What's the LATEST Book You've Read? MUSIC-RELATED ONLY!
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Hawkwind: Days of the Underground, Radical Escapism in the Age of Paranoia
Looking forward to reading this one (still awaiting delivery).
Much to my dismay, I haven't read a book in about 3 years. 
Catching up on a backlog of magazines this afternoon, I was reminded of one of the hardest obits to read in the past few years: music writer Gene Santoro, author of Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus; Highway 61 Revisited: The Tangled Roots of American Jazz, Blues, Rock and Country Music; Stir It Up: Musical Mixes from Roots to Jazz; Dancing in Your Head: Jazz, Rock, Blues and Beyond; and The Guitar: The History, the Music, the Players. He was also a regular contributor to The Nation (where I first got acquainted with his work, decades ago) and the New York Daily News. His prose just crackled. He was incredibly learned and wide-ranging, had great ears, and could be wickedly funny. I was expecting to be able to enjoy his keen insights and brilliant turns of phrase for many more years. Start with whichever of the book titles above speaks to you and work outward from there.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/gene-santoro-obituary/https://news.jazzjournalists.org/2022/05/music-writer-gene-santoro-rip/
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/gene-santoro-obituary/https://news.jazzjournalists.org/2022/05/music-writer-gene-santoro-rip/
Currently reading The Bakersfield Sound, which is interesting to me because I don’t care for country music.
However, I did grow up in the San Joaquin Valley (north of Bakersfield) and felt it would be interesting to learn more about the music from that area. There’s an Okie background in my family as well.
Earlier I bought a box set called The Bakersfield Sound. I had never bought a Bear Family box and, as people told me, they do create impressive sets.
I do find the early music interesting despite a lack of general love for the country genre. Maybe it would be more correct to say I’m not a fan of current country music.
As for the book, I’m only about a fourth in, but it is enjoyable and I can relate to the history of the area having come from there.
However, I did grow up in the San Joaquin Valley (north of Bakersfield) and felt it would be interesting to learn more about the music from that area. There’s an Okie background in my family as well.
Earlier I bought a box set called The Bakersfield Sound. I had never bought a Bear Family box and, as people told me, they do create impressive sets.
I do find the early music interesting despite a lack of general love for the country genre. Maybe it would be more correct to say I’m not a fan of current country music.
As for the book, I’m only about a fourth in, but it is enjoyable and I can relate to the history of the area having come from there.
Just started a book on Erik Satie last night. My interest in classical music is more in the Classical and Baroque eras, but I bought Steve Hackett’s album Sketches of Satie some years ago and loved it, in particular, Gymnopedie No. 1, which is possibly my favorite classical song. I appreciate the oddity of Vexations, too. I knew Satie was... quirky... and figured it was time for a deeper dive into his life.
Bootleg
Just finished this one which I got curious about. I remember "back in the day" when a Dylan freak friend of mine got the "Great White Wonder"
and other Dylan bootlegs. More recently I have been at a record show and seen large quantities of bootleg CDs. I was a little surprised.
The book was written in 1994 and is somewhat old news but it was quite interesting a comprehensive.
Just finished this one which I got curious about. I remember "back in the day" when a Dylan freak friend of mine got the "Great White Wonder"
and other Dylan bootlegs. More recently I have been at a record show and seen large quantities of bootleg CDs. I was a little surprised.
The book was written in 1994 and is somewhat old news but it was quite interesting a comprehensive.
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Not a book, but an essay in the December issue of Harper's--by ex-New Yorker music writer Sasha Frere-Jones, entitled "Corner Club Cathedral Cocoon: Audiophilia and Its Discontents." Lots to agree with (and to disagree with, starting with taking recommendations from Steve Guttenberg...), and lots to think about. Here's the paragraph that others have used to sell the piece:
https://harpers.org/archive/2022/12/corner-club-cathedral-cocoon-audiophilia-and-its-discontents/
S. Alexander Reed, Laurie Anderson's Big Science (Oxford University Press, 2022).
For Laurie Anderson fans with a tolerance for academic jargon only. (As an academic, my own level of tolerance is pretty high, though not as high as it once was.) Not uniformly enlightening, but it offers some interesting history & background and elucidates what's happening, track by track, from the standpoint of music theory. As for cultural theory, which is more up my alley: I liked what two late chapters had to say about Anderson's relationship to genre (especially "New Wave") and gender best of all.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/laurie-andersons-big-science-9780190926014?cc=us&lang=en&https://www.popmatters.com/laurie-anderson-big-science-reed
For Laurie Anderson fans with a tolerance for academic jargon only. (As an academic, my own level of tolerance is pretty high, though not as high as it once was.) Not uniformly enlightening, but it offers some interesting history & background and elucidates what's happening, track by track, from the standpoint of music theory. As for cultural theory, which is more up my alley: I liked what two late chapters had to say about Anderson's relationship to genre (especially "New Wave") and gender best of all.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/laurie-andersons-big-science-9780190926014?cc=us&lang=en&https://www.popmatters.com/laurie-anderson-big-science-reed
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I read Steven Wilson's book-"A Limited Edition of One" over the holidays.
