Good books about music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMee_r95Nfs

#OneThread

There's one guy with a house in Decline III, that iirc he may have legitimately but treats like a squat - one of the only music-related scenes in that film is a house party with the other kids passing out and pissing and puking in and breaking his bathroom.

re: the Nothin But A Good Time book

Kip Winger talks about being ridiculed by Metallica & Beavis & Butthead but he also comes across like a huge douchecanoe in this book & therefore i am not convinced that he was treated unfairly lol

i remember being sort of mystified by III

I think he had this whole thing where he's like I'm really a serious composer, he's done "classical" stuff

yeah that came up - he says producers told him to simplify his music & he was like “you mean i could have had hit records playing like i did in high school!?”

eye roll to the skies

but in another thread someone pointed out that if you look up their album sales even in the mid/late 70s they didn't sell nearly as many records as you'd expect

I remember seeing the “Lick It Up” video a lot, and they had a slight makeup-free rebound in the late ‘80s. But yeah, they were never huge sellers: out of 18 albums in the ‘70s and ‘80s, only four hit the top 10 in the US (and two of those were Alive!s).

Similarly, with their singles: only one top 10 (“Beth,” #7) out of 40 (if wikipedia is accurate) singles in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

re perceived vs actual bigness of Kiss vs some others:

I just looked and their biggest album is Destroyer, only 2X platinum

kinda wild, Rocks is 4X, Toys in the Attic is 8X platinum

I assume the album sales you quote are US alone? As a Norwegian born in 1969, I can affirm that around 1980, EVERY KID around me knew who Kiss were, while I doubt any of the other bands mentioned registered much at all. This iconic-ness in (at least some) other parts of the world may play a part.

(are there reliable-ish worldwide album sale numbers? might be interesting to compare those)

(also ties in with VG's "Kiss fully just *poof* disappeared as soon as they took off their makeup", which fits v well with my experience)

I mentioned these things to my partner, born 1976, and even in her childhood memories, the regular Saturday treat was candy assortments that often had small packs of Kiss stickers in them. A classmate of mine somehow managed to get the means to acquire all the four solo albums released on the same day. Nice marketing job, there.

(There were non-Kiss sticker bags in those packs as well; I remember a "Punk" series, from which I can only recall a few Gruppo Sportivo stickers. End of digression.)

In the US the 1980-1982 period was their slump - The Elder (1981) in particular was a stiff. Lick It Up was if anything their comeback album and, as Tarfumes suggests, in the makeup-free side of the '80s they sold consistently well. And Revenge from 1992 is their 2nd highest charting LP ever (!).

Yeah agreed, The Elder thwarted stuff a bit independently of the unmasking thing. Thinking of which, I went to check the Unmasked (1980) wikipage, and quite unusually for an American rock album on English-language Wikipedia, a banner at the top says

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Finnish. (October 2017) Click "show" for important translation instructions.

I did quote U.S. sales only but most Wikipedia entries for albums show sales certifications from around the world

oops not the individual entries but a band's discography page

holy cow! Norway is unique, the highest charting Kiss albums are......

*drumroll*

.... Unmasked (#1) and Music From the Elder (#7)

wild

So I bought Nothin' But a Good Time and read it in a couple of days, bc it's an addicting read. Observations:

1. To get a nitpick out of the way, although they are not of the scene the book is concerned with, I felt Def Leppard got downplayed almost to the point of being erased from the history. Bc while the LA bands were all still working out their record deals Def Lep were selling multi-multii-multi platinum quantities of Pyromania and MTV was playing them to death before they did the same w/ Quiet Riot. The LA bands may have added the element of overt sleaze to the mix, but Def Lep established a hard rock-pop template and production innovations that were widely imitated.

2. I especially liked the first half of the book when they talk about the groundbreaking bands of the Sunset Strip scene and how the scene transitioned from new wave to hard rock. When the more formulaic, dumber bands start to come in the stories get repetitive and it's harder to care about those people.

3. It was not apparent to me from their music that (as VG alluded to) Winger were self-important musos (especially Kip). Does this mean their '80s albums are worth further exploration, ie do they have layers I missed?

4. Did the book make me want to go on Youtube and rewatch old videos from the likes of Faster Pussycat, White Lion, and Britney Fox? Yes it did. Jury's out on whether that's a good thing.

