The ILM Essential Reading Thread

Obv Reynolds.

Jon Savage 'England's Dreaming' is just great and again, so much more than just a book about the sex pistols. (It starts with a detailed social history of the King's Road, for example.)

I don't normally do biography, but Julian Cope's 'Head On' is hilarious and definitely worth a read as is his 'Krautrocksampler', whic is out of print now , I think. If one definition of good music writing is making you want to hear the music described, then Copey missed his vocation by being a pop star.

And if all that's not out enough for you get your head round Kodwo Eshun's 'More Brilliant Than the Sun' which is great if only for the vicious critique on the rest of writing about music in the introduction.

I've just started 'Words and Music' by Paul Morley and I'm too excited to say anything about it. Is there a thread on that already somewhere?

old music books/essays on the web

the second Lester compilation ("Main Lines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste")is mandatory mostly for "Bob Dylan's Dalliance W/Mafia Chic."

John Morthland (editor of above)also wrote "The Best of Country Music," a truly definitive record guide. (out of print)

"Pet Shop Boys, Literally" by Chris Heath is a great documentary of 80s pop and a delightful sampler of The Wit & Wisdom of N. Tennant.

"All What Jazz" by Philip Larkin is somewhat limited as criticism -- he's a hidebound swing-era conservative -- but his prose sings. Read it for form rather than content and you could learn how to write.

"Blues People" by Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones). He's a hateful anti-semite but this early work is a thoughtful examination of race and music in the US.

"Disco" by Albert Goldman. For my money this is the best book ever written about popular music. It took the scourge of rock criticism, professor Goldman, to define the first popular alternative to rock. "Disco" is the source for every subsequent history of the DJ, and also the first/only book to consider the effects of technology on pop music-making. And it's short, probably 10-20,000 words enclosed in a amazingly decadant coffee-table book. Also provocative, thought-provoking and FUNNY as hell. big caveat: it's out of print, and insanely expensive on Amazon.

"The Dark Stuff" by Nick Kent outclasses most journalists' collection because Kent went back and edited/combined various pieces into a varied and cohesive whole. Classic encounters w/ Iggy, Neil Young, Guns & Roses and Stone Roses/Happy Mondays.

Any one of the various editions of "Rap Attack" by David Toop is essential. The "EMP Oral History of Hip Hop" is overlong, even padded, but the first half, er, rocks.

I've always had a soft spot for "Any Old Way You Choose It" by Robt Christgau. a nice mix of early 70s consumer guides and essays. more mainstream than his musical tastes and prose style became later, but just as intelligent and challenging.

"What do I do w/ Greil Marcus?"
Read him w/ a salt shaker at hand. If you start thinking "is it just me or is this hyperventilating nonsense?" It's not you.

mystery train seems sort of thin next to marcus's later work (which i really like, mostly), but the "presliad" is still worth reading.

controversial choice. could see you banned from ilm

Greg Tate - 'Flyboy In The Buttermilk'.

John Corbett - 'Extended Play'

(i realise this question may come across as somehow personally involved since I'm mentioned at the top of the thread, but I'm more just curious than anything else. I accept that you feel like an outsider but I would never have considered your writing about music to be somehow contrary to some hypothetical ILM guiding principles - whoever is defining them)

I'm wondering if there's some sort of Universal law involved.

Oh my god yes, without any question. Matos and I are united on this point.

This is an interesting distinction. How is importance defined?

(you can do penance by suggesting books on reggae or dancehall or some jamaican music axis, which i would v. much appreciate since every time you post to a dancehall thread i get out my notebook).

also does anybody know what happened to the archives of Addicted To Noise? can we bully Da Capo into publishing them?

I think there's another thread where someone mentioned reggae and dancehall books...

I had no idea this was true. I'll be leaving now. hahaha! Just kidding. I don't even know what girls aloud is. maybe i love them too. and i did own the 45 of come on eileen when i was a kid.

I should mention that Kelefa Sennah (sp.) piece on Jay-Z that's in De Capo's best of 2002.

and dee you're right, but the Elizabeth Mendez-Berry piece on Jay 'Classic Material' just !KILLS!, as does that entire book.

In "Midnight Train to Georgia," which everybody I've ever met acknowledges as a great record, the frivolousness of the Pips doing their train-whistle ooo-woos (especially if you're watching it on TV and they're gesturing and spinning around in unison at the same time) is what keeps Gladys's soul singing down-to-earth. Without the Pips, Gladys would be merely "intense" - not catchy enough, therefore boring, therefore not intense at all, really. Calling music "intense" or "emotional" or "soulful" is usually a euphemism for "it seems like something I'm supposed to like." It's fairly obvious that the Pips alone would be an ignorable proposition; my point is that Gladys alone would be just as ignorable. And, in fact, the problem with most soul music is that it's all-Gladys/no-Pips: e.g., '60s Aretha Franklin subscribed to the fallacy that by removing shlockish prettiness from music (Dionne Warwick's "I Say A Little Prayer," say) you improve it, when really you just make it more reverent....

Then again, since rock'n'roll is a leisure time activity, there are inevitably people who act like music should be all Pips/no-Gladys. But that wouldn't work, either, since Gladysness is where music's tragedy comes from. As often as not, I need moroseness or violence in my disco. My sense of humor's fine, but the trash-aesthetic concept of forced insignificance (where ideas and passion and audacity are shrugged off as "pretentious") isn't fun - it's lazy.

I was gonna say "because no one enjoys arguing against tons of ppl by yourself" and then I realised oh wait, some ppl *do* enjoy that and sometimes I do, too, but most of the time most ppl don't.

I've been reading Steve Almond's Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life. Enjoying it so far, and it seems to be way up ILM's alley (a book about being an obsessive music fan / sometimes professional music critic).

Criticism of Criticism