cbmmm3
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
currently reading U2 At The End of The World
What's the LATEST Book You've Read? MUSIC-RELATED ONLY!
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Haven't seen a lot of other contemporary jazz fans raise their hands around here, but I'll plug Nate Chinen's Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century (Pantheon, 2018) anyway. Chinen wrote for the New York Times for many years before they downsized their Arts & Culture desk a few years back; since then he's been doing great stuff for NPR, via jazz flagship stations WBGO in Newark and now WRTI in Philly. He's the exact opposite of a jazz snob, and he's especially simpatico towards younger musicians with feet in more than one genre (especially, but not only, R &B and hip-hop). His book got genuinely enthusiastic blurbs from Sonny Rollins and Herbie Hancock, and New Yorker classical critic Alex Ross said, rightly, that Chinen is "sharp in style and warm in feeling," someone who "follows the music wherever it goes and exults in its plurality of voices." So he's gotta be doing something right. Even though I was already familiar with a lot of the people he was writing about--and enjoyed hearing his smart takes on what's moving and interesting about their music--I especially enjoyed a late chapter, "Changing Sames," where he traces some of the extended family tree of the "Soulquarians" (D'Angelo, J Dilla, Questlove, James Poyser, Common, Erykah Badu), specifically its jazz & jazz-adjacent branches (Roy Hargrove's RH Factor, the Robert Glasper Experiment, Snarky Puppy, Chris Potter's Underground and Donny McCaslin's post-Bowie groups, Flying Lotus).
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/248047/playing-changes-by-nate-chinen/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/248047/playing-changes-by-nate-chinen/
Kenneth Burns
Member
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2016
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Here are the music books I've read since I last posted in October!
Jann Wenner, "Like a Rolling Stone"
Chris Stamey, "A Spy in the House of Loud: New York Songs and Stories"
Joe Hagan, "Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine"
Lisa Rogak, "A Boy Named Shel: The Life & Times of Shel Silverstein"
Graham Nash, "Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life"
Carole King, "A Natural Woman: A Memoir"
Carl Magnus Palm, "The Real Story of Abba: Bright Lights Dark Shadows"
Currently reading Rod Stewart's memoir. Great stuff.
Jann Wenner, "Like a Rolling Stone"
Chris Stamey, "A Spy in the House of Loud: New York Songs and Stories"
Joe Hagan, "Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine"
Lisa Rogak, "A Boy Named Shel: The Life & Times of Shel Silverstein"
Graham Nash, "Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life"
Carole King, "A Natural Woman: A Memoir"
Carl Magnus Palm, "The Real Story of Abba: Bright Lights Dark Shadows"
Currently reading Rod Stewart's memoir. Great stuff.
Dan Charnas, Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, The Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm (Macmillan, 2022).
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374139940/dillatime
Charnas is a fine journalist, and he obviously won the trust of anybody who was anybody in Dilla’s personal and professional life, including people who don’t have a whole lot of time for each other. (He’s generous to a fault about representing everyone’s position fairly and not taking sides.) The parts of the book that situate Dilla in relation to music history and genealogy, along with those that limn the musical, technical, and music-theory aspects of Dilla’s genius, are really great--both instructive and insightful, and snappily written. The narrative sections of the book, the straight biography, are the ones that don’t work for me. When Charnas writes about Dilla’s inner life, his family, and his relationships, his tone changes and his prose gets hackneyed--all sentimental melodrama and pop psychology. But on balance it’s a truly impressive book, an obvious labor of love and the product of decades of experience in & knowledge about hip-hop and years of diligent research & interviewing. Among other things, it’s got a terrific Dilla discography in the back. Bonus: it introduced me to Hiatus Kaiyote!
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374139940/dillatime
Charnas is a fine journalist, and he obviously won the trust of anybody who was anybody in Dilla’s personal and professional life, including people who don’t have a whole lot of time for each other. (He’s generous to a fault about representing everyone’s position fairly and not taking sides.) The parts of the book that situate Dilla in relation to music history and genealogy, along with those that limn the musical, technical, and music-theory aspects of Dilla’s genius, are really great--both instructive and insightful, and snappily written. The narrative sections of the book, the straight biography, are the ones that don’t work for me. When Charnas writes about Dilla’s inner life, his family, and his relationships, his tone changes and his prose gets hackneyed--all sentimental melodrama and pop psychology. But on balance it’s a truly impressive book, an obvious labor of love and the product of decades of experience in & knowledge about hip-hop and years of diligent research & interviewing. Among other things, it’s got a terrific Dilla discography in the back. Bonus: it introduced me to Hiatus Kaiyote!
