Good books about music

The Police also

xpost - yes! It’s really good but incomplete for obvious reasons.

All the surviving members of Joy Division plus Ian curtis widow have done memoirs.
& is that Jon Savage thing an oral history that contains more material by each band member too

Finally getting around to Jeff Tweedy's book, I like it quite as bit - funny and very conversational.

Duke University Press is doing a half-price sale on their books till May 25--- Tony Allen one, some reggaeton ones, more

https://www.dukeupress.edu/explore-subjects/browse?subjectid=110&sortid=3

mark lanegan's new memoir!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

seeing backlashes against Lanegan from the Connor brothers and an attempted one from LIam Gallagher.
THink I want to read the book anyway cos he's lead an interesting life, i mean quite apart from the responses so far, like.

What have the Connor brothers said? I can't find that anywhere.

THing about the vitriol that Lanegan directed at them in the book when they haven't really talked in years and whenever they have done its been civil.
May have been a response on FB by Van Connor that somebody else shared. Sounded like there was an FB Screaming Trees group that he contributed to.

Actually comment came from GAry lee Conner.

Thanks!

this book is great. the liam gallagher chapter is hilarious. overall lanegan he has very little good to say about the trees (or anyone, really, with some notable exceptions -- the gun club, nick cave, johnny cash, waylon jennings, chris cornell, josh homme, layne staley, and kurt cobain). he caricatures lee throughout the book. i wouldn't be happy if i were him, either. he doesn't treat van to the same scorn but still i'd be pissed

Has anyone read It Still Moves by Amanda Petrusich?
Also curious about Will Oldham On Bonnie Prince Billy by Alan Licht, anyone familiar with it?

I have teh Will Oldham but haven't read it yet.

i've got the Oldham book it's good, basically a long interview, i'm not the biggest fan of music books or biographies tbh so maybe not the best judge but it's an enjoyable read

actually i could read it again now you've made me think of it, excuse my uncertainties

An old friend of mine who is a music professor at Syracuse University wrote a “textbook” about new wave music called Are We Not New Wave. It’s got lighter moments, but also some pretty deep and thoughtful academic discussion. I loved it! Here it is on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11461133-are-we-not-new-wave

Cheers ordered the Oldham book and David Crosby's Long Time Gone!

There are more relevant threads to post this on, but--I know this is self-serving--I'm going to post here, where anybody who opens it up does buy music books.

I just self-published a book on pop music in movies and on TV: You Should've Heard Just What I Seen. It's on Kindle Direct Publishing, which is owned by Amazon, so that's where you have to order it.

States

Canada

A friend has also been talking to me about the book and posting clips on YouTube. The first one, 20th Century Women is here--you can find others in the same place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UorpT9Qbhu0

Cool, just watched. Who is your friend?

Scott Woods. He runs the Greil Marcus site, and he's been my friend and co-author for years--you might even remember him from Radio On.

Oh yeah, we toss it back and forth a little bit on rockcritics.com sometimes, when I comment on his posts. Most recently re his interview w *ilxor mark s, editor of A Hidden Landscape Once A Week,* just in case any of yall didn't know about that...

Oh, nice! Will order when I get my next CESB cheque (don't tell Scheer).

In the meantime, I added the book to Goodreads, since it wasn't on there yet: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54240276-you-should-ve-heard-just-what-i-seen

Thanks, cryptosicko (on both counts)! I got out ahead of you this time and made up a playlist a few days ago (posted the link in the Spotify playlist thread).

Delighted to see "It's Too Late To Turn Back Now" on there (assuming the entry is on BlacKkKlansman). One of my two own fave song/visual media combos of recent years, along with Prefab Sprout's "King of Rock and Roll" in the Netflix series I Am Not Okay With This.

Don't know that, but I have Netflix so I'll give that a look. "It's Too Late" was an automatic pick.

Until I get the book, I am really enjoying the YouTube series. Just finished the American Graffiti, which ends with a great gag.

Wasn't that great? Scott's so good with this stuff.

Harald Kisiedu's European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany 1950-1975 is a very interesting study of...well, the German avant-garde jazz scene of the 60s and 70s, with particular focus on Peter Brötzmann, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Manfred Schoof, and Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (an East German saxophonist whose work I'm not familiar with). It's really good, a mix of biography and broader social/political context...and I was surprised to find a quote from a 2019 interview I did with Brötzmann for Bandcamp included in it.

