Semisonic) on a recommendation by a friend, it's a great read and Jacob is a really engaging writer, it's the boom and bust tale of Semisonic (and a bit about Trip Shakespeare) but very good nonetheless.

^ So You Wanna Be A Rockstar? It's a great one.

Yep, that's the one!

Y'all really made me just order a book by the drummer from Semisonic, and that's why I love this place.

My 2 fave rock memoirs are Crazy From the Heat and Chronicles Vol 1, maybe not in that order.