33 1/3 Series of books

Slate: I Read 93 Books About Pop Albums. Here’s what I learned.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_completist/2014/09/_33_1_3_books_the_30_best_from_aretha_franklin_to_neutral_milk_hotel.html

No Hugo Wilcken "Low", no credibility

ha ha it's so epic (and very Steve) that he read ALL of them, wow

(won't lie, I'm sad that I didn't get a shoutout- I thought we were friends! ouch)

Are you Hugo? If so, amazing book--best monograph on DB

i'm curious about the Shoot Out The Lights book. anyone read that one and got any thoughts?

i have now read the Shoot Out the Lights book. it's kinda on the opposite end of the spectrum to the Zoso book in terms of analysis & detai. Zoso was extremely well written & engaging, but ultimately a little dense & verbose, at least for me; SOTL was way too thin & tenuous with sections of really weak writing.

aerosmith, I'll admit that I was skeptical about reading Master of Reality (I haven't read any of the other fictional entries, mostly because the fictional conceit doesn't seem to jibe with what I'm looking to get out of the series), but I'm really glad that I did because it was excellent. It worked really well as an epistolary novella, but it was also more effective at parsing the album (a process which sometimes benefits from a hyper-subjective, inarticulate-yet-passionate perspective) than some of the more straightforward entries have been.

― Deric W. Haircare, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 16:47 (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

way late to this, but I was in Strand bookstore the other day and finally saw a copy of this (cos my local store doesn't have it) and picked it up, and wow I wish I had read this sooner. Strangely, I had an idea for a 10-minute short play years ago that was similar to this (although switch out mental patience for criminal in jail), but this was pulled off way better than I could have.

as Deric said (almost 7 years ago), I liked that the fictional component of the story wasn't merely an excuse to gush over the album in a new format, but could stand on its own and be compelling even if that particular album wasn't one you enjoyed. obviously for someone like me who loves Masters and also considers it probably his favorite Sab, it makes it that much better. Although Sabbath doesn't serve the same purpose for me that it does for the narrator, there are definitely other bands/albums that do serve that function.

great stuff.

I like to think that my early encouragement helped spur a young unknown towards literary greatness.

speaking of young unknowns

http://333sound.com/2015/04/16/open-call-2015-22-and-under/

rats. 7 months too old

same

nvm i misread, 22 before may 2016! i'm way old man

Well I was under 22 before May 2016.

Someone got me the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack one, it is so good! I have been waiting my entire life to read this book!

The thing I've been wondering regarding that one is how different it is from the the previous book he wrote on the subject, Maestro Mario.

Just read the brand-new Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables one. I'm kinda blown away by how this is essentially "Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables: The Early Years" by Alex Ogg (which was just published LAST YEAR ferchristsakes) with an added sheen of (non-musical) historical colour. It's quite shameless. Unless there is something connecting the two works which I don't know about. It's just a complete rip-off! Plus Ogg's book has tons of artwork, labels, Winston Smith art etc. Don't get this 33 1/3 book - get the Ogg.

iirc when you pitch something you have to say how your work will differentiate from any other books/documentaries on the subject. so obv bloomsbury knew about the similarity and it didn't bother them.

i have something i might be interested in pitching this time out, but little-to-no-advance and a percentage of royalties on a smallish run with a limited audience, for all the effort that would go in? not that appealing tbh.

Finished another one that just hit the stands: Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy. Nice to get some background on Devo without the usual faux-corporate trappings. The only criticism I have is that the book operates on the principle that this was Devo's creative peak and that what came before and after was lacking. The portrayal of Duty Now For The Future as their nadir is baffling.

i have something i might be interested in pitching this time out, but little-to-no-advance and a percentage of royalties on a smallish run with a limited audience, for all the effort that would go in? not that appealing tbh.

same here, unfortunately i have an idea i really believe in

i really love duty now. that album has a ton of punk cachet, maybe even more so than the debut. and new traditionalists and oh no! are no slouches either. i know the band doesn't rate duty now -- the songs were leftovers, they were all fighting, they hated the producer. but bands can be wrong about their best work.

