Good Books About Music or Bands
 

I read a lot of books about music and think if its done properly it can make you think/respect the music in a whole new way.What are some of your favorite books in this vein or what were some really bad ones people should avoid?

Some of My Favorites:
Our Band Could Be your Life- Michael Azerrad (my fucking bible, so well written)
Secret History Of Rock- Roni Sarig
Lost In The Woods:Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd- Julian Palacios (best book on him)
Confusion Is Next- Alec Foege (I think he did a good job would have liked it more if it went up to and thru washing machine though)
Shakey: Neil Young Biography- Jimmy McDonough (best and only one? on him)
The Beatles- Bob Spitz (best book on them)



great ones from from 33 and 1/3 series:
Piper at The Gates of Dawn
Loveless

My favourite is still Greil Marcus' Mystery Train. Jon Savage's England's Dreaming is also great.

Simon Reynolds books are always interesting, if at times infuriatingly single minded in the way they treat their subjects.

Lester Bangs' Psychotic Reactions is a great fun read but one that I find increasingly annoying as time goes on. This isn't so much a fault of the book as much as the way in which it's become something of a bible for so many lazy-minded gutter-romantics.

Books dealing specifically with a single band tend to be less interesting, although I did enjoy Paul Stenning's Guns 'n' Roses: The Band that Time Forgot. I know this tends to divide people here but I also enjoyed Alec Foege's SY book, Confusion is Next.

My name is on the acknowlegements page in Our Band Could Be Your Life.
I got my first edition copy signed by Michael Azerrad too.

If you like REM, It Crawled From The South is really in depth.

Nothing against their music, but REM have never struck me as a particularly interesting band from a behind-the-scenes perspective.

Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life by John Litweiler was quite good.

So was Space is the Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra by John F. Szwed.

I loved The Carpenters by Ray Coleman, though of course it's tragically sad.

Angie Bowie's revenge shot at her ex-husband Backstage Pass: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie is just plain awesome trashy fun.

Hip Hop America by George Nelson does the early days proud.

Of course most on here have probably read Confusion is Next by Alec Foege but he deserves credit for doing a decent SY biography, though of course it's time for several more chapters. We'll see what Everett True does in his Youth book.

Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society a conversation between Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim

Noise Water Meat by Douglas Kahn

Four Musical Minimalists by Keith Potter

Best music book i've read by miles! It really is well written, I couldnt stop reading it, even for the bands I never listen to sections.

Johnny Cash's autobiography
Nick Cave's And The Ass Saw The Angel

Bob Dylan's Chronicles
Pink Floyd: Inside Out by Nick Mason

american hardcore
choosing death
lexicon devil
nothing feels good
the dirt
lords of chaos
psychotic reactions and carburator dung
mainlines, blood feasts and bad taste

I learned more about the Ramones from this book than from all the others I've read added together.



A pretty cool history of NY punk.



An even cooler history of DC punk.


I found "Our Band Could Be Your Life" to be a bit derivative in places. The SY section quite frequently quotes verbatim from other SY books.

I need to get dance of days

The best book about Rock is, paradoxicly about country music: Country, the Twisted Roots of Rock & Roll by Nick Toches. Also Rock and the Pop Narcotic By Joe Carducci, the works of Peter Guralnick, We Are Devo by Dellinger & Giffels...I liked Our Band Could Be Your Life. I don't like Dinosaur JR.

I've wanted to read Carducci's book...never see it around here...oh, yeah there's such thing as the internets...

Lunar Notes by Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad) is good if you like Beefheart.

not really a book about music or bands but very good

Seconded Please Kill Me, though a lot of it is BS. Punk magazine did not name punk rock as they claim in the book. I watched a video of the NY Dolls in '72 and they were Johansen referred to them in it as a "punk band". I'm sure he was just using a term that had been around for a while too!

I'ma gonna get this.

WOuld have been a fantastic place and dare I say, "scene" to be apart of.

it was recently republished after being out of print, get it before it goes out of print again and costs $50 on ebay, it's a superb book

yup

really? i always see it at virgin megastore when i go to ny.

I prefer autobiographies. anthony kiedis' and motley crue's dirt top my list.

i read david lee roth's recently but it wasn't nearly as exciting as i thought it would be, though i did finish it, which i don't usually when the writing isn't great.

never finished johnny rotten's.

henry rollins' "get on the bus" sucked so bad i didn't make it past page 60. 60 pages of no sex or drugs but a lot of whining. ugh.

on the regular biographies, zeppelin's book wasn't nearly as well written as i thought it would be. again, finished it but it was only ok.

marilyn manson's book was extremely well written, but parts of it made me feel so dirty i needed a bath. it's every bit as disturbing as you would think it would be.

I've been reading American Hardcore, which (if you're into hardcore) is pretty cool. Otherwise it'd probably be pretty exhausting.

it is only visually exhausting, image after image there is not a huge amount of text in that book. but it is a kind of enjoyable read

american hardcore is probably my favorite book ever.

Too much reading would alienate the average hardcore nostalgee.

Have any of you read Fahey's How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life?
Is it any good?

Off the top of my head-

Rip It Up and Start Again, SImon Reynold's take on post-punk is an interesting read.
England's Dreaming, Jon Savage - essential reading.
The House that Trane Built, the history of Impulse Records, Ashley Khan. Not a great fan of his wrting style but he manages to unearth lots of interesting facts and stories (he has also written books on the recordings of Jazz at Massey Hall and Kind of Blue).
The Peel autobiography was a joy to read - it just brought back lots of memories.

I remember Tape Delay by Charles Neal about 80's underground music was an essential read at the time. We Owe You Nothing a collection of interviews from Punk Planet magazine (?) I remember had some interesting stuff.

Two favourites are Charles Mingus' autobiography/story Beneath the Underdog - a classic, and Val Wilmer's As Serious as Your Life, her recollection of the free jazz/fire music scene in the late 60's.

Julian Cope´s KRAUTROCKSAMPLER -
highly recommendet for all fans of the grosse kosmische muzik.
I really enjoyed it.

^
But you have the advantage of being able to read German! English language copies are as rare as the proverbial hens' teeth.

I think "J Roslie" aka "Gulasch Noir" found an english online version somewhere. But that was on the old board.

I think it's out of print again maybe. Amazon doesn't have a copy that's cheaper than £28.

Wreckers of Civilisation - Throbbing Gristle
Hor Mit Schmerzen - Einsturzende Neubauten
The Art of The Sixth Sense - Cabaret Voltaire
Tape Delay - all of the above and more.
RE:Search 6/7 - The Industrial Culture Handbook
An Ideal For Living - Joy Division
From a Distance - Ian Curtis

... and if you like photography, Glen E. Friedman's books are great.