Good books about music

Thought this was maybe discussed here but can't find it, Paul Hanley's Leave the Capital: A History of Manchester Music in 13 Recordings is fantastic (so far).

https://www.amazon.com/Leave-Capital-History-Manchester-Recordings/dp/1901927717

Have not read that but read his fall book which completely ruled

Haven't read that but loved Steve Hanley's The Big Midweek.

Hanley bros podcast is pretty good too

Just pre-ordered this:

The Cricket: Black Music in Evolution, 1968–69
edited by A.B. Spellman, Larry Neal, and Amiri Baraka

$35.00
Ships out September 27, 2022.

Contributors include: A.B. Spellman, Imamu Ameer Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Larry Neal, Cecil Taylor, Milford Graves, Sun Ra, Ben Caldwell, Clyde Halisi, Don L. Lee (Haki R. Madhubuti), Duncan Barber, Gaston Neal, Hilary Broadus, James Stewart, Norman Jordan, Roger Riggins, Ronnie Gross, Stanley Crouch, Albert Ayler, Askia Muhammed Toure, Donald Stone, E. Hill, Haasan Oqwiendha Fum al Hut, Ibn Pori ‘det, Ishmael Reed, Joe Goncalves, Larry A. Miller (Katibu), Sonia Sanchez, Willie Kgositsile, Billy (Fundi) Abernathy, Dan Dawson and Black Unity Trio. Preface by A.B. Spellman. Introduction by David Grundy.

A rare document of the 1960s Black Arts Movement featuring Albert Ayler, Amiri Baraka, Milford Graves, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and many more, The Cricket fostered critical and political dialogue for Black musicians and writers. Edited by poets and writers Amiri Baraka, A.B. Spellman, and Larry Neal between 1968 and 1969 and published by Baraka’s New Jersey–based Jihad productions shortly after the time of the Newark Riots, this experimental music magazine ran poetry, position papers, and gossip alongside concert and record reviews and essays on music and politics. Over four mimeographed issues, The Cricket laid out an anticommercial ideology and took aim at the conservative jazz press, providing a space for critics, poets, and journalists (including Stanley Crouch, Haki Madhubuti, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez and Keorapetse Kgositsile) and a range of musicians, from Mtume to Black Unity Trio, to devise new styles of music writing. The publication emerged from the heart of a political movement—“a proto-ideology, akin to but younger than the Garveyite movement and the separatism of Elijah Mohammed,” as Spellman writes in the book’s preface—and aimed to reunite advanced art with its community, “to provide Black Music with a powerful historical and critical tool” and to enable avant-garde Black musicians and writers “to finally make a way for themselves.” This publication gathers all issues of the magazine with an introduction by poet and scholar David Grundy, who argues that The Cricket “attempted something that was in many ways entirely new: creating a form of music writing which united politics, poetry, and aesthetics as part of a broader movement for change; resisting the entire apparatus through which music is produced, received, appreciated, distributed, and written about in the Western world; going well beyond the tried-and-tested journalistic route of description, evaluation, and narration.”

Link to purchase

ooh that looks interesting

spellman still with us i'm pleased to see (as are ishmael reed and sonia sanchez)

Peter Doyle's Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900-1960,

Just bought this! Plus the Cantwell Haggard book.

The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 by Emily Thompson

Ordered this yesterday.

I wish I could chime in right now and say "I'm reading a Three Dog Night biography," but alas, I'm not.

Maybe you just watched the Playboy After Dark with them and James Brown. Close enough, I guess.

When I read Dave Weigel's book on prog, The Show That Never Ends, I was kind of amazed at how a major sub-theme was that Robert Fripp was a toxic nightmare of a person. What's amazing is that I've just about finished Sid Smith's In The Court Of King Crimson, a complete 50-year history of the band written by an avowed superfan, and that impression has only been strengthened! He really seems like the worst possible person to be in a band with. But the book is very well written and deals with every era more or less equally. (I hate the 80s albums, but this book almost convinced me to revisit them.)

Just read

Terry Teachout - Duke (very much not a good book about music)
Alex Ross - The Rest Is Noise (yes this was pretty good)

currently on

Ted Gioia - The History Of Jazz, 2nd Edition (just 100 pages in but already am having serious reservations about this)

If anyone can suggest some better books about early/mid 20th C music then please suggest. I already have Yeah Yeah Yeah / Before Elvis on the pile and am sure they will be an improvement.

I am one of the Teachout book's few defenders. I don't need him to convince me of Ellington's greatness, so I enjoyed the insights into his life and career.

Gioia is The Fucking Worst. The only person whose "history of jazz" I think I'd like less would probably be Scott Yanow.

Pete Tomsett's book Fifty Shades of Crimson dwells a fair amount on Fripp's relations with band members, though it's interesting that the only one who seemed to outright hate him was former friend Gordon Haskell, who also hated the music and lyrics he performed, and seems to have suffered from a lot of professional jealousy as well.

Read Paul Hanley's other Fall book, Have a Bleedin' Guess, which is also great. Now I'm reading Brix's autobiography, which isn't as good as those two, but I gotta get the whole picture.

