What's the LATEST Book You've Read? MUSIC-RELATED ONLY!

[Clement]

My next purchase? (Although I might wait a year for the paperback edition.) Love Ann Powers, love Joni--what's not to like? You can read the preface for free on the publisher's website:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/traveling-ann-powers
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I couldn't wait! Thanks SO much for the link! Those >40pp convinced me to buy two copies–one for my daughter!

 

[hafquark]

Just finished "I'm Gonna Say It Now: The Writings of Phil Ochs"

 

[~dave~~wave~]

My next purchase? (Although I might wait a year for the paperback edition.) Love Ann Powers, love Joni--what's not to like? You can read the preface for free on the publisher's website:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/traveling-ann-powers
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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

 

[humprof]

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

 

[knifeman]

Geezer Butler's Into the Void. Great book if you're a Sabbath fan.

 

[Kenneth Burns]

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?

 

[Clement]

Can't wait to get into this one! @GOS !

 

[humprof]

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/

 

[leahypc]

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).

 

[cbmmm3]

and its an effin good book btw

 

[SyrinxTemple]

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).

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.

 

[Blackwood]

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.

 

[humprof]

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/

 

[Kenneth Burns]

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!

 

[Quad Linda]

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.

 

[Blackwood]

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...”.)

 

[humprof]

Looking forward to this new Joni-inspired book:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/song-so-wild-and-blue-paul-lisicky

 

[humprof]

I'm expanding the category of this thread to include any interesting music writing, no matter the length. This short piece is by novelist, critic, and essayist Hari Kunzru, who rotates in as one of the resident "Easy Chair" columnists for Harper's magazine. His latest is "Lo-fi Beats for Work or Study," on the uses of ambient music (and, passingly, one of its antecedents, "furniture music"). Here's the crux of the piece, which completes the "sandwich" of a quote from Brian Eno:

The idea of music that can “accommodate” multiple levels of attention without “enforcing” any one is the most precise definition I’ve found for the kind of music that helps me to work. As Eno says, it’s less “background music” than it is multilevel music, something that creates a perimeter if that’s what I want, but which doesn’t suffer from requiring my sustained attention. I don’t think of ambient music as a genre, except in the most vague way. It’s not a particular set of sounds; it’s more a practice of listening, of using music as a tool to induce a particular mental state. When it’s functioning, the music recedes, leaving a space for thought. And though I’m not aware of it, I’m still listening. I have a high tolerance for repetition, but kitsch and banality quickly begin to force themselves to the front of my mind. Clicking on a playlist titled lo–fi beats to relax/study to brings me little relaxation or sense of studiousness. Since I am also a degenerate record collector, this suits me fine.

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/11/lo-fi-beats-for-work-or-study-hari-kunzru-work-music/

 

[Blackwood]

I'm expanding the category of this thread to include any interesting music writing, no matter the length. This short piece is by novelist, critic, and essayist Hari Kunzru, who rotates in as one of the resident "Easy Chair" columnists for Harper's magazine. His latest is "Lo-fi Beats for Work or Study," on the uses of ambient music (and, passingly, one of its antecedents, "furniture music"). Here's the crux of the piece, which completes the "sandwich" of a quote from Brian Eno:

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/11/lo-fi-beats-for-work-or-study-hari-kunzru-work-music/

Good read. My work now and in the past has involved a lot of editing and a fair bit of writing. I quickly learned that listening to vocal music while working was a no-go, so I gravitated to instrumental music. Sometimes it’s classical, a bit of Japanese from time to time, or instrumental versions of vocal albums.

But Eno’s work can often be best (along with some other artists in that realm) because it does allow me to get lost in something that’s not totally background, but not familiar enough that I get pulled into as I might an instrumental of a vocal song where the lyrics could be rolling around in my head. The ambient pieces have no pre-existing definition or history like pop songs or well-known classical pieces.

And it’s the longer pieces that work well because there aren’t song breaks every few minutes to subtlety distract. So 77 Million Paintings (44 min) or Thursday Afternoon (61 min) work better for me than something like the Apollo album with individual pieces that are different.

The mention of Satie in the article reminded me of Vexations. I think I tried it once as work music but rather than soothing, it can drive one a little batty.

Probably my favorite music in this area came from Anthony Robbins. While I read the Unlimited Power book when it came out, a friend went all in and got some expanded cassette program that he loaned me for a bit. In it was musical pieces under the title of Total-Self Confidence and Unlimited Financial Success. (They can be found on YouTube.) Supposedly there were quiet, affirmation messages buried in it which I didn’t buy into, but I loved the music. I managed to find it years later and have digital versions that I play from time to time.

I’m curious if the author made it the whole hour in the chamber.

 

[SharpKnight]

The Gospel According to Luke by Steve Lukather is really great! And currently reading Not Dead Yet by Phil Collins.