Good books about music

The Light Pours Out of Me: The Authorised Biography of John McGeoch
Rory Sullivan-Burke

John McGeoch was the unsung hero of the post-punk era. Blazing a trail with some of Britain’s biggest bands and most revered artists – Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Armoury Show and Public Image Ltd. – John left an undeniable and indelible mark on music.

The Light Pours Out of Me examines John’s life and legacy, drawing on original interviews with the likes of Siouxsie Sioux, Howard Devoto, Johnny Marr, Billy Idol, John Frusciante, Keith Levene, Jonny Greenwood, Nick Launay, Ed O’Brien, Peter ‘Hooky’ Hook and many others.

I think this is available in the UK now, but not in the US till June 23. McGeoch died in his late 40s

How was that guy's name pronounced? It's probably "McGee" but I keep thinking "McGuck" because that idea makes me laugh.

Only ever heard it pronounced Mah-Gee-Ock.

I just asked stirmonster, maybe he'll know.

Mah-Gee-Ock is ok but Muh-Gee-Och is closer, with the Och bit being the same as if you are saying Loch, as in Loch Ness. in Scotland the "och" bit would be said with such emphasis and ferocity that it would possibly result in many Englishmen running for the border.

so, actually Muh-Gee-OcCCCHHHH.

I heard Mcgeoch pronounced by I think Budgie last week and need to relisten. Cos it wasn't what I had it as. I think it had 3 syllables when I had just thought it was Magock or something similar.
I've been listening to Curious Creatures the Budgie/Lol Tolhurst podcast. Think I may have come across it while looking for appearances by Will Sergeant tied in to his memoir,.
That's a book that is worth reading too. I hadn't realised that all of the Bunnymen, with teh exception of Pete De Freitas had pretty much learnt from scratch in the band or in the pre-band rehearsal formative bit. Les Patterson had never played before it was said that Sergeant and Macul needed a bassist for an upcoming debut gig supporting Teardrop Explodes. & Macul turned up to Will Sergeant's place with an acoustic he'd almost never played before. They seem to have spent some months rehearsing together but that was basically from scratch.
Otherwise mainly covers Sergeant growing up in the area outside of Liverpool. Quite good asa childhood/coming of age memoir and then into Punk.

I need to get into the Sue Steward book on Salsa that I got out after reading David toop's book Flutter Echo which was also pretty good.
& this Miles, Ornette, Cecil : how Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor revolutionized the world of jazz
by Howard Mandel looks good but I've only read the introduction so far.

Also just finished transcribing the bibliography and discography of Mande Music by Eric Charry which cover the music from Nort West Africa in great depth but is by an ethnomusicologist so isn't exactly light. Very interesting though.

Anyone read this new Elephant 6 book? I got a wave of 90s nostalgia listening to the author talk about it on a recent Sound Opinions; strange because I was never all that much into most of that stuff beyond In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

started the bruce dickinson autobiog a few days ago.
i have no iron maiden in the archive, and it's not my thing, but damn, he can tell a tale.

got my eye on the recent SST Records book, anyone care to dissuade me?

Have mainly heard good about it. Don't think Ginn comes out looking great by the end. It's definitely one I want to read

I am a casual SST knower, but I have never heard a single version where Ginn comes out looking good in the end

JUst heard Budgie pronounce McGeoch again and yeah it's MakGee-ok.

I've been getting further into that book on Salsa and it is really good. Also been transcribing the discography to RYM for future reference.
& looking up artists on Spotify so getting to hear bits of that stuff. But there is a lot listed so it will be a longterm project to familiarise myself with this and the Mande stuff but definitely enjoying what I've heard so far.
Finding it odd that things cited in the 2 books have had low scores on RYM with some frequency. So wondering what the disparity is if there was less choice fro the same artists when the books were written around the turn of the millenium and now there is more available so comparison makes those recordings look bad. I am seeing higher gradings for other sets by the same band/artist on the website. & I'm just coming across the artist so have no grounding for comparison.

Budgie is wrong. :)

so, actually Muh-Gee-OcCCCHHHH.

^^^^ this

You can hear the correct pronuciation in this video (don't worry you don't have to listen to all 54 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlyBBc8-KP8

... worth watching for that goal at the start though!

Picked this up today

https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/0GfkvAbHCHfdYYlHaXsNXdgtvRTO6_8Qjc8pbfTe1mKap-HnBju7qlCZfwm68GKf5IYddg8tBbNsTL3m0emkc7c65ooXvoEaq55vJ6QJzmASbIETQhu2_dvkYHBA4XOUdIZwS4GM2l7ldN082mT-h4NIGMnlZLtBgnvV8sTaq8MojoYj9A47WHdR_pOTP3my17H4xM5JEMHGKu5IXRg4XzFgIlctkmBbMLcYsUquVOL0UAY_x7aLRHSQXlibfGn0spI5-wrtRKH0X7Alo5butyzB1y1WiUm1hZW1zMZOqq9ZxQ2C6E1N58xiQa0TAg8ytIvJ2l2Q720_2aZWVANI9hjR=s0-d-e1-ft#https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2420,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F27f34777-f090-4092-bb10-f31d458f4232_1210x938.png

That looks like a worthy read!

that url has at least 3 domain names in it.

Marissa Moss, Her Country

anyone wanna recommend a book (or books) available here? 40% off sale rn:

https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/search-by-category/categories/music

skip the "this one's OK" ... tell me if there's one here you really love!

