33 1/3 Series of books

jesus, arular already?

I looove that Nocturnal Emissions record, one of my favorites of theirs.

Can anyone rep for the Master of Reality tome?

oh, god yes. excellent sort of fiction. one of the best ones in the series, imo

Yeah, don't delay on Master Of Reality. It shreds.

I read the Loveless one this morning. It was pretty good.

mine didn't make the cut. :(

i enjoyed 'master of reality' a lot, but drew daniel's '20 jazz funk greats' is my favorite book from the series that i've read so far. i think someone said this already, but the 'village green' book is like a really good, long article in mojo -- not gonna blow your mind or anything, but strong research and lots of good quotes from most of the band members (except ray, IIRC).

I'd be curious enough to read Bat out of Hell and 2112, stepping stones to the gargantuan Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness volume I'm waiting for.

I really hope they do a Fugazi one someday.

There was a whole load of these in a local charity shop... one of those upmarket charity shops which are actually more expensive than most non-charity shops. Bought the "Village Green" one.

Would read the heck out of Donuts, 2112 and Back In The DHSS. Meantime tho? zzzzzzzz

I'd really like to know who wrote the other 2112 proposal. Ultimately seems a good sign that both made it.

Fear of Music reviewed in tomorrow's NYT; the critic incorrectly says Lethem saw Stop Making Sense in 1982.

Finished Fear Of Music a few weeks back. i guess I'm not a Lethem fan because I was annoyed with the writing about halfway through.

Fear of Music reviewed in tomorrow's NYT; the critic incorrectly says Lethem saw Stop Making Sense in 1982.

― go down on you in a thyatrr (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, June 2, 2012 1:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

the writer stopped making sense in 2012 then, har har har

keep looking at the 94 potential titles and trying to find something, anything to get excited about and it's kinda hard. look at how fucking corny the selection of hip hop albums is:

The Pharcyde Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
J Dilla Donuts
Outkast Stankonia
Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Eminem The Slim Shady LP
Danger Mouse The Grey Album
Jay-Z The Blueprint
The Game The Documentary
Insane Clown Posse The Great Milenko
Drake Thank Me Later
Lauryn Hill The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Jay-Z The Blueprint

Anyone have a shelf of these and want to share a pic? I read ebooks these days but this is one series that I would love to collect paperbacks of.

Well, outside of the Danger Mouse, The Game, Drake, and Kanye selections I would probably read about all the rest of those. I think, a solid author provided, a good story could be pulled from the rest of them - particularly Slim Shady LP, Donuts, and Pharcyde.

yeah there's definitely some good albums in there that could inspire worthwhile books, but the spectrum of that selection is stiflingly "rap that rock critics like"

What rap albums wouldn't be "rap that rock critics like" though? The Great Milenko btw haha.

there's a whole canon of countless albums revered by rap fans that don't have the same kind of cachet with rock critics (often different albums by the same artists)

They also probably don't have the same cachet with readers of 33 1/3 books either.

ehh nevermind, this is the circular conversation that's happened on ILM a thousand times before, "music writers focus on the same tired canon because that's what people who read about music tend to be interested in, the snake eats its tail, nothing every changes" etc.

No no I definitely see your point. Looking over the list it IS very "these were big Pazz N Jop favs". I guess I'm just wondering how obscure you'd have to go to avoid that and whether or not the people who buy these books (or check em out from the library) would even be interested in them.

(xp)
The endless inner groove of a 33 1/3 record.

Hip-hop doesn't really do "reclamation" projects does it? Trying to think if there is something equivalent to Big Star or the Velvet Underground or whatever where it was basically largely ignored upon release and then suddenly everyone goes "ohmigod this was IT, lets reissue, write books, hail the forgotten influence, etc."

hahaha, I think UGK alone could disprove that thesis

Not really sure how. It's not like Ridin Dirty was some completely unheard masterpiece (it sold pretty well on release IIRC). And it was guesting on a Jay-Z track that blew them up not people revisiting their old stuff and suddenly finding time for them.

i would say maybe the majority of rap albums regarded as classics grew into that status gradually, lot of things that seemed to everybody like perfectly good or unremarkable workaday records started to feel significant given how big the artist became or who followed their lead. or popular regional things that only later become universally regarded critical favorites. not a lot of total flops and unheard records that got rediscovered, though.

did anyone read the Fear of Music one yet? i was really disappointed, and the chapter on eno must have fallen out of mine because he hardly mentioned him once...are you kidding? And I'm a fan of his other writing!

Only 253 people heard The Joralemon Street Team's Borough Hall B-Boyz but every one of them became either a DJ, a Rapper, or a Minister of Information.

