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    Originally posted by Felicity, I guess so View Post
    Two great reminders from imp- that exhibition and the Go-Bs book (I will be in floods, as some of the songs send me as it is)
    I did make it to the Rip it Up exhibition on its last day and I've just finished Grant & I. It's great. I wept, as predicted. He really can write and for such an evident performer/show-off, he has a really nice self-deprecating approach. Inevitably has driven me to fill in a few gaps in my discog of their solo work. Can't believe I didn't buy Warm Nights at the time, since Edwyn Collins was both producting and playing on it (I've got some of the tracks on the Intermission compilation).

    And I'd love to track down the les Inrockuptibles Go-Betweens special issue - the cd (which has a great map cover) is around on ebay and discogs but not the magazine.

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      Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
      Just started David Cavanagh's book on Peel. Will report back. I like the approach of seeing each episode as a time capsule, with the news bulletin and playlist providing context. I wonder if it will challenge the growing view that John Walters did much of the donkey work, such as the gigging and talent spotting. Andy Kershaw's autobiography was very hard and bitter regarding Peel, claiming that he didn't do enough to fight the BBC's reductions of Peel and Kershaw's hours.
      A good book. Sadly, David Cavanagh died suddenly a couple of days ago.

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        I bought my brother Kenney Jones's autobiography "let the good times roll ".
        Having had a career with The Small Faces, The Faces and The Who he must have some stories to tell, I'm borrowing it when he's finished.

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          Originally posted by Sporting View Post
          A good book. Sadly, David Cavanagh died suddenly a couple of days ago.
          Very sad news. RIP.

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            Sad news indeed.

            Music book of the year for me is Will Ashon’s book on the Wu-Tang. The intellectual range and ambition of it is remarkable. I’d recommend it to anyone who has any interest in any aspect of American culture.

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              Not a music book as such, though it plays a major role in the book for obvious reasons - anyway, just read Ben Watt's 'Romany and Tom', his memoir about his parents, and it's the kind of book you regret having to finish. His Dad was a jazz bandleader and an alcoholic depressive, his Mum an actress whose career was cut short by triplets (Watt's half-siblings), and who then became a journalist mainly for TV Times, semi-famous for interviewing Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor several times. Beautifully written, in particular on the travails of dealing with slowly deteriorating parents.

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                I finally bought the two more recent books by some wannabee writer David Stubbs. Also picked up a repress of "England's Hidden Reverse" which I had wished I bought 15 years ago before it went out of print and changed hands at Kodwo Eshun like prices.

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                  Just finished Ian Penman's 'It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track'. I never much liked him when he was writing for the NME in the 80s, mainly because I couldn't understand what the fuck he was on about half the time, which is not a good look for a writer. These essays, though, are something altogether different. Absolutely top class music writing - told me tons of stuff I never knew about Donald Fagen, Prince, Frank Sinatra, John Fahey (those examples off the top of my head), and - most importantly - made me want to listen to them anew, or discover stuff I've previously ignored. Would have been happy if it had been three times the length.

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                    Have just got the Penman book so that encouraging. Dont have the same antipathy to his NME scribes and thought it was a bold move of the paper to regularly publish articles that were well beyond the mainstream standard of contemporary music writing. Yes they were difficult to understand though always thought that was the point.

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                      A lot of NME writing in the 1980s was very challenging and dense, and it was a better magazine for it - when I was 16-20 years old it hugely guided my musical and political outlook (even if I probably tried to pretend otherwise). But I was always resistant to Penman - maybe I wasn't bright enough, maybe I wasn't prepared to make the effort. I still have some old copies and cuttings, maybe I should see what I make of that writing now.

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                        Out today, by occasional WSC contributor and collaborator Ian Preece.

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                          I am using the lockdown to read comprehensive biographies of my namesake, Louis Armstrong, of which the best so far are those by Laurence Bergreen and (for totally exhaustive analysis) Thomas Brothers. If you want the short version, Gary Giddins' 'Satchmo' is sufficient (174 pages), but I have grown accustomed to wanting day by day development of his art and analysis of all his best recordings.

