Good books about music

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.

It did made me want to visit Airdrie, which is quite an accomplishment in its own way.

:-O Please tell me you will not go to Airdrie.

I've been to Coatbridge - also featured in the book - I think I can handle Airdrie in the daytime (I asked a friend up here what Airdrie was like and he just said, "rough place"!)

“Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize.”

Valerie Wilmer's ultra-essential jazz book As Serious As Your Life has been reissued.

Next question: what about this biography of Larry Norman, who I never heard of until I saw the book in the store

The great irony of Norman's career, Thornbury says, is that secular musicians like Bono and Pixies' Black Francis embraced his message, but the Church largely rejected it.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596450516/why-should-the-devil-have-all-the-good-music-larry-norman-s-battle-for-and-again

Not sure i want to read a whole book about the guy.

Have to admit the Black Francis blurb intrigued me.

464 pages lol

https://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=41428

Viv Albertine has a new memoir out. Doesn't sound like it has much (if anything) to do with music this time around, but worthy of note based on her first book

Jessica Hopper has a new memoir out too, Night Moves -- haven't seen it, would read

The book I bought about Akron punk kinda sucks, not very well written
The new CAN book by Rob Young (and Irmin Schmidt) is GREAT so far but I haven't had much time to read it :(

psyched for the CAN book ...
just finished the Astral Weeks book that just came out (which covers a lot more ground than just van morrison). highly recommended.

Was wondering about that one.

What’s the Wire book Tom D was going on about on other thread?

the astral weeks book is really more of a history of late 60s counterculture in boston — lots of cool connections.

Oh Read & Burn

Do the Velvets make an appearance in that book, Tyler?

There's a long chapter about the Velvets, the Boston Tea Party, and Jonathan Richman in the Astral Weeks book. Lots of crazy stories.

Memphis writer Robert Gordon's latest Memphis Rent Party is a collection of old stuff and new stuff, and old stuff that never got published. I liked the readings he did from it in DC (about Furry Lewis, James Carr, Tav Falco and more) . He also showed rare video of Furry Lewis and of Mudboy & the Neutrons.

Just got an email this morning abouyt an oral history of SWANS coming out at the end of June
http://jawbonepress.com/swans-sacrifice-and-transcendence/

"Swans: Sacrifice And Transcendence
The Oral History
Nick Soulsby

Published June 26 2018
ISBN 9781911036395
6 x 8.5 in (150 x 215 mm)
336pp inc. 16pp photo insert
$22.95 / £14.95

‘I’m no stranger to failure, and I’m aware it can arrive at any minute—as it often has. You have to keep things close to your chest and be aware of what’s really important: the work, not everything around it. If you have faith in the work, then the people will come … it’s an artistic imperative, it has nothing to do with public perception or career or any of that crap.’

‘The name, Swans, it’s synonymous with who I am, but it’s how it’s achieved and it’s achieved by people—those people need to have total commitment to making this sound and to making it utterly incisive and uncompromising. The work is everything and it has to—at least at the time—appear, to me, to be stellar. That’s the prerequisite. It’s an intangible thing where it really speaks and has some truth within it.’
—Michael Gira

Over a span of some three and a half decades, Michael Gira’s Swans have risen from chaotic origins in the aftermath of New York’s No Wave scene to become one of the most acclaimed rock-orientated acts of recent years. The 1980s’ infamous ‘loudest band on the planet’ morphed repeatedly until collapsing exhausted, broken, and dispirited in the late 1990s.

Swans returned triumphantly in 2010 to top end-of-year polls and achieve feted status among fans and critics alike as the great survivors and latter-day statesmen of the underground scene. Throughout, Gira’s desire has remained to create music of such intensity that the listener might forget flesh, get rid of the body, exist as pure energy—transcendent—inside of the sound.

Through these pages, the musicians responsible tell the tale of one of the most significant bands of the US post-punk era. Drawing on more than 125 original interviews, Swans: Sacrifice And Transcendence is the ultimate companion to Swans and their work from the 1980s to the present day.

Nick Soulsby is the author of Thurston Moore: We Sing A New Language (2017), Cobain On Cobain: Interviews & Encounters (2016), I Found My Friends: The Oral History Of Nirvana (2015) and Dark Slivers: Seeing Nirvana In The Shards Of Incesticide (2012). In 2014 he curated the compilation No Seattle: Forgotten Sounds Of The North West Grunge Era 1986–1997 with Soul Jazz Records, and he also wrote the oral history of the band Fire Ants for the reissue of their 1993 EP Stripped."