I have recently read Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful and Ian Penman's It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track, really enjoyed both for their sorta fanciful insights onto the personalities of artists. So far from all the hagiography and legend-burnishing bios and magazines I read when I was a teenager.

Enjoying Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, even though Astral Weeks itself was never my favourite album (been a while, though). The subtitle is cribbed from Marcus, I think, and it really does feel like a secret history, with all this stuff lost to history. I do remember reading about the hype over the Boston Sound in Lillian Roxon's encyclopedia. I've got to see if I can track down that Chamaeleon Church album with Chevy Chase!

Took about three seconds.

Let us know how it sounds. I just remember the names of a few Bosstown Sound bands: The Beacon Street Union, Ultimate Spinach---I did hear a couple by Earth Opera, who were kind of on the bandwagon, I think, but more of an art-folk-rock, proto-Americana thing, with Peter Rowan and David Grisman. (Wiki sez "they frequently opened for the Doors," so maybe not too genteel!)

All three are key in the Boston Sound ("Bosstown Sound") chapter--Orpheus, too, who had a Top 100 hit that I don't think I remember.

X-post re It Still Moves by Amanda Petrusich. Saw that a little of it is available online and I skimmed the chapter re her driving to Memphis and going to Beale Street and Sun Studio. Eh, kinda underwhelming. Based on my own visits there and what I have read elsewhere, she doesn’t add much. There are also chapters on Clarksdale, Charlottsville, and elsewhere.

(xposts) Walsh quotes Chase from an interview where he looks back at that time. I won't reproduce the quote here. Big surprise: Chevy Chase is not a very pleasant person.

So I have heard

[Ghost Notes]
Pioneering Spirits of Texas Music
By Michael Corcoran

Illustrated by Tim Kerr

This looks interesting ---

[i]Ghost notes” is a musical term for sounds barely audible, a wisp lingering around the beat, yet somehow driving the groove. The Texas musicians profiled here, ranging from 1920s gospel performers to the first psychedelic band, are generally not well known, but the impact of their early contributions on popular music is unmistakable. This beautiful Tim Kerr-illustrated collection provides more background on the Texas from which these artists sprang, fully formed. Readers will learn about the black gay couple from Houston who inspired the creation of rock ’n’ roll, as well as the true story of the origin of Western Swing. They will learn about “the first family of Texas music” and the birth of boogie-woogie, the dirt-poor singers and the ballad collectors who saved folk songs during the Depression, and the accordeonista whose musical legacy was never contained on recordings but was passed on by his protégé. The pioneers of modern times include the Dallas rapper who became the wordsmith of gangsta rap, the sheriff’s son from Dumas who produced the signature tunes of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and the blind lounge singer Kenny Rogers called the greatest musician he’s ever known.[/i[

I'm looking to read a biography of Bob Dylan, but there are so many. Which ones are the best? Thank you.

Have you read Dylan’s own Chronicles? If not, definitely definitely read that first. One of my favorite books ever on any subject in any genre.

^

But--as has been pointed out earlier on this thread (or maybe on a Dylan thread)--it is most definitely not an autobiography in the conventional sense.

I prob mentioned this on here before, but the one by Anthony Scaduto, Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography, originally published in 1971, is one of the few I've read, and seemed in-depth---no idea how accurate, but for instance, Joan Baez was happy to rip into the subject once again, and the whole thing seemed warts-and-all, perhaps a shocker for those who hadn't seen or heard about Don't Look Back. There's a 2001 edition with a foreword by Johnny Rogan, dunno if any updates.
Publisher:
Written at the dawn of the seventies by a former crime reporter and self-confessed "mafia expert", this book was not only the first serious study of Dylan's life and work, but also a landmark in the way popular music was written about.