The DJ Screw book is really good but Who Got The Camera? is incredible, one of the best music books I've read in years. A must-read.

I found the Chris Stamey book very interesting and wide-ranging; he originally planned to publish a songbook where he would discuss the structures and theory behind his songs, with some anecdotes and stories interspersed, but in the course of writing, the latter took over.
The variety of people and situations he's been involved with, and his insights into songwriting, production, culture and rock band dynamics might give this book some appeal even to someone who isn't familiar with Stamey's own music.

Deusner's Drive By Truckers book is great.

i haven't read it yet so obviously i would defer to someone who has, but the malone/neal country music u.s.a. book has basically been considered a definitive reference on the subject for decades afaik

xpost do you need to be a DBTs fan to enjoy it, ya think? i've tried, but never been able to connect with them ... or maybe the book would help with that.

i do, however, love the South

oh great now I find out.
Had just heard Adele Bertei on C86 last week talking about her past and teh book on Labelle
Paul Youngquist on Sun Ra looks interesting.

If i had any money I'm sure there are several there I would grab.

"don't suck, don't die," kristin hersch's book about vic chesnutt is very good though also very sad

do you need to be a dbs fan to enjoy it, ya think? i've tried, but never been able to connect with them ... or maybe the book would help with that.

Though it's his most famous project, they don't dominate the book. He goes into detail about the misery of making their second album in England and why he ended up quitting.

i do, however, love the South

Ha, the book is structured around his time in New York! Starting in about '74 seeing Television at CBGBs and ending with his move back. There's some Southern flavour, though, working with Chilton for example.

I think they're talking about DBTs? Anyway, I don't think you need to be a fan, necessarily, but it helps. There is however a lot about the south and its history, and music. And of course how a band like the Truckers fit in, or don't.

Ah, I see, thought it was a typo.

yeah, was talking about the Truckers. thanks!

Sonic Boom - The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records is a breezy, enjoyable read that informatively fleshes out company figures such as Mo Ostin, Joe Smith, and Lenny Waronker, and really impresses on you the achievement of Warner Bros. growing from an afterthought of a record company in the late '50s to basically the industry leader in 1970. Some peculiarities to the writer's style and tone (he's previously known for a bestselling Springsteen bio), but as I thumb back through the pages of this I realize it's much more good than bad. Puts it all in historical perspective in 250 pages without being weighed down by too much detail.

I should mention the author is Peter Ames Carlin

He also wrote a Paul Simon book, I believe, which seemed okay.

And Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson bios, as it turns out. It seems this book isn't getting much fanfare, so was worth a mention. I'd like to see more record company stories like this.

I own Sonic Boom but haven’t read it yet.

Also would like to re-recommend Susan Hamilton’s Hit Woman: Adventures in Life and Love during the Golden Age of American Pop Music. Contains everything you ever wanted to know about Chuck Berry’s Dr. Pepper commercial, to name one thing. Randy Newman’s too.

Maybe I'm not grown up enough, but I can't get into music books about executives, A&R representatives, record companies, etc. I do remember appreciating Carlin's Wilson biography though.

I liked the Susan Hamilton one a lot too. Quite a character.

David Cantwell's critical bio of Hag.

^^just came in the mail!

The recent article in the New Yorker about Foley artists led me to The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 by Emily Thompson. It's not strictly about music but music runs through the fabric of the book as Thompson goes through some key achievements and developments in modern acoustics. There's a chapter on "Noise and Modern Culture" that gets into Russolo, Antheil, Varèse et al a bit. I'm only halfway through, looking forward to the chapter called "Electroacoustics and Modern Sound." It's not a dry read at all; Thompson's a terrific writer.

I'm wondering about that Suicide bio from 2015. "Dream Baby Dream: Suicide: A New York Story by Kris Needs

I'm fifty pages from the end of this. It has weirdly warped priorities - there's probably less than a page about the decade of Vega's adult life before becoming a visual artist and seeing Iggy, but there's at least a page of an interview with Rev giving a potted history of Charlie Parker and be-bop. I sometimes get the feeling that the writer is trying to reach a certain page count.
It's good at filling in the mystery about what exactly they were doing between 1970 and 1977 (playing many more shows than previously reported), and describing Rev's jazz roots (studying with Lennie Tristano and hanging out with Tony Williams) but despite having a lot of interview quotes from the two principals and most of the surrounding figures, I don't really feel like I've become closer to the source of the music. Needs would probably say you have to listen with a New York attitude.

There is another book on the band called No Compromise by David Nobakht which I thought was pretty decent. I haven't read the Needs one so can't compare.

have come across a few podcasts with Martin Rev telling the story of the band too.

The recent article in the New Yorker about Foley artists led me to The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 by Emily Thompson. It's not strictly about music but music runs through the fabric of the book as Thompson goes through some key achievements and developments in modern acoustics. There's a chapter on "Noise and Modern Culture" that gets into Russolo, Antheil, Varèse et al a bit. I'm only halfway through, looking forward to the chapter called "Electroacoustics and Modern Sound." It's not a dry read at all; Thompson's a terrific writer.

This sounds really interesting, and I might recommend one of my favorite music books of all time, Peter Doyle's Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900-1960, as a follow-up.

Sounds good to me too.

The DJ Screw book is really good but Who Got The Camera? is incredible, one of the best music books I've read in years. A must-read.

I really must get to this, having known Eric Harvey for some years.

xxp thanks, I'll chase down the Doyle book as well. Sounds (lol) like it's up my alley.