I couldn't wait! Thanks SO much for the link! Those >40pp convinced me to buy two copies–one for my daughter!
What's the LATEST Book You've Read? MUSIC-RELATED ONLY!
- Thread starter Quad Linda
- Start date
Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:
hafquark
500 Club - QQ All-Star
Just finished "I'm Gonna Say It Now: The Writings of Phil Ochs"
I can recommend this recent interview with the author on Rock's Backpages podcast, by noted UK music writer Barney Hoskyns.
https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Podcast/Episode/e178
I've been a loyal reader of music writer Phil Freeman's Burning Ambulance blog for years. (He moved to Substack a few months ago.) In today's post, he reviews a whole bunch of books, a couple of which have been sitting on my shelves unread: one of them, Jon Savage's classic England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond, has sat there for ages; and the other, Will Hermes' Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever, only since it was published a couple of years ago. But the volume Freeman spends the most time on is one I don't have: Christoph Dallach’s Neu Klang: The Definitive History of Krautrock. He makes it sound pretty fascinating--"despite," like me, "not being a particularly obsessive fan of the music filed under that heading." It struck a particular chord because I'd just finished listening to Steven Wilson & Tim Bowness's Album Years episode on "Folk, Ambient, & Krautrock" in 1972. (Wilson's favorite album ever is Tangerine Dream's Zeit.)
https://burningambulance.substack.com/p/krautrock-punk-rock-and-the-weight
https://burningambulance.substack.com/p/krautrock-punk-rock-and-the-weight
knifeman
500 Club - QQ All-Star
Geezer Butler's Into the Void. Great book if you're a Sabbath fan.
Kenneth Burns
Member
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2016
- Messages
- 28
Here's the latest. I reread Mike Nesmith's wonderful memoir "Infinite Tuesday," and I can't say enough good things about Gary Giddens' two-volume (and counting) biography of Bing Crosby. This is superb music writing.
Semi-relatedly, can anyone recommend a good Cole Porter biography?
Semi-relatedly, can anyone recommend a good Cole Porter biography?
Here's a review (by Hua Hsu, himself an excellent music writer, in the New Yorker) of a new book I'd like to read: Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music, by Franz Nicolay. "Young people who came of age before the twenty-first century...could be forgiven for assuming that working one’s way up from gigs to a steady job in music was a plausible career path...But anyone who has streamed a song on their phone for free can sense that something has changed. 'Musicians,' Nicolay argues, 'were the canaries in the coal mine of the precariat.'"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/28/band-people-franz-nicolay-book-review
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477323533/band-people/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/28/band-people-franz-nicolay-book-review
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477323533/band-people/
For anyone interested in Geddy Lee's book, 'My Effin' Life', there's a great price on it right now on Amazon - $14.67 (63% off).
and its an effin good book btw
I cannot recommend enough. I know it is 500 pages, but I would have been fine with double that. Of course, they have been my favorite band since I was 10.
I don’t remember being aware of XTC when they were active, but that’s not surprising since the style is something I would have avoided at the time and not played on the radio stations I listened to.
However, always being interested in Steven Wilson’s surround mixes, I started buying the 5.1 reissues in the last year or so. There was a lot of it I liked (King for a Day is now a favorite song) so I wanted to learn more about the band and ran across this book which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The book is an interview format and covers about 30 songs that Andy wrote. What impressed me was his desire to do something different with each song, mainly musically but also lyrically. Since the person interviewing him was a musician, he could draw things out that a non-musician might not so you could understand what was happening in the songs.
Some of the stories relate to what was happening in the band at the time, so while it’s not a band biography, you get a general overview of their history sprinkled throughout.
I know we have The Big Express in Atmos. I hope Wilson revisits his earlier 5.1 mixes for Atmos.
However, always being interested in Steven Wilson’s surround mixes, I started buying the 5.1 reissues in the last year or so. There was a lot of it I liked (King for a Day is now a favorite song) so I wanted to learn more about the band and ran across this book which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The book is an interview format and covers about 30 songs that Andy wrote. What impressed me was his desire to do something different with each song, mainly musically but also lyrically. Since the person interviewing him was a musician, he could draw things out that a non-musician might not so you could understand what was happening in the songs.
Some of the stories relate to what was happening in the band at the time, so while it’s not a band biography, you get a general overview of their history sprinkled throughout.
I know we have The Big Express in Atmos. I hope Wilson revisits his earlier 5.1 mixes for Atmos.
The entire 33-1/3 series (excluding pre-orders) is 30% off--not 33-1/3% off?--at Bloomsbury through the weekend.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/series/33-13/
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/series/33-13/
Kenneth Burns
Member
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2016
- Messages
- 28
Music reads and rereads since September:
Mark Russell, "Presenting Mark Russell"
Dave Marsh, "Before I Get Old: The Story of the Who"
Ken Caillat and Steve Stiefel, "Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album"
Mike Rutherford, "The Living Years"
Geoff Emerick, "Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles"
In my 50s I think I spend more time reading about music than I do listening to it!
Mark Russell, "Presenting Mark Russell"
Dave Marsh, "Before I Get Old: The Story of the Who"
Ken Caillat and Steve Stiefel, "Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album"
Mike Rutherford, "The Living Years"
Geoff Emerick, "Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles"
In my 50s I think I spend more time reading about music than I do listening to it!
Been reading woefully little for too long.
recently read 90 page hard bound book from Hear My Song - Laura Nyro UK 19 CD. Mostly text by Gil, her Son. Many photos, too.
recently read 90 page hard bound book from Hear My Song - Laura Nyro UK 19 CD. Mostly text by Gil, her Son. Many photos, too.
I think of these as “candy bar books”... a quick hit to take the edge off, but you shouldn’t always expect a lot of lasting nourishment.
I enjoy reading in bed at night. Sometimes my capacity at the end of the day doesn’t allow for something deep, so books like this where you can read a chapter (one album) in about 10 minutes hits the spot. I’ve read a handful of these and this is the latest.
If you keep in mind that it’s just one author’s opinion (this guitar solo is good, this one isn’t), and that there’s not always a lot of deep research into the meaning of the songs, it’s fine.
In this case, the author seems to have pulled lyric meaning from what was painfully obvious, what was publicly stated about the song by the band in the past, or speculation. There isn’t an attempt to get a hold of the song writers for any clarity just for the purpose of this book.
But that’s OK. This fits the bill for what I need some nights.
They’ve supposedly got books coming later this year about Journey, Deep Purple (from 1984 on) and Steven Wilson (solo) and I’m looking forward to those. (For Journey, I picture a lot of cut/paste of “It’s a love song focused on...” or “It’s a breakup song focused on...”.)
I enjoy reading in bed at night. Sometimes my capacity at the end of the day doesn’t allow for something deep, so books like this where you can read a chapter (one album) in about 10 minutes hits the spot. I’ve read a handful of these and this is the latest.
If you keep in mind that it’s just one author’s opinion (this guitar solo is good, this one isn’t), and that there’s not always a lot of deep research into the meaning of the songs, it’s fine.
In this case, the author seems to have pulled lyric meaning from what was painfully obvious, what was publicly stated about the song by the band in the past, or speculation. There isn’t an attempt to get a hold of the song writers for any clarity just for the purpose of this book.
But that’s OK. This fits the bill for what I need some nights.
They’ve supposedly got books coming later this year about Journey, Deep Purple (from 1984 on) and Steven Wilson (solo) and I’m looking forward to those. (For Journey, I picture a lot of cut/paste of “It’s a love song focused on...” or “It’s a breakup song focused on...”.)
Similar threads
