Good books about music

This could be good: https://slate.com/arts/2017/10/the-jann-wenner-biography-and-the-hbo-doc-reviewed.html

Referring to the book, not the doc...

Reading it right now. SUPER juicy, really great so far. Jann is a complete sociopath.

I read that Wenner doesn't like it, which is probably a sign that it's good.

There's a Lou Reed bio that just released as well...

has anyone read the new 33 1/3 on the raincoats' s/t?

Yeah, what's great about that is Jann is one of the primary sources & cooperated with the author throughout the writing process. I mean you really have to read it to believe it, the guy is just nuts.

has anyone read the new 33 1/3 on the raincoats' s/t?

I have - it's very good. It's not one of those that attempts any formal or structural experiments but it's smart and sound and well-written and gave me plenty of bits to think about.

My only small gripe (and I totally know this is my problem as much as it's the writer's) is that it leans a bit heavily on noting the impact the record had on American alt-rock/indie icons of the 90s - the fact that Kurt liked the Raincoats is a matter of pure indifference to me. I understand that Bikini Kill, Calvin, Kurt will be cultural touchstones for most of the people who buy the book, I get that the cultural reception of the record in the US is interesting, it's just that it pops up repeatedly in the book.

Got the Wenner biography for half-price today--been looking forward to it. Everything I've seen has been really positive, with the exception of Marcus calling it vile in his column yesterday. That did not dissuade me.

It's fantastic. It's so juicy, and the best part is Jann was completely cooperative with Hagan, gave him access to his archives, his rolodex, gave hundreds, maybe thousands of hours worth of interviews over the past 4 years, says INSANE things like "I would take my private jet up and circle LaGuardia just to have lunch," and then only when he gets the manuscript 6 months ago, denounces the book as "tawdry." Motherfucker, you dug your own grave! The rare biography that is authorized and denounced by its subject. Really, really fucking good book, and great job on Hagan's part.

haha, now I want to read it!

Shakey is another one of those

I think Shakey is my favourite rock bio.

Deep insight gleaned from Sticky Fingers: Jane Wenner sure is beautiful.

http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/59cd31eaa64e473347b79974/master/h_590,c_limit/rolling-stone-1117-ss02.jpg

(Can't seem to find an online photo without Jann at her side.)

yeah, whereas Jann in the mid-80s... oof

Their son sure is nice lookin'!

https://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/gus-wenner-headshot.jpg?w=199

Looks like a guy you can't trust.

Looking for recommendations on books on electronic music, preferably from a 'historical sonic evolution' type of angle or just anything that will give me a fundamental understanding of the genres and subcultures with the right amount of mythological titillation, too.

How about Energy Flash by Simon Reynolds?

Wazzabout the book by Matos, The Underground Is Massive?

that's more about how the rave scene specifically developed in the united states but yes it's very good

both look pretty cool, thanks. I'll give Energy Flash a read first.

Sticky Fingers got much better after the intro--the more the author removes himself and just tells the story, the better it is. (He uses the phrase "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll" in the intro, the biggest and reddest of red flags.) It's a sobering book. Not that I had any illusions about Rolling Stone, and whatever I've taken from the magazine (which amounts to a bunch of 40+-year-old record reviews and Rob Sheffield today) remains, but not an inspiring saga.

Funniest part by far is the 10th-year-anniversary TV show they put together. I don't remember watching this, for which I'm sincerely sorry.

Binder booked Ted Neeley, the star of Jesus Christ Superstar, to perform an elaborate Beatles dance medley called "A Decade in the Life," which included performers in foam strawberry suits and black leggings doing a psychedelic maypole dance as Neeley, dressed as Father Time, sang "Strawberry Fields Forever." The sequence also featured two men in rubber Nixon and Kissinger masks singing "I'm a Loser," inspired, no doubt, by a famous SNL skit of Aykroyd and Belushi praying in the Oval Office on the eve of impeachment. Binder said the Beatles sequence cost over $100,000 to shoot.

In other words, Steve Binder was unable to recapture that Elvis Comeback Special magic

That Matos book is really good! It talks more about subcultures and communities than it does sounds and sonics, but it's an entertaining read.

(xpost) I might go a bit further--he was also unable to recapture that Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell magic.

