Truly essential books about music

David Toop's Ocean of Sound was another watershed book for me, one of the few music books that reads well as an interdisciplinary text, a creative narrative, and a selective but compelling overview of its particular obsessions.

Likewise Greil Marcus's In The Fascist Bathroom, and/or Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, depending on which edition and in which country you purchased it. This book introduced me to Kleenex/Liliput and Lora Logic years before KRS put the trendy stamp back on the post-punk bloodline.

Music Downtown by Kyle Gann is a great collection of essays on the rise of "downtown" music in NYC. Highly compelling reading for those of us who were too young to be "on the ground" when all the pivotal moves were being made, and a dizzyingly literary approach to boot.

Robert Christgau's 70s, 80s & 90s

All Music Guide

The Dirt

Lipstick Traces is the only other thing coming to mind at the moment, although there are obviously others.

Great book about musicians' relationship to drugs throughout the history of 'popular' music, starting with ragtime/dixieland and going to the 1990s. Really interesting stuff.

we owe you nothing: punk planet, the collected interviews

the rock n' roll: an unruly history book that accompanied the pbs special is not so bad either, goes through the way back roots really well, though it could have done more.

i haven't read any music books that have come out in the past year or two, besides a couple of the 33 1/3 series - which are lovely, if any of you haven't seen them yet.

anyway, i was thinking about picking up that, or the book on post-punk that just came out in the states that i can't remember the name of right now.

Starmaking Machinery Geoffrey Stokes. A masterful case study of recording/marketing/music-making in the 70s by the late Village Voice writer/editor. Subject is Commander Cody & the Lost Planet Airmen but you don't even have to like country rock to dig it.

The Gospel Sound Anthony Heilbut. say "Amen" children. By the end you'll be ready to join the Church of God In Christ yrself.

Four Lives In The Bebop Business AB Spellman. Pretty much as advertised, if bebop includes Cecil Taylor & Ornette Coleman as well as Jackie McLean & Herbie Nichols.

As Serious As Your Life Valerie Wilmer. Jazz avant-garde up to the 70s.

The Best of Country MusicJohn Morthland. Thorough and engagingly written record guide that also doubles as history/intro. Published in 1984 and begging for an update...

Dream Brothers David Browne. Fascinating and deeply felt double-bio alternates chapters on Tim and Jeff Buckley, subtly drawing parallels and contrasts. Also a great comparison/study of music biz machinations in the late 60s VS early 90s.

Pet Shop Boys, Literally Chris Heath. The 80s. Brilliant, as we used to say, also side-splittingly funny and thought-provoking.

All You Need Is Ears George Martin. You don't have to be a tech-geek (well maybe a little) to enjoy and learn from the Beatles producer's autobiography. Less self-serving than you may expect.

The Recording Angel Evan Eisenberg. Just re-released last year, this study of music and technology is more theoretical that my usual fare, but deciphering Eisenberg's theory of "phonography" will change the way you hear music. Seriously.

obvious choice: you can't go wrong w/Peter Guralnick. Besides the 2-part Elvis bio, Sweet Soul Music, Feels Like Going Home and Lost Highway collect profiles of blues country and rockabilly musicians. And right now I'm thinking Guralnick on Sam Cooke is the best pop music biography I've ever read.

-- Emily B (emily.burnha...), March 21st, 2006.

Is this the one by the late New York Times writer Robert Palmer? His writing on both blues and rock is excellent.

Last year -- good read so far, but probably best read in conjunction with books like Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and Rickey Vincent's funk book (which it is in part a clear response to).

My eternal underrated favorite is Dave Rimmer's Like Punk Never Happened, which in the guise of a book on Culture Club is an amazing from-the-time-itself meditation not merely on New Pop but the mechanics of pop and fandom. A modern equivalent -- say something from a couple of years back that discussed Xtina or N'Sync as a base point but actually dwelt on everything from mp3s to modern promotion or what have you -- would be brilliant, but I don't know if it exists outside of, well, here (and the NYLPM archives).

everybody references Bangs, you might as well know what they're talking about...

I'll be danged if I know what he's going on about, but it sure has a great discography...

over-rated,too nyc oriented, too old too blah blah,too much

and i'd second psychotic reactions, lost highway & sweet soul music.

which of the vu books is best? i'm currently trying to track down up-tight.

-- TRG (trgilmor...), March 21st, 2006.

My sentiments exactly. I've got 80 pages left.

