I read a lot of books about music - I tend to prefer longer form journalism over album reviews or shorter pieces, and I’m not such a fan of interviews
Thought it might be useful to have a thread for sharing recommendations for good reading about music - online or printed. Could be rolling, could be not, let’s see if it takes…
Here’s a few books of the books that I can remember reading over the last year:
Great read, covering the lives of pop and rock stars after they leave the spotlight.
Loved this - one of the best things I read last year. Jarvis Cocker reminisces on his formative years and early Pulp
This comes highly recommended.
This doesn’t come highly recommended. Wanted to see what the fuss was about.
A gift - for a novice to the genre, found it very useful and made some great discoveries
Thought this was amazing and a worthy winner of the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction.
Love Cope’s writing. I managed to get my hands on Japrocksampler and a download of Krautrocksampler a long time back, which really opened my eyes (ears?) to a lot of good music.
This is really interesting even if you’re not in to punk rock, like a series of case studies of bands who moved from independent to major labels and the impact it had on them. Some successes like Green Day, some absolute horror stories like Jawbreaker or At The Drive In. Also charts how the growth and levels of access to the internet impacted the ‘professional’ band landscape.
Head-On/Repossessed is not only my favourite music autobiography but probably my favourite autobiography overall. Cope’s writing is absolutely incredible; you feel like you’re there with him in every scenario, mundane or insane. I swear if I read it again it’s going to reveal a slew of false memories I’ve inadvertantly lifted off him from my last reading.
Sure I’ve mentioned before but some of those 33 1/3 books can be decent. I really enjoyed Slint’s Spiderland and J Dilla’s Donuts, but also read Endroducing and Sound of Silver and both were just alright.
I really enjoyed this comprehensive biography of J Dilla which makes a case for how influential he was. It’s all about the rushed snares if I remember correctly.
Think everyone knows about Meet Me in the Bathroom now.
I had a good time with this oral history of Metal
And this by Kelefa Saneh. Essentially a defense of genre as part of identity formation but it’s more fun and interesting as a personal history of his relationship with the different genres that resonated with him throughout his life. There’s also history that those familiar with the genres probably already know but enough to serve as a jumping off point for those who want to dig in. It’s not the deepest book in the world but I had a good time with it.
Jeff Chang’s history of early hip-hop Can’t Stop Won’t Stop I remember being fun but it’s been ages so I don’t remember a whole lot, might have to re-read at some point.
Really enjoyed White Rabbit’s recent output; a couple have already been mentioned but I’ve also read and enjoyed recently
Jude Rogers’ memoir-meets-science-of-music
Shirley Collins’ memoir of travelling America collecting roots and folk music with Alan Lomax, interspersed with memories of growing up in the UK in the 30s
and then one of my all-time favourite music books is Rob Young’s Electric Eden
The folk tradition through British music, – leans heavily on the revival of the 60s and 70s but bookends that with the earlier folk song collectors and the later strands through pop in the 80s
I’ve got Electric Eden in my to read pile and very much want to get hold of The Sound Of Being Human, I’ve always liked Jude’s writing when I’ve come across it. I like her Songbook podcast too where she talks to guests about their favourite music books, I bought Nico, Songs They Never Play On The Radio off the back of the episode focused on that and loved the chats with Vashti Bunyan and Shirley Collins.
I enjoyed Fingers Crossed by Miki Berenyi and have just bought this book on the mysterious Connie Converse, it sure is hefty
oooh, I’ve got loads. Here’s three to start with, but you should all read the Julian Cope autobiographies first!
Lloyd Bradley’s Bass Culture is an absolutely peerless history of reggae
Don’t think the Beastie Boys book has been mentioned yet? It’s perfect
Garry Mulholland’s This Is Uncool is a list book, so I can’t imagine anyone here liking it ha ha. The subtitle is the The 500 Best Songs Since Punk and Disco, and it’s short little pieces on each of those songs. Lots of biographical detail about the author’s own life, lots of great commentary, lots of great songs.
I think basically everyone should read ‘Like Punk Never Happened’ which is a very interesting account of the glory days of Boy George and Culture Club. Worth it even if you don’t like the band as a sort of snapshot of the 80s Smash Hits era of pop.
A book I liked less was the GBV book ‘Closer You Are’. The first half is good, and has some interesting biographical stuff about Pollard and the wider band. After Alien Lanes it descends into just recounting a lot of album reviews, and skirts over some of the things Pollard did that were perhaps not very nice/very odd. It’s £4 on kindle though so worth a punt I suppose.
I would warn you that finding out the inspiration for some of the songs maybe demystifies them a bit. Plus at one point the author claims ‘Kicker of Elves’ is a veiled criticism of Nationalism