"i would say maybe the majority of rap albums regarded as classics grew into that status gradually"

I feel like at least for the "rock canon" hip hop records (Paid In Full, It Take A Million, 3 Feet, Illmatic, 36 Chambers, The Chronic, Ready To Die, Supa Dupa Fly or whatnot) were all pretty highly regarded on release. But yeah I do agree that something like Ridin Dirty becomes a lot more like "oh this is the UGK record you must own" or whatever once they blow up.

yeah there's definitely some good albums in there that could inspire worthwhile books, but the spectrum of that selection is stiflingly "rap that rock critics like"

― kel ler/pharmacists (some dude), Saturday, June 2, 2012 3:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to be fair that category probably has 90% overlap with "rap that corny indie fuxors will buy an entire book about"

know your audience i mean

whatever, guys. the point is there's a shit ton of great rap albums that don't already have 33 1/3 books that would sell as well as any other rap-themed entry in the series, and they're considering greenlighting shit about poorly aging mid-'00s heirlooms like The Documentary and The Grey Album.

The rap books (except Beasties) are some of the worst sellers for them

Actually pretty much any book about a black person who isn't Hendrix

Any 331/3 that is: check the stats, and that goes for the AWESOME James Brown book that everyone ( including me) loves, and the awesome sly stone book

http://www.33third.blogspot.com/2011/09/league-table-sept-2011.html

the fact that the rap books sell bad no matter what doesn't change the fact that when they do them they should be as good as yours or the other worthwhile ones -- if anything that means why bother with fucking Thank Me Later

That league table goes to show that most people don't read reviews or recommendations. They love OK Computer and they're going to buy a shitty book about it no matter how many one-star Amazon reviews it gets. Meanwhile some of the best-loved ones - PE, James Brown, Prince, Sly, Throbbing Gristle - languish in the bottom half. Celine Dion looks like the only one in the Top 20 that's clearly selling off the back of its prose rather than the album.

I would never avoid a book on the basis of a zillion one-star Amazon reviews. The 33 1/3 brand is supposed to be a guarantee of quality, so it makes sense that the best selling books will be about the best selling albums on the list. You'd expect to see a correlation there.

yeah, that's why multi-platinum international superstars Neutral Milk Hotel are at the top of the chart

if the 33 1/3 brand is a guarantee of quality, i'd like my money for the atcq book back.

xp It's not the best-selling albums - it's the most significant ones to a certain audience.

I've never seen this brand as a guarantee of quality. It's always been wildly variable.

I see this brand as a guarantee that the odds are against you.

like American justice

I've never seen this brand as a guarantee of quality. It's always been wildly variable

sure, you and I and ILM realize that but I'm not sure the casual browser in Waterstones or Amazon would.

personally i think one of the series' greatest strengths is that each volume is such a relatively small investment of time/money that it's not a huge disappointment if a book here or two misses the mark, if it enables them to take a risk on publishing so many (often great) little books by mostly unknown authors on pretty niche topics. consistency is sacrificed for the sake of other virtues.

That league table goes to show that most people don't read reviews or recommendations the books that have been available for the longest amount of time have generally sold the most copies--with a few notable exceptions. The league table thing is more of an interesting thing to look at, sort of like amazon "sales ranks" (which may or may not have anything to do with sales), but as a piece of information it's not incredibly useful.

I agree that some are better than others, and the series IS wildly variable, but it's interesting to see how many people both love and hate the more outre books and how many people both love and hate the volumes that focus on mic placement and chord progressions, etc. So it boils down to different strokes/folks, really. I'm of the opinion that that variability is a big part of the reason the series has continued, where other similar projects have fizzled out.

Maybe. I'd be interested to know how many owners of the OK Computer book really rate it though - I haven't heard a good word about it. Even taking into account the obvious advantage of being published earlier (hey I noticed that too), sales suggest that a mediocre-to-bad book about a prestige album will sell more than a brilliant one about a more niche one. (Unfortunately for the purposes of 33 1/3 buyers albums by black artists, even when they're the biggest stars of their day, count as niche.) Unsurprising, perhaps, but discouraging. The good news coming out of the figures as that the books continue to sell, albeit modestly. A lot of music books published the same year as the first 33 1/3 batch are out of print by now.

Let's just say that I agree that some are better than others and leave it at that... but your point about the books continuing to sell and stay in print is a good one.
It's also worth noting when looking at the league table that when the series began in 2003, the economy was strong, there were many more indie and chain bookshops, and e-books were more of a futuristic notion than a reality. Kindle sales aren't tallied into the league table list. I would venture to guess that it would look VERY different if so.