Fuck it, I'm going to say Sugarman's "Wonderland Avenue". I only read it like last year, and for some reason I couldn't put it down. That doesn't mean it was partucularly good, but it does give a rather trashy and juicy perspective on post-60s/pre-punk L.A. and that city's glam rock culture, and it is filled with great Iggy and Fowley tales. Is it true? I don't know. Is is an addictive read? Yes!

(behind the scenes on an Alice Cooper tour, circa 1973...you'll wonder how these things were ever pulled off without cell phones, ATM's and the internet!)

When I read Heylin's From the Velvets to Voidoids as a youngster it had a huge impact on me -- it was one of those rotate-the-collection moments.

Craig Werner - A Change is Gonna Come
Charles Shaar Murray - Crosstown Traffic
Stanley Booth - The True Life Adventures of the Rolling Stones
David Ritz - his Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye biogs

I think my favourites would be the Guralnick series though: Lost Highway, Feel Like Going Home, Sweet Soul Music

-- curmudgeon (curmudgeo...), March 21st, 2006.

yes, yes it is. sorry, forgot to include the name.

one of the few books i've read re: music, really enjoyed it at the time though can't recall much beyond an account of the ruin of Cash's childhood home and the dusty, closed museum that he was living in at the time (pre-American recordings) which the Hurt video gives a taste off. Think there are bits on anybody anywhere from the Townes to Emmylou.
Not very deep but well written and interesting.

Can we please revive? I sure have been having trouble finding good, engaging music criticism or scene overview or biography-type long form books for summer reading ... give me some great stuff released in the last few years - things like 'our band could be your life,' 'please kill me,' are getting dog eared - hated 'perfect from now on' and I like fun overview books like RE/SEARCH 'incredibly strange music' and 'unknown legends of rock and roll' ...

Waiting for the Sun
Hotel California: Singer-songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the LA Canyons 1967-1976 (both by Barney Hoskyns)

Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Elektra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture

Song Man (Will Hodgkinson)

The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize (David Cavanagh)

Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop, from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears

Ditto on the Creation and bubblegum books. But both are monsters choked with factoids. Not very light or summery.

For engaging music criticism, try one of the 33 1/3 books. Carl Wilson on Celine Dion is fantastic. The Richard Meltzer collection A Whore Just Like The Rest is quite possibly the funniest book I've ever read. The San Diego Reader squibs towards the end are eternal, particularly the one where he makes anagrams out of Idiot Flesh (what else were they good for?).

Deserving a mention once again: Hit Men by Fredric Dannen

I read 'Awopbopaloobop-alopbamboom' by Nik Cohn when I was 13 and it changed my life; he took the piss out of Dylan and the Beatles, preferred early Beach Boys to Pet Sounds, was ruthless about the Doors, ended up with Creedence and Merle Haggard; surrounded as i was then (1973) by Zep and Purple adoring long hairs in Rural Ireland, it was an instant primer in oppositional attitude.

I lost that copy a few years later, and only came across a replacement recently, and...... it seems pretty thin now, but some of it still resonates; I remembered pages on Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but they turned out to be paragraphs, but incisive and vivid - perhaps a little too much.......

Another great one is Michael Gray's Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, which is the funniest, smartest "reference" book I have ever read. Scathingly sharp at times, and stupidly readable.

this came out a few weeks ago and it is outstanding

The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde - by David W. Bernstein

http://www.amazon.com/Francisco-Tape-Music-Center-Counterculture/dp/0520248929

definitely for fans of early American electronic music (Terry Riley / Pauline Oliveros / Steve Reich / Subotnick / Robert Ashley / Ramon Sender) but it's also about much more than that, it's about the environment in the early sixties that lead to what we now remember as 'the sixties'

lead / led

the DVD it comes with is a goldmine

from the book release party a few weeks ago - http://flickr.com/photos/matrixsynth/2613585191/in/photostream/

That looks great, Milton.

for a totally enjoyable blast through 80s pop one book that really hit the spot for me was Julian Copes double header head-on/repossessed.

Enter Naomi: SST and all That - Joe Carducci
Rock & the Pop Narcotic - Joe Carducci
The Dark Stuff - Nick Kent

'awopbopaloobop' is far and away the best but you have to get the original version, 'rock from the beginning' -- there's a lot of (possibly) scurrilous gossip in the original edition that got clipped out, prob for legal reasons. also for some reason they took out any and all references to homosexuality!

The edition of Awaobop.... I have is the Paladin one published in 1970 - I think intact: or were there even more scurrilous stories in the hardback?

does it have the one about johnny ray?

The House that Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records by Ashley Kahn

Second the Carl Wilson Celine Dion book