The ILM Essential Reading Thread

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