Good to hear it.
And which leads us to today's business. To wit:
...and your choice for best or worst book about any aspect of pop/rock/soul/jazz/country/folk music is...?
No arbitrary rules whatsoever -- you can pick a biography, a compendium of essays, a photo album, or even an anthology of psychotic ramblings...everything's cool.
Anyway, in case you're wondering, my choice for the worst is clearly (don't even attempt to argue with me) this 1981 total piece of crap by the now mercifully forgotten Albert Goldman.
Which falsely and maliciously places a disgusting racial slur directly at the heart of rock's creation story.*
For that alone -- and don't even get me started on his John Lennon "bio" -- Goldman deserves an eternity in a molten dung heap in Hell.
Oh -- and the other all-time worst (trust me, it's not even a contest) is this piece of utter mid-Sixties drivel by first generation rock crit Richard Meltzer.
Meltzer's an interesting guy -- he co-wrote some cool songs for Blue Öyster Cult -- but sorry, an umlaut doesn't justify...
...a book as crappy/silly as this pompous collegiate horseshit.
As for the best? Oh come on -- you didn't see these coming? 😎
Pretty cool cover art on both of those, no?
BTW, I have no idea who's responsible for the impressive frontispiece of Gender Chameleons, but the design for The Simels Report (a masterpice which may or may not come out sometime this year) was done by my beautiful and brilliant art director girlfriend. Who as you know is working cheap. 😎😎
I should add that that Gender Chameleons is apparently available at eBay for a modest $180.00!
Pretty hilarious.
Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?
And have a great weekend, everybody!!!
_________________________________________________
* I'm not gonna reproduce the offending passage, but let's just say it involves a very famous quote from Sun Records auteur Sam Phillips that Goldman, because he's a shithead, deliberately misrepresents.
19 comments:
Back in the pre-internet days I had a little hobby of reading right wing Christian anti-rock books. Too many to remember, but the three I could easily find on my shelf from the early to mid 80s (I've got stuff going back to the 60s somewhere):
Rock's Hidden Persuader: The Truth About Backmasking by Dan & Steve Peters with Cher Merrill - These are the weirdos who brought you playing songs backwards to hear the satanic messages.
Why Knock Rock by the same group of idiots.
Rock: Practical Help for Those Who Listen to the Words and Deon't Like What They Hear by Bob Larson, who was all of the right wing Christian space in the 80's. The author's photo on back is everything you'd expect of an overage youth minister still trying to be early 60s hip in the 80s.
And yeah, Goldman's books sucked. You felt the need to take a shower every few pages.
i read lennon's bio by goldman - it had a really nasty attitude toward him
i did read a bit of keith richard's autobiography - the first chapter or two - it was pretty good
today's washington post has a feature article about the autobiography of peter wolf of the j. geils band
I can't wait to read the Wolf book, if only for the stuff about Faye Dunaway. 😎
Greg Milner Perfecting Sound Forever
Marc Myers Anatomy of a Song
Tom Moon 1001 Recordings to Hear Before You Die
Cleveland Jeff
Some of my favorites: Steve Gorman's memoir on the Black Crowes - uproarious! Love Goes to Buildings on Fire - the best book on music in NYC. Finally, Jim Miller (I believe) wrote Rock Eras in 1987 and I read it in my undergraduate experience. This book takes popular music (1955-1982) and contextualizes and intellectualizes it. This book made me see popular music as something important and worthy of analysis. Still assign chapters to my own students.
Nick Tosches- Unsung Heroes Of Rock & Roll is my very favorite.
It's certainly the funniest, with the possible exception of Mark Shipper's "Paperback Writer". I stole so much from Tosches for Gender Chameleons...
peter's dealings with Van the Man made Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 a fun read
"Never a Dull Moment - 1971" David Hepworth. Whether you agree with all his assessments of that year - a good read. Hepworth a good UK writer.
"Play it Loud" - Brad Tolinski. About the development of the electric guitar. Very good and informative
"Careless Love" or "Feel Like Going Home" Peter Guralnick
Pete Townshend's auto-bio, Who I Am. Love PT's music (up until Psychoderelict, anyway), but man, does he portray himself as a selfish dick.