Far too much stuff that's not about The Fall in Brix's.

gotta get the whole picture (about nigel kennedy)

unperson i think i quizzed you before abt a gioia book on jazz and you were non-committal -- did further reading harden yr attitude? (i know he's a knob online)

(i have a slim volume of essays by him reviewed in the wire before *i* was editor even -- i think by andy h4milton? -- which i think i skimmed at the time without taking offence but also without anything much impressing me; however we're talking like 1990 here lol so my memory is not reliable)

also is the weigel book worth reading? in principle i kind of like the idea of prog discussed from the perspective of a socially liberal libertarian who has a deep knowledge of day-to-day politics (if only bcz i want to see such a person exploring the complexities of why it's termed "progressive") (but evidently not so much that i got round to purchasing it)

unperson i think i quizzed you before abt a gioia book on jazz and you were non-committal -- did further reading harden yr attitude? (i know he's a knob online)

Yeah, honestly I've soured on him recently. I never paid that much attention to him in the past but the last few years he's struck me as a genuinely poor thinker, and far too reliant on some music-writing clichés which really bug me.

also is the weigel book worth reading? in principle i kind of like the idea of prog discussed from the perspective of a socially liberal libertarian who has a deep knowledge of day-to-day politics (if only bcz i want to see such a person exploring the complexities of why it's termed "progressive") (but evidently not so much that i got round to purchasing it)

Yeah, I liked it. He lays some interesting groundwork early on, talking about Liszt, Mussorgsky and Ravel, and his ultimate thesis (as I put it in my Wire review) "is that florid displays of virtuosity, and compositional complexity for its own sake, can be gestures of rebellion." It's very UK focused, with only a few continental European acts discussed, and Krautrock is not within the book's scope, but still, it's a relatively lightweight read that manages to convey a lot of information. When you consider that it's written by someone who doesn't spend their whole life writing about music, it's kind of amazingly well done. When political journalists offer opinions on culture, it usually makes me want to shove my head through the wall. Not true at all in this case.

The Weigel book was indeed very readable, but the political or social analysis struck me as being fairly general. You might want to try to dig up Paul Stump's The Music's All That Matters from 1998, where he writes about e.g. the differences between urban and provincial UK progressive artists; although he has some weird quirks of taste that made the book less than useful as a listening guide for me.

Teachout - you're right unperson, there was plenty in the way of fascinating detail through the book, however found myself muttering "fuck off Terry" every few pages which spoiled it for me.

Gioia - yeah knew this was bad as soon as I got to his bizarre summary of the blues, which was no more than a compilation of all the bullshit myths I've already had debunked by better books, and his refusal to discuss the ODJB or Paul Whiteman puts paid to any claims that it's comprehensive, however overall am finding it less annoying than Teachout as it's laying down this traditional narrative in a clear enough way that I'm appreciating more the better books on the subject I'd previously read.

yes i own (and long ago actually read) the stump book: it was mainly spoiled for me by his uncontrolled rage against a poorly delineated "post-modernism" in general and various nme writers in particular (who i had time for back then)

not that they shd be beyond criticism (so maybe i shd reread it, i'm quite likely more measured about and less patient with some of that stuff myself these days), but he never seemed to be landing accurately on anything they actually said, just furiously harumphing that they considered themselves too cool for his twiddly faves

his uncontrolled rage against a poorly delineated "post-modernism" in general and various nme writers in particular ...he never seemed to be landing accurately on anything they actually said, just furiously harumphing that they considered themselves too cool for his twiddly faves

Ah, I didn't realize Carducci's Disease had hopped the Atlantic.

The Bob Stanley pre-rock-pop book is so deliciously revelatory it probably deserves its own thread, but for now I’ll just say it keeps me running to YouTube to check out an old recording, or to Amazon to order an old CD. The quantity of music he must have listened to to write this is incredible.

You got an advance copy?

No, I think it has been officially published. Hasn’t it? I ordered it through the usual channels

Oh wait, I see, it's the ebook that isn't out yet.

It's been out in the UK for a couple of months and is as good as Josefa says.

I just came across a listing for Innovations in British jazz by John Wickes with a blurb from the people selling it which sounds interesting. Anybody come across it or even read it?
Seems to tie things in with various strands of prog and other improvisatory rock among other things. So sounds like something I want to read but thought I would see if anybody here is familiar with it.

Yes, it's a good and very thorough study of the British progressive jazz scene of the 60s and 70s. I've tended to dip in depending on my interest/current research rather than read cover to cover - although it has an overall chronological/thematic approach it's not really a narrative history. It's also a bit unwieldy with small print, so it's not the kind of thing I'd take to read on the bus as it were. As you say, it does a good job of tying progressive jazz with the prog and rock scenes. Maybe less strong on scenes outside London, but then that's a history that's still to be fully researched/written. Duncan Heining's Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers covers some of the same territory, although is more rooted in the modern scene around Ronnie Scott et al. Both writers take a broadly Marxist approach, which is fine with me. They could both do with more feminist input though - Maggie Nicols' forthcoming memoir should help redress that balance.