Speaking of hip-hop: in association with his book This Must Be the Place: Music, Community, and Vanished Spaces in New York City (out yesterday), Jesse Rifkin is publishing extended versions of some of the 140 (!) interviews that went into the book.
He starts with first-among-equals of the giants of modern music writing, Greg Tate. (Asking "the greatest music writer in the world" to let a music-writing newbie interview him for his book, says Rifkin, "felt like asking Paul McCartney to watch me strum a G chord and give me notes.")
Man, I miss Greg Tate....
He starts with first-among-equals of the giants of modern music writing, Greg Tate. (Asking "the greatest music writer in the world" to let a music-writing newbie interview him for his book, says Rifkin, "felt like asking Paul McCartney to watch me strum a G chord and give me notes.")
Man, I miss Greg Tate....
madscot
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Got the deluxe edition yesterday, halfway through the main book already and it’s brilliant
Link to hardcover on Amazon with reviews:
https://www.amazon.com/Beatles-Sgt-...sprefix=beatles+album+series+,aps,281&sr=8-10
jhw59
400 Club - QQ All-Star
Finished Alan Paul's latest on the making of Brothers and Sisters and other events such as Watking Glen. As with all his books, interesting and well written so I recommend it!
Eager to read William Robin and Kerry O'Brien's On Minimalism after listening to this NPR story:
The jazz musicians
"There's also an important part of early minimalism viewed through modal jazz," O'Brien says. "There's a case to be made that Miles Davis was one of our first minimalists. You could also call John Coltrane one of our first minimalists. In albums like Africa/Brass and tracks like 'India,' he, like Reich and Riley, was significantly influenced by North Indian music and West African music, and incorporated those influences into the music, which resulted in an attraction to drones and repetition."
The rockers
"One of the reasons this music has endured is because it has this continued engagement with pop music, and especially with rock music," Robin notes. "In the early '70s, The Who pay overt homage to minimalism in the opening of their song 'Baba O'Riley,' which is named for Terry Riley. A few years later, you have Brian Eno and David Bowie collaborating on a series of albums that are very much influenced by the fact that they're listening to a lot of Steve Reich and Philip Glass in this period."
The publisher's web page for the book includes a free pdf of the Introduction:
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520382084/on-minimalism
The jazz musicians
"There's also an important part of early minimalism viewed through modal jazz," O'Brien says. "There's a case to be made that Miles Davis was one of our first minimalists. You could also call John Coltrane one of our first minimalists. In albums like Africa/Brass and tracks like 'India,' he, like Reich and Riley, was significantly influenced by North Indian music and West African music, and incorporated those influences into the music, which resulted in an attraction to drones and repetition."
The rockers
"One of the reasons this music has endured is because it has this continued engagement with pop music, and especially with rock music," Robin notes. "In the early '70s, The Who pay overt homage to minimalism in the opening of their song 'Baba O'Riley,' which is named for Terry Riley. A few years later, you have Brian Eno and David Bowie collaborating on a series of albums that are very much influenced by the fact that they're listening to a lot of Steve Reich and Philip Glass in this period."
The publisher's web page for the book includes a free pdf of the Introduction:
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520382084/on-minimalism
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cbmmm3
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Stereophile mag. Have subscription. Since forever.
Emily Nussbaum's recent New Yorker piece on the "culture wars" in country music makes an excellent companion piece to Sanneh's chapter on country:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...cs-culture-wars-and-the-remaking-of-nashville
inspclouseau
300 Club - QQ All-Star
I’m doing this one right now; only about a quarter or the way through but I’m already loving it - it’s very, very well written and engaging, let alone being a fascinating subject.
So far there’s been one quick mention of quad and it’s pretty dismissive - basically just chalking it up to another expensive experiment that didn’t catch on when record companies were floundering…nothing we haven’t heard before and I guess when they’re talking about the majority of the music buying public, not altogether untrue as a big simplification.
But anyway, the book as a whole has been enjoyable and fascinating.
So far there’s been one quick mention of quad and it’s pretty dismissive - basically just chalking it up to another expensive experiment that didn’t catch on when record companies were floundering…nothing we haven’t heard before and I guess when they’re talking about the majority of the music buying public, not altogether untrue as a big simplification.
Making my way through this Beatles series.
Belatedly discovered that Bloomsbury has expanded its long-running "33 1/3" series with several "Global" imprints (Japan, Brazil, Europe). The Japan lineup has some titles that might be of interest to folks here. I know a bunch of us dig Cornelius, but I also think that @PurpleMoustache is a particular fan of Joe Hisaishi, and @J. PUPSTER of Cowboy Bebop?