The pain he inflicted on his family, again and again, because he couldn't keep it in his pants, and could not resist getting high, is impressively horrifying. And - that's with Townshend likely putting the most-positive spin possible on his antics!
After reading Keith Richards auto-bio, Life, I thought... Keith is a much better person than Pete. A conclusion I'd never even have imagined before cracking those books.
Steve, fir
st - congrats about navigating the publishing world.
My second - did you not get authors approval for your book cover ?
Just one more - did the artist/designer not receive credit on back cover ? Great Cover !
rob
Best: "Shakey", Jimmy McDonough's lengthy biography on Neil Young. Lots of interesting stuff about Neil, who sat for extensive interviews, and many key figures (Elliot Roberts, David Briggs, the guys from Crazy Horse) in his career. Not only very informative but also very funny in many spots: for example, the chapter in which we meet Roberts and Briggs for the first time is hilarious. It's been about 25 years since the book was published; I am hoping that maybe there's an update or sequel at some point.
'England's Dreaming' by Jon Savage is IMHO the definitive history of British Punk Rock.
Also, it may be a slight tome, but I greatly enjoyed Tommy James's memoir about how he was ensnared in the Roulette Records mafia.
Favorite: Live at The Fillmore East: Amalie R. Rothschild -
Reminds me why the Fillmore East is my favorite music room ever. Great photos!
Least favorite: Waging Heavy Peace: Neil Young - Neil delivers the most self serving bullshit I've ever read from a rock musician. After a hundred pages I had to bail!
Captain Al
The Who is pretty much my favorite band, but the biographies of Moon and Entwistle, sympathetic as they were to their subjects, depicted two very damaged and damaging people, massively talented but toxic. Very sad. Townshend’s autobiography was in many ways unflinching - it’s hard to imagine anyone showing themselves as a bigger self-serving and pathetic asshole as Townshend does in, for example, his description of his pursuit of actress Theresa Russell - but being unflinching doesn’t make it less creepy to read. Regarding his art, Glyn Johns’ statement that “it is impossible to overestimate Pete Townshend’s impact on popular music” rings true to me, but Pete doesn’t seem to be someone you’d want to hang out with. Those albums, though…amazing.
Probably the most interesting and fun book I’ve read about music is Al Kooper’s autobiography, even though it could be tighter. The aforementioned Glyn Johns autobiography is interesting but terribly assembled; it’s basically a chronological recitation of Glyn’s career. His trials and tribulations with the Stones are of course legion, and all of the times when Keith ruined something by being spaced out on heroin are spelled out in detail. And the way that Jimmy Page screwed Johns out of the producer credit on the first LZ album set the tone for the scurrilous antics of Page, Bonham, and the thug Peter Grant.
Finally, if you’re interested in the neurology of music, the late Oliver Sacks’ “Musicophilia” is utterly fascinating; it starts off with the case of a New York orthopedic surgeon who gets struck by lightning (I’m not making this up!), is resuscitated, and a few weeks later develops an overpowering urge to spend all his time learning and playing classical piano; the case histories get weirder from there.
My favorite is Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelganger by Neil McCormick. It’s about trying to succeed and not doing so.
Stevie Van Zandt's Unrequited Infatuations is also very good.
Brian Eno’s A Year with Swollen Appendices is an edited diary of one year in his life. It’s often fascinating. On a few occasions you learn some things you might prefer no to.
- Paul in DK
Seconding "Unsung Heroes", "Paperback Writer", and any Peter Guralnick.
"Please Kill Me" - Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
"Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung" - A Lester Bangs collection
"Tell The Truth Until They Bleed" - Josh Alan Friedman ...dishes the dirt, and he was Ronnie Spector's former boyfriend
"It Came From Memphis" - Robert Gordon ...it made me want to go there, and I did, even though most of the people he writes about weren't active
"Mystery Train" - Greil Marcus ...I didn't really understand Elvis until I read the Elvis chapter
I've got a hardcover version of the Glyn Johns autobio which I've been forgetting to read now for several years. 😎
I should add that Chris Hillman's autobiographical memoir is terrific, especially -- obviously-- if you're a Byrds fan like me. https://powerpop.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-byrds-of-fall-are-on-winters-traces.html
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