Brix Smith’s book is interesting. I had forgotten how much of a West L.A. rich girl she was; there is overlap with stuff from the memoir from Cary Grant/Dyan Cannon’s daughter, as they both went to Crossroads in Santa Monica, and Rob Lowe was a mutual friend of theirs

For #NonfictionNovember a stack of my favorite 2022 music books. I’m partial to that one on top but you should read and buy all the great volumes here by @anniezaleski @carynrose @FrancescaRoyst1 @MarissaRMoss @johnlingan Greil Marcus and Bill C + Bobbie Malone 1/2 #musicbooks pic.twitter.com/F6NuXoVHnW

— The Running Kind: Listening to Merle Haggard (@dlcantwell) November 2, 2022

Recently read — or listened to, more accurately — “Major Labels” by Kelefa Sanneh. Enjoyed it a great deal more than I thought I would. He was nicely inclusive and open-minded, but not so much that the wind blows through. I gather he’s not rated ‘round these parts.

KId Congo's memoir was really good. Read it in 3 days, Some New Kind Of kick. Hope he writes some more even if not memoir. THink he was writing reviews and things for fanzines so wouldn't sneeze at him looking into his own aesthetics and music and stuff. Just reallly hope this isn't his sole published written work.

I need to read the Kid Congo book

hopefully getting Holy Ghost the Albert Ayler biography tomorrow for Xmas.
Looked good when I saw it in local bookshop last week.
Don't think I had been aware of it but saw title in psychedelic font and thought it must be interesting.
Writer was apparently a friend of Albert's brother Donald

It's very good; I wrote it up for The Wire not long ago (paired up with the massive Sonny Rollins bio).

I also have my eye on the recent Eric Weisbard book.

If this is Songbooks, I have read (most of) it. It's a history of American music writing, organized by topic under the heading of the book that originated this particular strain of discourse. For instance, books about metal are discussed in the chapter "Pimply, prole, and putrid, but with a surprisingly diverse genre literature: Chuck Eddy, Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, 1991".
He suggests in his introduction that it's not necessarily meant to be read cover-to-cover, so I read about two-thirds of the chapters. There are a gigantic number of books that are discussed or at least mentioned, from criticism to histories to fiction, and so it's great to whet your curiosity for all the other music books you could be reading, but I found that Weisbard's commentary on the individual titles is so compressed it's almost as cryptic as Christgau at his most. It would have been a relief to have a few more definitive declarative sentences instead of a lot of equivocating about how "more investigation is needed" into this or that topic.

I really want to get the Kranky Records book

Does Weisbard acknowledge that he was replaced as Voice Music Editor by Eddy? To whom I hereby acknowledge my personal and professional connections, also that I'm mentioned among the acknowledgements in that book, before saying that the author sticks his pimply prole neck out into some writing that pushes itself into more vividly descriptive indications of just why we should bother with this stuff, much of which was hard to find and/or expensive, in whatever condition, with whatever reputation it already had, if any.
The kind of thing that got Eddy into the Weisbard-edited Spin Guide To Alternative Music (before The Great Replacement). That's still worth looking for, at least in libraries, and there's at least one ILM thread about it.

Also worth looking for at the library: Dylan's mostly good new music book (pix are always good), which I posted about and from on Is Bob Dylan overrated?

Xpost. The Kid Congo book is great. A very solid memoir about bands that were not very well documented from the inside. I was so happy when I stumbled across it in the library.

Amazing it being recognised enough for library to pick up copies. It was something I had hoped for for years. Kid had said he kept a diary when I met him in Gun Club days so I hoped he might have kept them and be able to write something from them as aide memoire and this is so much more.
Great book as was Barry Adamson's which I had read a couple of weeks earlier.

Now just read Ribby Krieger's Set The Night On Fire which is also pretty great. His life told in short paragraphs not fully chronologically but I think pretty truthfully. Including looking into his bandmate's memoirs and attempting to correct various myths including those created by the film by Oliver Stone.
Quite a good read.

Also just coming to the end of Tricky's Hell Is Round The Corner which is also a pretty honest look back at his life/career I think. Shows his weaknesses etc
Worth a read if you enjoy his music. Quite good anyway I think.

I really want to get the Kranky Records book

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, December 22, 2022 9:51 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

after seeing this post i read the amazon sample. seems really well-written and illuminating. love how it really goes heavy into the business side of things. i kind of forgot how much i was an indie trainspotter around 2000, especially around that chicago milieu, fun to read about the ins and outs. how did i never know that smashing punpkins were a chicago band? haha weird.

i always assumed they were l.a. from the get go, but i was never a big fan anyway

I remember some grumbling at the time about a Chicago band trying to sound like they’re from Seattle.

Just learned that Karl Bartos put out a 600+ page memoir recently. Anyone read it?

i just finished the kranky book. i found it pretty dry. lots of facts, not many anecdotes. also in one paragraph of this book about chicago indie rock, he calls the wilco album “yankee foxtrot motel” three times

haha burn