                          At the other end of the jazz spectrum, 'Coltrane: The Story Of A Sound' by Ben Ratliff is a book I intend to revisit.

                          Mark Lewisohn, 'In Tune' on The Beatles to December 1962 is definitive.

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                            Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post

                            Mark Lewisohn, 'In Tune' on The Beatles to December 1962 is definitive.
                            I would love to read the extended edition of this, but it's more than 100 bucks in any currency. Still, well-reviewed and 1,600 pages...

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                              There is a Kindle version for $44.99 sold through Amazon Australia. I don't know whether you'd be able to get that outside Australia.

                              https://www.amazon.com.au/Beatles-Th...al-text&sr=1-1

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                                Thanks but I'm an old-fashioned tree-cutting down book reader.

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                                  Just finished Infinite Tuesday by Mike Nesmith. An enjoyable read, but not the 'behind the scenes' life story I was hoping for. It's more about him as a person than him, a history. He goes deep into his Christian Science upbringing and it's largely about his life as a spiritualist / seeker / intellectual. Basically, he talks about what he wants to talk about, which probably isn't what most fans want to hear about. But it's insightful about the man, with quite a few good (but not great) anecdotes along the way. He's also the most private Monkee, so probably wasn't the best candidate to write a tell-all. Even the revelatory bits are heavily guarded.

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                                    I am awaiting delivery of Dave Ball's autobiography, Electronic Boy. Really looking forward to this one.

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                                      I've started reading Brix Smith's autobiography. When it started out, logically enough, with her childhood in California I was thinking, "Ah, come on, get past this stuff and on to joining The Fall". But although the prose is nothing stunning, I got so wrapped up in the story of her youth (yo-yoing between her mother in Chicago and her father in LA on an almost a year-by-year basis) I almost completely forgot that this woman was one day going to end up in an indie-band in rainy fookin' Manchester. I'm still not at that part, but I'm really wrapped up in the journey to get there.

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                                        Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                                        Current Music Books

                                        Two autobiographies at the moment. Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace (bathroom reading,) and Carole King's Natural Woman (over morning coffee.)

                                        The latter, as you'd maybe expect from someone who's spent a lifetime crafting three minute jewels, is a masterpiece of concision. Short chapters, chronological structure, tight, well balanced, fair-minded. In contrast, while it's not all over the shop, Young's book bounces around a good deal, he also has a clear and current agenda which he returns to almost every other chapter.

                                        Basically Neil's a techno-nerd, he collects guitars and cars, he designs sound-effects for toy trains, and most recently he's proselytising for high quality online audio, via his own system, PureTone. It's clear his motives are as pure as his product: he really believes in hi def sound, Man! But, nevertheless he comes across as a bit of a shill. Otherwise it's a good read. I wasn't fully aware of his debilitating medical conditions in his youth -- epilepsy, polio -- and his devotion to his sons, who both have chronic long-term conditions, is admirable and never sentimentalised.

                                        In her book -- which, unlike Young's is more bio than memoir -- King gives us the facts, but little in the way of reflection. They're also selective, sometimes glaringly so. Those of us familiar with the controversy surrounding He Hit Me, and it Felt Like a Kiss for instance, would have liked her take on the song, but it's not even mentioned, though there's a entire chapter on Little Eva. Other things are, however. Four failed marriages. The difficulties of being only 5'2" and pushed ahead two grades in high school. A husband, and business partner, with substance abuse issues. And, of course, working on Tin-Pan-Alley in the early sixties.