5. I thought a quote from Brad Tolinski, editor of Guitar World magazine was otm, where he says that hair metal guitar shredders made guitar soloing into a sport, and an aspirational pursuit, rather than a mode of personal/emotional expression as per the older generation.

6. Speaking of which, I can't help thinking of the hair metal/grunge divide through a generational lens. It seems to reveal a duality within Gen X, bc many of the musicians of both eras were Gen Xers. For example, Sebastian Bach, Nuno Bettencourt, and Zakk Wylde were all approximately Kurt Cobain's age. It's as if there was a pre-ironic and post-ironic schism within that age cohort, or that one high school clique took over from another one. Sebastian Bach was a fan of Nirvana & wanted to tour with them but Cobain refused bc he couldn't abide the homophobia. The horny hedonism of hair metal seems to vanish when you focus on the grunge scene, even though these people are of overlapping age and share many musical influences. And I wonder if the teens of Gen Z have any time for '80s hair bands, since the genre seems to go against all the attitudes we associate with them. It is impossible to imagine a phenomenon like hair metal arising from Gen Z, as times and mores are so different.

funny a former ilxor was talking about their kid listening to warrant - cherry pie because of a tv show called supernatural that's popular with kids now, apparently they play lots of 80s and 90s music

good post,I want to read it, interesting about Def Lep, they were odd, at once a part of it and not a part of it, but the biggest band on the planet

come to think, were they the only Brits that were really big in that era?

Priest and Maiden were fairly big at the time (not remotely like Def Leppard tho). The book ignores them too. It does give lots of space to Ozzy Osbourne, but that is partly because Ozzy poached three of his guitarists from the LA scene, and also bc they were able to get a lot of pertinent quotes from Ozzy and Sharon.

Def Leppard not being included didnt seem like a slam against them as much as they werent part of the US scene as per the books overall focus. I mean, Whitesnake & The Scorpions barely rate mentions too except a few quotes & they were massive, the Cult & Europe are huge & they arent mentioned at all

for the context of the book i wasnt really losing my shit over it

Also yes, Winger has much deeper layers you should definitely explore the under appreciated subtleties of Seventeen /irony font

ah yeah Whitesnake would be the other one that fit from the UK w/DL. Maiden and Priests are too real metal to me, or basically at least back then no girls liked them.

but from an author's perspective you could really get to writing an enormous book if you tracked down all the different countries, etc

yeah the focus was primarily American hard rock - you need multi volumes for worldwide though that would be awesome

Yeah it's not like I wanted detailed back stories on Def Leppard or any other non-US band, but maybe an acknowledgement that they played a part in breaking the late '70s commercial slump of hard rock/metal (which the book reminds us of) and that more than any other band they got it onto heavy rotation on MTV. Plus you hear their slickness and production sound in many of the later '80s hair bands so they must have been an influence. Of course the book is an oral history, so if none of the oral historians bring up the subject, well...

A global perspective could be a lot of fun. Especially since then you get to talk about bands attempting to "be American" by blatantly imitating Sunset Strip bands even though they're from, like, Finland.

pyromania was definitely foundational, plus van halen

definitely!

hair metal guitar shredders made guitar soloing into a sport, and an aspirational pursuit, rather than a mode of personal/emotional expression as per the older generation. I was already thinking about how, in the late 70s or early 80s, a member of Blue Öyster Cult was quoted by Creen as saying that you should support your favorite bands like your sports teams, through thick and thin, going to all the shows you can, buying all the shirts and stickers and albums no matter what the critics say (but a concert vendor I knew said the real money was in the t-shirts) no matter who gets replaced, going from headliners at the Garden to your County Fair (I'm paraphrasing a little toward the last part of that, given the subsequent History of Rock).
by the later stages of Hair Metal, word got out that the Guitar Institute, I think it was called, was becoming a problem, advertising heavily in the guitar slicks for recruits from all over: come to L.A, and get financial assistance for tuition (your parents can cover it, or maybe you can, as a waiter etc), and learn the killer bits (also ads for StarLicks™ tapes, which you could get for practicing at home, far from the GI Jungle, at least to start with). Eventually it was reported that ads for aspiring band members were starting to specify No Guitar Institute---but Hair Metal reached a point of diminishing returns anyway, as with disco, grunge, Southern Rock, shoegaze, rockabilly, so many more.