Terry Graham's Punk Like Me finally arrived after a lengthy delay. I payed into the Kickstarter dcampaign about 5 years ago.
Have read first couple of chapters and it seems pretty decent. Traces his path as a musician from childhood through to him walking outon the Gun club in 1984. Must get through thsi. Quite good so far.

Dr John Under A hoodoo Moon his memoir which its taken me about 20 years to get a copy of. He's just tried smack for teh first time after one of his guitar mentors lost patience with him continually asking about it. He's also a possibly prepubescent teen at the time.
Again really well written and i wish I had more time to devote to it. It's my transport book currently.

Blondie by lester Bangs. very odd as a mass media coffee table book on a popular band.
Loving it, gives a lotof insight into the background etc. & the New York scene of the time.

Nothing But The Blues: The Music and the Musicians. Lawrence Cohen
Great coffee table book on the blues which I picked up for €3 from a local charity shop.
I want to read this through after having just read Elijah Wald's book on the Delta Blues

read the two elijah wald books that i ordered recently: escaping the delta and how the beatles...

they were both really great reads. for quite some time lately i had actually been trying to find good books describing the many shifts occurring in 1920s popular music (the early blues and 'hillbilly' markets, advent of electric recording, influence of film etc.). others i had found before wald's writings were either too focused on recordings, which were just one (non-dominant) facet of the pop music industry, or interpreted the landscape from a non-contemporary lens that i found suspect. by contrast, wald very clearly put a lot of effort into providing a broad and comprehensive overview of pop music that emphasized how the eras' musicians made their living, how consumers and amateur musicians (people were often both especially in the early days) enjoyed music, how other industries became big players in pop music as technology shifted, etc. i especially appreciated that he touched upon the role of dance in pop music, which was particularly indispensable for his chapter on the early 60s. i also enjoyed the clear effort he made to convey how people conceptualized, categorized, and thought about pop music in its various forms at the time instead of trying to retrospectively slot things into dubious boxes that barely even make sense today, as many histories unfortunately do.

there were some moments that were clearly a little more speculative than others. one in particular: he describes the mid-50s period when songs like "patricia", "purple people eater", "tom dooley", "at the hop" and "volare" were all hits getting major exposure through radio, but suggests that, well, probably no one actually liked/bought all those records, different as they were, but they certainly would have heard all of them! but then there's a footnote attached to that statement which literally says that multiple readers of the manuscript told him that at the time they actually enjoyed and owned most of those records he mentioned. i find it so odd that he didn't bother to reformulate that paragraph a bit given that he had some decent indication of being slightly off-base! but moments like that are not common, as most of the time he was careful to cite his speculations of typical behavior/taste with carefully interpreted contemporary sources.

anyway, do read them if you've been curious and would be interested in broad but informative/detailed surveys of those periods.

Yeah, Wald is fantastic and I love both those books.

I'm currently reading Graham Lock's Forces In Motion: The Music and Thoughts of Anthony Braxton, which is a combination tour diary and mega-extended interview transcript with Braxton; Lock spent two weeks traveling with him on tour to write it, and it's giving me a clearer understanding of how he thinks, how he feels about his own work, what he's trying to accomplish and why, and so much more (it's giving me a much better understanding of other AACM dudes, too, just based on Braxton's thoughts about them). It seriously is unlocking Braxton's music for me in a way that's perfectly timed, since I've been in a real mood to listen to a lot more of his stuff lately.

Just finished the Song Machine, which was informative and a good overview of current music trends, but lacked something I can't quite put my finger on...I think maybe i thought the track and hook vs melody and lyrics was perhaps underexplored.

anyway, I have read a lot of the pre-war Blues books and Escaping the Delta is probably the best. In search of the blues was criticized in some quarters, but that's a book that asks some tough questions as well, and I thought it made it's case well:
https://www.amazon.com/Search-Blues-Marybeth-Hamilton/dp/0465018122

Wald is one of my favorite music historians. Huge fan of “Beatles”

i liked the song machine too! the narrative it sketched out was pretty compelling, it made some very solid/intriguing points about how pop evolved over the years he covered, and the details he uncovered in interviews were often fascinating.

one thing that was a bit distracting about it was that there were a lot of minor factual errors. almost all were harmless to the broader points/thesis, but it did leave me wondering just how thorough his research outside of his own interviews actually was (not to mention how so many people who looked over the manuscript failed to notice). and in some cases it seemed he was ignoring some information in service of a more compelling narrative. (like, saying tricky stewart had never scored a big hit before the mega-smash "umbrella" sure makes the story more exciting, but it just wasn't true!) and in general his blind spots were in the predictable directions (overemphasis on rock, little awareness of hip hop that wasn't inspiring pop that would come later, etc.).