In addition to a Bob biographer's wish-list of interviews, Scaduto pulled off the remarkable coup of getting Dylan's full co-operation without conceding an editorial veto. Dylan has read this book cover to cover and discusses its uncomfortable contents with the author at length! I don't remember him doing it in the first edition, but that was a very long time ago. Oh wait, here's a confirming blurb: "The author's triumph was that ultimately he persuaded Dylan to talk."-Liz Thompson, editor of the Dylan Companion And publisher does end with a quote: "I read it. Some of it is pretty straight, some of it exactly the way it happened… I rather enjoyed it."-Bob Dylan

One I haven't read, but remember appealing reviews of:
Positively Main Street: An Unorthodox View of Bob Dylan by Toby Thompson---also 1971, and the time is right to go back to Hibbing and do some talking, do some other kinds of digging.

Read some of
Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan by Howard Sounes---2011, and he follows the paper and digital trail---some said the motorcycle accident never happened, was a cover-up etc.--but Sounes saus he found the hospital records. Also a secret (to me and prnb you, I assume) marriage, sworn testimony re the one to Sarah, much more.

Did read all of, and enjoyed:
Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña by David Hajdu---also 2011---think xgau and Marcus thought he gave Richard F. too much credit for encouraging Dylan to write---I didn't take it that way, but did note that he supposedly turned D. on to a much better grade of weed, which helped some with the writing. (Also liked what I read of Hajdu's Lush Life, about Billy Strayhorn.)

Has anyone read It Still Moves by Amanda Petrusich?

― rizzx, Sunday, May 31, 2020 5:49 AM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I couldn't quite get into that one, though I never gave it much of a shot. But I loved her 2014 book, "Do Not Sell At Any Price" about her introduction to the world of 78rpm collectors. I wasn't familiar with that world before that book.

I just read about a series of Punk orietnated books by Steve H Gardner who used to edit the fanzine Noise for Heroes.
Therse are 3 compilled voluumes of the fanzine stretching between 1980 and i think 2004 ,. I just got the first one ordered.

Also a 4 volume series about Punk fro Origins onwards. you can see a lot of the contents on the Look inside on Amazon.

I read about these in Ugly Things seems like i need all the volumes of taht too.

Notwithstanding a little heartsickness that this will get 30 times the attention my own book on the subject got, this does look good and I will buy it: Adam Nayman on the music in Paul Thomas Anderson's films.

freddy freshes rap records books

What's your book on the music in PTA films clemenza?

I should have said on a related subject--mine's on pop music in movies, not just PTA. The overlap would be with Boogie Nights.

Haven't read it yet, but just ordered Harry Sword's Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion, a book on the history of drone. Based on the blurb below, I'm hoping for something in the sweet spot between Julian Cope and Joe Carducci:

Monolithic Undertow alights a crooked path across musical, religious and subcultural frontiers. It traces the line from ancient traditions to the modern underground, navigating archaeoacoustics, ringing feedback, chest plate sub-bass, avant-garde eccentricity, sound weaponry and fervent spiritualism. From Neolithic beginnings to bawdy medieval troubadours, Sufi mystics to Indian raga masters, cone shattering dubwise bass, Hawkwind's Ladbroke Grove to the outer reaches of Faust and Ash Ra Temple; the hash-fueled fug of The Theatre of Eternal Music to the cough syrup reverse hardcore of Melvins, seedy VHS hinterland of Electric Wizard, ritual amp worship of Earth and Sunn O))) and the many touch points in between, Monolithic Undertow explores the power of the drone - an audio carrier vessel capable of evoking womb like warmth or cavernous dread alike.

In 1977 Sniffin' Glue verbalised the musical zeitgeist with their infamous 'this is a chord; this is another; now form a band' illustration. The drone requires neither chord nor band, representing - via its infinite pliability and accessibility - the ultimate folk music: a potent audio tool of personal liberation. Immersion in hypnotic and repetitive sounds allows us to step outside of ourselves, be it chant, a 120dB beasting from Sunn O))), standing front of the system as Jah Shaka drops a fresh dub or going full headphone immersion with Hawkwind. These experiences are akin to an audio portal - a sound Tardis to silence the hum and fizz of the unceasing inner voice. The drone exists outside of us, but also - paradoxically - within us all; an aural expression of a universal hum we can only hope to fleetingly channel...

It's coming out from White Rabbit Books, a UK publisher with no US distributor that I can find, but if anybody wants to buy it without paying more for shipping to the US than the book itself costs, Blackwell's offers free shipping to the US.