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/series/33-13-japan/
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/series/33-13-japan/
ooh! I've been thinking about picking up the one for Zaireeka, but now I'll have to take a look at these. I need to get around to finishing Cowboy Bebop, it's a show I have to be in a specific mood for. I have the 2xLP soundtrack they put out 2-ish years ago, but now they've announced this behemoth: Yoko Kanno - Cowboy Bebop 11xLP-Box | Light In The Attic Records
Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead In the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (U of Texas Press, 2019).
This book describes itself first of all as a “love letter” to ATCQ. And it’s in the epistolary sections—literally, letters addressed to the members of the band, and to Phife's mother—where it’s at its best: sincere, touching, lyrical. It tries to be more than that, with mixed success. I don’t know Abdurraqif’s poetry, and I’ve only heard his Lost Notes podcast (he did the second season, on 1980); I still need to check out Object of Sound. But so far, in my limited exposure to his work, I’ve rarely seen him rising—as a historian, a critic, a cultural commentator, a memoirist, even a prose stylist—to anything approaching “Macarthur ‘genius’” level. That's okay; there are different kinds of genius. And this is a good book regardless, worth reading and buying, especially if you're a Tribe fan.
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477316481/
Here's an excerpt:
https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/excerpt-go-ahead-in-the-rain-notes-to-a-tribe-called-quest.html
This book describes itself first of all as a “love letter” to ATCQ. And it’s in the epistolary sections—literally, letters addressed to the members of the band, and to Phife's mother—where it’s at its best: sincere, touching, lyrical. It tries to be more than that, with mixed success. I don’t know Abdurraqif’s poetry, and I’ve only heard his Lost Notes podcast (he did the second season, on 1980); I still need to check out Object of Sound. But so far, in my limited exposure to his work, I’ve rarely seen him rising—as a historian, a critic, a cultural commentator, a memoirist, even a prose stylist—to anything approaching “Macarthur ‘genius’” level. That's okay; there are different kinds of genius. And this is a good book regardless, worth reading and buying, especially if you're a Tribe fan.
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477316481/
Here's an excerpt:
https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/excerpt-go-ahead-in-the-rain-notes-to-a-tribe-called-quest.html
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Neil Young: Chrome Dreams
Published 2013 or so. Enjoyable read, full of watercolour paintings by Neil himself, which is cool. Some great anecdotes & behind the scenes info about inspirations for various songs he wrote too.
Published 2013 or so. Enjoyable read, full of watercolour paintings by Neil himself, which is cool. Some great anecdotes & behind the scenes info about inspirations for various songs he wrote too.
Ellen Willis (1941-2006), Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis On Rock Music (U of Minnesota Press, 2011).
This is essential reading for anybody interested in the history of rock criticism, an arena where Willis--one of the founders of the genre--usually gets upstaged by her male peers (Christgau, Marsh, Bangs, etc.). It collects almost all of Willis's music writing for The New Yorker, where she was hired after her brilliant 1967 debut, a self-published essay on Dylan in the forgotten/short-lived magazine Cheetah, and it throws in a few other important pieces, too. (After seven years at The New Yorker, she went on to work at the Village Voice and Rolling Stone, to write on a host of other subjects, and to found the program in Cultural Reporting and Criticism at NYU.) I like Willis as a sociologist, a political theorist, and a cultural critic more than I like her taste in music: her personal icons--Dylan, Joplin, the Stones, the Who, the Dolls--aren't mine. But she writes unapologetically as a fan--a deeply engaged, self-aware, skeptical, politically astute fan--and these short essays are all gems worth studying and coming back to.
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/out-of-the-vinyl-deeps
This is essential reading for anybody interested in the history of rock criticism, an arena where Willis--one of the founders of the genre--usually gets upstaged by her male peers (Christgau, Marsh, Bangs, etc.). It collects almost all of Willis's music writing for The New Yorker, where she was hired after her brilliant 1967 debut, a self-published essay on Dylan in the forgotten/short-lived magazine Cheetah, and it throws in a few other important pieces, too. (After seven years at The New Yorker, she went on to work at the Village Voice and Rolling Stone, to write on a host of other subjects, and to found the program in Cultural Reporting and Criticism at NYU.) I like Willis as a sociologist, a political theorist, and a cultural critic more than I like her taste in music: her personal icons--Dylan, Joplin, the Stones, the Who, the Dolls--aren't mine. But she writes unapologetically as a fan--a deeply engaged, self-aware, skeptical, politically astute fan--and these short essays are all gems worth studying and coming back to.
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/out-of-the-vinyl-deeps
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