Obvioulsy can't tell how good it is until I read it but looking forward to finding out.

Have started Rob Young's All Gates open which I'm enjoying. I didn't know much about the band members' early lives before. Young seems to have things centring on Irmin Schmidt with other members gradually being introduced.

& Daniel Spicer's Anadolu Psych which has had me listening to more music from the area. Just got the Finders keepers Ersen compi through the door today.

Yeah I'd like to read xp Robert Gordon's latest, posted about it and the album on Alex Chilton thread:

Robert Gordon, who wrote the thread-relevant It Came From Memphis, put together a listening companion of the same name, has now coughed up the book x album both titled Memphis Rent Party: Chilton shows up on a couple tracks, Jim Dickinson sings "I Want To Be A Hippie," (and some guy named Jerry Lee Lewis crashes the party)---tasty take here:https://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/freaky-roots-memphis-rent-party-reveals-hidden-charms/Content?oid=11838795

I read that post, thought "Robert Gordon? Isn't he dead?" then realized I was thinking of Robert Palmer.

I thumbed through that book yesterday, likely I'll wind up reading it. I had thought this was the rockabilly Robert Gordon, but turns out not.

Nope. This Robert Gordon's "It Came From Memphis" is a must read, plus he has a Stax book and movie docs too.

I have that It Came From Memphis CD, but I wasn't aware of the accompanying book. Will have to seek that out, too. Seems like he's taking the southern music baton from Stanley Booth?

Gordon's new one is great — and he adds plenty of supplemental context to the already-published articles (some of which is just as interesting). the stuff about James Carr is haunting.

Charles Hughes' Country Soul is also a must read

That Stubbs book Mars By 1980 sounds great. I don't know how I missed his 2009 book, Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen. It's something I've thought about often.

"Modern art is a mass phenomenon. Conceptual artists like Damien Hirst enjoy celebrity status. Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news. However, while the general public has no trouble embracing avant garde and experimental art, there is, by contrast, mass resistance to avant garde and experimental music, although both were born at the same time under similar circumstances - and despite the fact that from Schoenberg and Kandinsky onwards, musicians and artists have made repeated efforts to establish a "synaesthesia" between their two media. Fear of Music examines the parallel histories of modern art and modern music and examines why one is embraced and understood and the other ignored, derided or regarded with bewilderment, as noisy, random nonsense perpetrated by, and listened to by the inexplicably crazed. It draws on interviews and often highly amusing anecdotal evidence in order to find answers to the question: Why do people get Rothko and not Stockhausen?"

My theory has always been that just because some people say they get avant visual art, doesn't mean they actually understand it. It has more to do with money and status, there's always collectors with money who will buy whatever they think might rise in value, or give them status as they flaunt pieces at dinner parties or whatever. It has little to do with appreciation. There's no financial gain for pretending to understand or collecting avant garde music.

Finished the Can book, loved it.
http://fastnbulbous.com/rob-young-all-gates-open-the-story-of-can/

I started a thread about that Stubbs book Fear of Music in 2012 but it didn't get a single response. FWIW I think the landscape has changed since 2009 and his theory no longer holds water. Contemporary classical music is now rather hip and popular - Glass and Reich sell out the big London halls on a regular basis and even a relatively peripheral figure like Gavin Bryars gets the cachet of a residency at Cafe Oto.

I see that Michael Davis has a memoir out I BROUGHT DOWN THE MC5
https://mc5music.bandcamp.com/merch/book-i-brought-down-the-mc5-by-michael-davis

Is that newly published? Davis passed away in 2012.

Anyone read All Gates Open yet and if so is it worth buying?

With the Michael Davis book, possibly this has finally found a publisher after the Wayne Kramer memoir was announced this year.
I haven't seen much about it beyond it turning up in ads I've seen in other publications.
Would liker to know more.

With All Gates Open. I'm on the final chapters of teh Rob Young history part and it has been very interesting and given me a load of info that I didn't have before.
Shame that he didn't get to personally interview all of the ex-members befo0re they died. & that Damo wasn't interested inm contributing. But very good, very readable & very recommended.

The Quietus gives its take here:

http://thequietus.com/articles/24830-top-40-best-books-about-music

Good to see Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya on the list — I don’t see it mentioned a whole lot lately, and it’s one of the two or three most important books on 20th century western music.

And Ned is otm about Chet Flippo’s Who/Cincinnati piece.