It's a good read as Steven cover's some of his childhood memories all the way to the present and as we know he is a huge music fan so cover's his favorite record shop's that he would go to as a teenager and beyond and also favorite albums,songs,bands etc.
There is a also a chapter that explains some of the story to his next album-The Harmony Codex.
He does also mention when he first met Rotem(his now wife) in Israel for the first time, she was only 17 and Steven is his early 30's. He explains why the relationship together didn't work out at that time but you can tell from the different mention's in the book he is over joyed that they are now married and is happy raising 2 stepdaughter's together with Rotem.
It's a good read as Steven cover's some of his childhood memories all the way to the present and as we know he is a huge music fan so cover's his favorite record shop's that he would go to as a teenager and beyond and also favorite albums,songs,bands etc.
There is a also a chapter that explains some of the story to his next album-The Harmony Codex.
He does also mention when he first met Rotem(his now wife) in Israel for the first time, she was only 17 and Steven is his early 30's. He explains why the relationship together didn't work out at that time but you can tell from the different mention's in the book he is over joyed that they are now married and is happy raising 2 stepdaughter's together with Rotem.
A Hard Day's Write - stories behind every Beatles song (updated) - Steve Turner
Kyle Devine, Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. There's a whole thread about this book, and after reading lots about it, I finally got around to the thing itself. The writing can be a little bit jargony at times (we academics can't help ourselves), and there are places where it feels like a long article that's been padded and stretched to fill out a book. A late chapter mostly rehearses an intra-disciplinary beef about whether the subject of the book is even a fit subject for Musicology. But it makes an important argument, and hopefully it inspires more research and more transparency about the materiality of the so-called "cloud" and the potentially dire ecological consequences of the shift to streaming. (The historical chapters of the book make it clear that the human and ecological costs of older technologies of manufacturing and distributing recorded music were no less dubious, just hidden--whitewashed? obfuscated?--in different ways.) 300 pages, 100 of which are endnotes & bibliography. A pretty fast read.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537780/decomposed/https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/political-economy-ecology-of-streaming.33170/
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537780/decomposed/https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/political-economy-ecology-of-streaming.33170/
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I started getting into the Grateful Dead last year. My knowledge of them over the decades has been very, very basic. So I figured it was time to explore things a bit more on the history side and not just the music. I read a GD book last year, but just started this one by Phil, which I’m really enjoying.
I have this one but have not read it yet.
Ditto
It’s been a long battle to get to the point where I won’t finish a book I’m not totally enjoying. I had tried to believe that there might be value right around the corner, or at least in the next chapter in any book, especially a biography.
But as I get older, I’m trying to take more of a “screw it, life is too short for a book that ain’t doin’ it for me” attitude.
Unfortunately, this book about Mississippi John Hurt fell into the “screw it” category.
It almost felt like an official report. For example, the author relies HEAVILY on census data to tell the story of everyone Hurt so much as brushed shoulders with as a youngster. In fact, if you took a shot of your favorite adult beverage every time the author wrote “census”, you’d be hammered before you finished the first chapter. The chapters are so massively long (there’s only five) that I didn’t even finish the first one and multiple nights reading it.
The author also said “probably” or “seems likely” a lot which is not unusual given the era. But between ultra-specific on everyone’s census data and other things being hard to pin down, it became a bit of a joyless read. (There’s one 3-star review on Amazon where the complaint about it being too scholarly was raised. I agree.)
If Hurt had been my relative and I was into genealogy, I would appreciate this book a lot. A family member wrote the forward and was thrilled with the book... as she should be. All of us should be so lucky to get a book about a famous family member that goes into such detail about the family. Maybe his later life and re-discovery was more interesting in the book, but I’ll never know. Still love his music, though.
Moved on to a Tom Petty book last night and already enjoying it more.
But as I get older, I’m trying to take more of a “screw it, life is too short for a book that ain’t doin’ it for me” attitude.
Unfortunately, this book about Mississippi John Hurt fell into the “screw it” category.
It almost felt like an official report. For example, the author relies HEAVILY on census data to tell the story of everyone Hurt so much as brushed shoulders with as a youngster. In fact, if you took a shot of your favorite adult beverage every time the author wrote “census”, you’d be hammered before you finished the first chapter. The chapters are so massively long (there’s only five) that I didn’t even finish the first one and multiple nights reading it.
The author also said “probably” or “seems likely” a lot which is not unusual given the era. But between ultra-specific on everyone’s census data and other things being hard to pin down, it became a bit of a joyless read. (There’s one 3-star review on Amazon where the complaint about it being too scholarly was raised. I agree.)
If Hurt had been my relative and I was into genealogy, I would appreciate this book a lot. A family member wrote the forward and was thrilled with the book... as she should be. All of us should be so lucky to get a book about a famous family member that goes into such detail about the family. Maybe his later life and re-discovery was more interesting in the book, but I’ll never know. Still love his music, though.
Moved on to a Tom Petty book last night and already enjoying it more.
https://jpgr.co.uk/black.htmlA fascinating topic.
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