BUT nevertheless it was a very compelling read! i was a little apprehensive about it at first, because i remember its release precipitated some really silly/wrong-headed reviews in the press.

Nothing on Trouble Boys here--must be something on one of the Replacements threads. I'm about 100 pages in. I like that Westerberg tried to write a song once that sounded like Wishbone Ash's "Blowin' Free." Love that Creem's Rick Johnson was an influence. The stuff on the Replacements/Husker Du rivalry is good. Where did I hear about them first...almost positive it would have been via Christgau's Sorry Ma blurb.

Possibly the most depressing music book I've ever read

does anyone have any post #100 (or so) recommendations from the 33 and 1/3 series?

Really enjoyed Terry Graham's Punk Like Me which covers the LA punk scene and time in the Gun club.

Possibly the most depressing music book I've ever read
― Number None

Just on the epilogue--it is, in a way. And exhausting.

I always took the sideshow aspect of the band to be just that, something that existed apart from the records--I didn't realize the extent to which it was the central fact of their lives. The first couple of records, sure; they're young, and they're getting attention, act out. But 200 pages and four or five albums later, why are they still pouring beer over their heads and pointlessly ruining vans and sabotaging every step forward with two steps back? I understand their hostility to any industry people who tried to change them and didn't know anything about them. By they seemed outnumbered in the book by industry people who actually loved the band and wanted to help them. I know that's a simplification of complicated lives--they're really afraid of success, their addictive and sometimes abusive backgrounds, etc.--but like I say, exhausting. I'll never not love my favourite Replacements songs (played the "I'll Be You" video for my class today and it sounded as great as ever), but halfway through, I wanted to be reading about R.E.M. or some other band who boringly tried to stay focused and more or less do the right things.

i've had morley's "words and music" on my coffee table for *years* now and i've barely cracked it

has anyone read it? any good? plax?

a few i can cosign

john szwed's sun ra biography
caetano veloso's tropical truth

and i've never gotten tired of the uh rough guide to reggae. really!

another one i've had for years but not read - "the aesthetics of rock". surprisingly little discussion on that one on this thread.

One additional thing on the Replacements book. I think I got one good laugh for the longest stretch: when the band told Benmont Tench to tell Tom Petty how much they loved his song "Running Down a Drain."

Any word on This is Memorial Device yet?

I have the Morley book, didn't read it cover to cover, but read a good chunk. Can't say it really stuck with me though. Lots of talk about Kylie Minogue. Couldn't really relate a lot to his POV.

hard-line poptimism?

i bought it cause i heard it had some good writing on electronic music (kraftwerk, moroder, new order, human league etc)

Perhaps, he strikes me as someone who likes very specific things and gives thgem primacy way out of proportion with their place in the overall musical landscape. Also, the quirks and eccentricities of his writing tend to overshadow the subject matter.

ah that's interesting

i was planning to approach it not as informative nonfiction but as critical theory, maybe? but i guess i haven't enjoyed reading critical theory for a long time now

I could see all the odd stylistic stuff being some kind of pop music Deleuzian project, but it didn't really hit for me.

I'm curious about this Aesthetics of Rock one, not familiar with it.

honestly i just couldn't resist the cover

https://www.amazon.com/Aesthetics-Rock-Capo-Paperback/dp/0306802872

the Morley is more of a book-length ZTT sleevenote than analysis or critical theory

Any word on This is Memorial Device yet?

Borrowed a copy from the local library here in Glasgow recently. It is basically Bolano's Savage Detectives recast as an oral history of 'outsider' Scottish music in the early 1980s - as entertaining, and as limited, as that sounds. Too many of the voices start to sound like the author, but maybe that's the point. Keenan has good fun with made-up band names, albums, limited edition cassettes etc. It did made me want to visit Airdrie, which is quite an accomplishment in its own way.