Books About...
Walking down a sunny street to the library
Checking out the latest books about [rock and roll]
Going to the fruit stand to buy a dozen oranges
and the books and the oranges go back to [my] place
tell the same old story to everyone that know
[I'm] just sitting in [my] room reading books about [rock and roll].
It's the time of year when I start looking for winter reading material, and I always love reading a good book about music. Be it a biography, history of a genre, a memoir, or what have you, I'm looking to read it. So who has some good recommendations for me?
NOTE: They can be about any genre, I just used 'rock and roll' above because it worked pretty well as a lyric replacement.
Craig
Checking out the latest books about [rock and roll]
Going to the fruit stand to buy a dozen oranges
and the books and the oranges go back to [my] place
tell the same old story to everyone that know
[I'm] just sitting in [my] room reading books about [rock and roll].
It's the time of year when I start looking for winter reading material, and I always love reading a good book about music. Be it a biography, history of a genre, a memoir, or what have you, I'm looking to read it. So who has some good recommendations for me?
NOTE: They can be about any genre, I just used 'rock and roll' above because it worked pretty well as a lyric replacement.
Craig
Comments
Craig
As for a biography of Sun Ra, that may go to the top of the list. Such a fascinating dude.
Craig
Other suggestions:
"Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong",
"Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original",
"Moanin' at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf.
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (one of their two primary recording engineers - lot's of inside stories. Every Half-Price Books in the Cities has a few copies)
(I'd be surprised if you haven't read Our Band Could Be Your Life, since it features a lot of our 80s favorites, including the Mats and the Huskers)
I'll have to look in to the others. Thanks!
Craig
Craig
There really, really should be a good book about it if there isn't one I'm missing.
Craig
(Do you like how I brought you back on topic, with the book tie in? And now, the weather...)
I have a book about Bruce Springsteen that is going to go overdue tomorrow. Yikes. I better get reading.
Please?
...back to topic: Craig, if you're still reading this: no one's mentioned any of the 1st generation rockcrit gods, so I will: Lester Bangs, of course; Greil Marcus (I've tried to read Lipstick Traces for 20 years and someday I will succeed), and my favorite, Robert Christgau: the passing of his monthly Consumer Guide is a loss I mourn dearly.
Rudie - No such thing as off topic when it involves The Replacements.
Craig
Ekkehard Jost - Free Jazz (a canonical book)
George Lewis - A Power Stronger Than Itself (on the AACM)
Graham Locke - Forces In Motion (Anthony Braxton, probably my favorite jazz book)
Derek Bailey - Improvisation
John Litweiler - The Freedom Principle (Jazz after 1958)
Kevin Whitehead - New Dutch Swing
John Szwed - Space Is the Place (Sun Ra)
Craig, one last music book suggestion: England's Dreaming, by Jon Savage. And, as a companion piece, The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe--the scene where one of the teenage characters goes to see the Clash in 1976 is, to borrow a musical metaphor, perfect-pitch.
Ole Bruce is further down the list, now. I'll post back when I've read it, and not just acquired it from the library.
It is this one
Runaway dream : Born to run and Bruce Springsteen's American vision / Masur, Louis P.
While I was at it, I found this one, too and have not yet read it, either.
Meeting across the river : stories inspired by the haunting Bruce Springsteen song / Kaye, Jessica
My latest non-renewable book that I MUST read is one that deserves its own post, and I am not up to the task of doing it justice right now; it's that good. I had a job interview for my dream job today, and I am knackered. I shod my feet with pumps instead of the usual tennie runners, manicured my talons with "Commander In Chic" by Sally Hansen, dyed my hair, put on some thigh-highs, interrupted my usual web jackassery to research interview Q&A, the whole gamut.
O baby, I looked good.
Yes, I have a 2nd interview. WIsh me luck!
Craig
OK, for the other book that I almost peed my pants laughing at, it was so funny:
Let's get the bad out of the way first. Whoever edited this needs to find another line of work. I have not seen so many errors in one book before in my entire life. I felt like taking a red pen to it. Mistakes here on emusers, OK fine...we are not getting paid. Somebody presumabley got paid to edit/proofread this book. Maybe they were stoned like the main character.
So - overlooking that, there are bon mots and witticisms on every page.
Unbeknownst to me, My husband started reading it this morning and almost took it with him on the plane. Which is a good thing he didn't - I was down to the last 2 chapters and would have been quite irked. He liked it enough that he begged me to request it again from the library, since I returned it without knowing he'd started reading it.
I started this one first
Different authors write the backstory that goes to the Springsteen song (one I've always enjoyed). I've only read the first two, and they were both fantastic yet vastly different.
From Booklist
The characters in these stories inspired by Bruce Springsteen's song about a promised land, "Meeting across the River," will never grasp or even fully comprehend such a place. For them, as in the song, the promised land remains elusive. The song, of course, leaves a lot of details to the imagination, which allows the contributors to this collection to fill in the blanks. All the song reveals is some small-time hoods, a "last chance" deal that is about to go down across a river, an unnamed narrator, a guy named Eddie, and a reward of "two grand." Will girlfriend Cherry stay? It appears doubtful. On so enigmatic a foundation, 20 diverse stories have been erected, most the work of already published, if not particularly well known, writers who have put their hearts into fleshing out tales of small-time losers, petty criminals, and other assorted misfits who dare to dream of a promised land. June Sawyers
The Star Tribune writer who does the local music articles seemed to really like the book coming out this week (although he did question the fact that it doesn't deal with the issues of sexuality that were so important to the Huskers or with SST).
Craig
I look forward to both books.
ANYHOO, the 'Meeting Across the River' book is so far, excellent. One story is told from the point of Eddie, another from the point of Cherry, more from the point of I'm not going to tell you, read the book. So far, one story was set in Jersey, another in Wyoming, another in Detroit....you get my drift. These authors have vivid imaginations.