Yeah, Guitar Institute of Technology. I remember when I first heard about that I thought "oh no, this is a bad sign." And then there was the Bass Institute of Technology, and so on, lol.

Didn't know about the Bass! Must have been one for Drums too.
As far as xpost other British bands, seemed like Led Zep's template made a lasting impression, at least/mostly aspirationally, in terms of quality music *as well as* sales and Rawk behavior. And provided an inspiration for Def Lep, who seemed like the most high-profile New Wave of British Heavy Metallers in the States, a bit moreso than Iron Maiden, whom I don't remember hearing as much as DL on the radio, ditto Motorhead (who were nevertheless a Godsend for those of us in this era with 0 use for Hollywood Hair, unless you count G&R), Some of the other NWBHM groups, whatever their general grassroots following in the US, seemed were more of an influence on American musicians, like Metallica namechecked Diamond Head several times, and Lars eventually tracked down the masters of and rights to the originals they covered on the exc. Garage Inc.): blanking on the title of his anthology of originals, but I was struck by the one listen I got: a double, from when 2-CD sets were still in those boxy cases.

Seemed at least as close to punk as metal: no-frills flights!

Oh yeah, and I was working in a CD store when VH1's Legends finally did a doc on Zep, and we started selling tons of their product again, def. incl. to the aforementioned late-twentysomething Hair Metal nostalgiacs.

(In '96, I think.)

As I know dow knows, Chuck Eddy's The Accidental Evolution Of Rock'n'roll: A Misguided Tour Through Popular Music was initially conceived as a song-by-song look at Hysteria.

The thing about the guitar magazines was that no matter who they interviewed, guys from Ratt or Cinderella or Ozzy's band, they were explicit that they weren't about speed and showing-off, they all made a point of saying that it was all about balancing technique and soul, communicating a message via music. Even they knew that an emphasis on technical prowess was seen as gauche in the rock world of the 80s.

they would always say some bullshit like yeah I'm really more influenced by Clapton or someone like that lol

will say Warren Dimartini of Ratt was a cut above imo

on the other end of the spectrum, apparently it took ~8 hours~ to record CC deVille’s solo for “Nothin But A Good Time” because he was fucked up on drugs & constantly hitting the bathroom

nothing butlike a good time

heh yeah Poison even with all the studio magic you could tell they couldn't play for shit

what they lacked in talent they made up for with sheer determination & givin the ppl what they want (aquanet, spandex)
cf: Motley Crue

(i enjoy both bands)

I don't love Poison, but if Cheap Trick had recorded "Talk Dirty To Me," music critics as a group would be falling over themselves to praise it as one of the greatest rock 'n' roll songs of all time.

It was their Sex Pistols tribute - thank Poison for uniting classic rock and punk five years before grunge.

pistols? new york dolls i thought, esp since the riff is straight from Personality Crisis

What are some good books about R&B from the 80's and after? Not Hip-Hop, obv. Feel like this music doesn't get as quickly dismissed as it used to but still don't see the same level of geekery that was given to Stax, Motown, Philly and the like.

I haven't read any, but L.A. Reid has a memoir out. Might be a place to start.

https://www.dukeupress.edu/books/browse/by-series/series-detail?IdNumber=4215171

Singles

One song, one book, one series. Each book in the Singles series tells a complex story about a single song. Not just a lone track on an album, but a single: a song distributed to and heard by millions that creates a shared moment it is bound to outlive, revealing social fault lines in the process. These books combine popular culture and fandom with music criticism and scholarly research to ask how singles change lives, reshape perceptions, bring people together, and drive them apart. What is it about a single that can pry open a whole world? That can feel common to all and different for each? How can something so little mean so much? Singles offers insightful, provocative answers to these questions.

View the series editors' guide to submitting a proposal for Singles.

“331⁄3, Singles, what’s next… books focusing on a particular chorus or bridge!?”
/hackycomic

(I would love a bridge one, though)

XP - O Superman, was my first thought.

damn...will the 33 1/3 peeps start their own 45 series in response??

how do you write about a bridge without writing about the rest of the song, though?

but yeah, i mean, a good bridge is everything imo. songs where the bridge is the best, are the best.