                                        I'm only half-way through both books and I'll definitely finish them -- though Young's will take substantially longer. If you had to choose one, I'd definitely go for King's.
                                        I finally got around to the Carole King autobiography, and I'm only 130 pages in - your review's pretty on the money. She's not a writer, is she? I can see why Goffin did the lyrics. It feels like she was persuaded to write this and then it turned into a homework project she ground out reluctantly, possibly by dictating it out loud to a stenographer. 'Then I did this, then that happened, then we wrote that song and it did really well so we bought a new house' etc. Have put it to one side for a while - very disappointing, although the passages about how record label song factories in the 50s and early 60s worked are interesting enough. And I can't stand it when famous and talented people spend half their book telling you how talented other famous people are too, and what amazing people to boot. There was a lot of that in the Brix Smith book after she left The Fall. The last section of Johnny Marr's book was filled with that guff too. Fuck that - if you've got something interesting to say about someone let us know, otherwise don't tell us at all.

                                        Can't get over the fact that the lyrics to Natural Woman were written by a bloke... Love that song, but I may never listen to it again. That should have been a chapter in itself explaining how she felt about that song.

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                                          'Bessie' by Chris Albertson.

                                          'Sydney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz' by John Chilton.

                                          Both have gaps and speculative passages because it's so hard to document black lives from that period given the lack of documentation and film but they capture the personalities of these two geniuses as well as could have realistically been done from the sources.

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                                            Originally posted by imp View Post
                                            Out today, by occasional WSC contributor and collaborator Ian Preece.

                                            Due to COVID, I've only just got my hands on a copy of this - it was only published outside of the UK at the end of July. It features profiles of 27 latter-day indie record labels world-wide and, as stated in the chatty introduction, it's aimed at anyone curious about exploring new music, rather than re-treading histories already told of labels like Rough Trade, 4AD etc. I think of myself as vaguely left-field when it comes to discovering new genres of music, but I haven't heard of the vast majority of these labels. It's very nicely written - a conversational, personal approach, and I'm looking forward to using it to try out a ton of artistes I've never heard of before. Chapter One is Mississippi Records...

                                            [full disclosure - I'm thanked in the acknowledgments because we put the author up for a night in Frankfurt and took him to a Nils Frahm concert. In return he offers Orient v Northampton and a night out at Caf? Oto, which I think is a fair exchange.]

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                                              Beautiful Scars, by Tom Wilson.

                                              Wilson is a singer / songwriter / guitarist out of Hamilton, Ontario. His big break was with a '90s rock outfit called Junkhouse, but he's been with a really tight group called Blackie & The Rodeo Kings for the past 20-odd years. We've seen them a few times, and Wilson on his own a couple more. An autobiography, Beautiful Scars tells the bleak story of his being raised in very working class Hamilton in the '60s and '70s, when people without much education (or social graces) suddenly started making good money in the steel mills and having families. Raised by an older couple who clearly weren't his parents (but wouldn't tell him who was), Wilson got into music, women, booze and drugs before finding real success and eventual redemption. He can write a sentence, this man, as well as tell an honest tale.

                                              This is simply a brilliant, breezy book and I recommend it, whether you know Wilson or not. Find a used copy or whatever...you won't regret it.
                                              Last edited by WOM; 31-08-2020, 13:40.

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                                                'Kansas City Lightning' by the late Stanley Crouch. Not just great on Charlie Parker (up to 1940) but also the Kansas City jazz scene and those who made it swing, some of whom are well-known (Count Basie, Lester Young), some less so (the ones who never went to Chicago or New York). My one criticism would be that he takes all his interview materials at face value and doesn't employ any critical skepticism about older musicians boasting about their exploits as young men. Some legends are presented as fact.

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                                                  'Listening to the Wind' is costing me a fortune, and I'm only on chapter 4. Splashed on a lot of excellent music - vinyl, cassettes and downloads - from Sahel Sounds (chapter 2), and then a bundle of 13 cassettes at $3 each from Oakland ambient label Constellation Tatsu (chapter 3). Going to get through this very slowly and carefully, but it's a rewarding, inter-active, sonically educative way to read a music book.

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