(full disclosure: i worked on evie's book, doing the interview transcriptions.)

also i remembered last night that the day i got my 33 1/3 rejection last year was the day i was having major surgery -- the message hit my inbox as i was lying there in a hospital gown, waiting for the morphine drip to kick in. not my least vulnerable moment!

Yeah, the book contains interviews with the band where they express disappointment with Duty Now. But they are also on record as being regretful about aspects of the first album too. And the later ones...even the last one which you'd think it would have been created with zero expectations and with full creative control yet they still had a bad experience with Warners. My theory is that they strived more than most to control everything, but their career 78-84 proved to be extremely challenging and uncontrollable. Their critical and commercial fortunes fluctuated wildly. So that the only era they appear to not be regretful about is the brief flash of widespread popularity (Whip It and FoC) and the 74-77 period. No surprises they have specifically focused on revisiting and repackaging those periods more and more to that over the last decade or so.

I had no idea the band didn't like Duty Now; I love it to bits.

http://333sound.com/2015/06/01/open-call-for-33-13-proposals-2015/

everyone who can be bothered to pitch to these people is independently wealthy, yes? still never encountered any publisher as up itself as them

well i have pitched to them and i am not quite begging on the streets but i have a few bills i'm definitely sweating rn, so "independently wealthy" hahaha no. the proposal does seem like it'd be a big time suck for me this year, though.

that's big time-suck, not big-time suck.

a Tom Waits 33.3 about why Big Time sucks

the world needs a 'celebrity skin' one.

oh my god yeah

yeah, i'd have written about that or POTI over live through this.

Just read the brand-new Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables one. I'm kinda blown away by how this is essentially "Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables: The Early Years" by Alex Ogg (which was just published LAST YEAR ferchristsakes) with an added sheen of (non-musical) historical colour. It's quite shameless. Unless there is something connecting the two works which I don't know about. It's just a complete rip-off! Plus Ogg's book has tons of artwork, labels, Winston Smith art etc. Don't get this 33 1/3 book - get the Ogg.

does it seem like a "derivative work"? that is, does it follow the ogg closely in what it says/structure even if it doesn't directly plagiarize the word choice, etc.? because ogg might have a lawsuit, frankly.

on another note: if i knew more about music i'd love to write a little book on "she's so unusual."

has someone written about the saturday night fever soundtrack? that'd be a good' un.

the movie and the bee gees and mainstream disco in general have been written about extensively, but i'd want to know more about the lesser-remembered stuff on that album like ralph macdonald's "calypso breakdown"

Seriously considering doing an Erotica pitch.

! ! !

it's probably the alcohol speaking but i'm thinking of pitching the indigo girls.

I'd want to do Blackout if it was even remotely worth it

Has Aaliyah's S/T been done. You could sneak that through under the Trojan Horse of "favourite album of every female indie artist or singer in an indie band."

yes but i don't want to pitch ANYTHING to them

Considering a pitch for the Fania All-Stars' Live at Yankee Stadium. Not because the album itself is world-shakingly great, but because a broader overview of 1970s New York salsa would be a lot of fun to write.

What were the successful pitches last time? I seem to recall the chosen books were a lot safer and more Mojo-esque than had previously been the case.

I would read the Fania book in the blink of an eyelid.

This was the final list from last time:
http://333sound.com/2014/06/03/14-new-33-13-titles-coming-2015-2016/

I was gonna say, I remember there being some weirdo titles in there last time. I mean, yeah, you got Metallica and Bitches Brew and Workingman's Dead and Psychocandy, but Hangin' Tough and Super Mario Bros are hardly the stuff of Mojo!

you know what i'd read --but which 33 1/3 is unlikely to ever publish? -- gary giddins on that bing crosby christmas LP.

never read any of these - which would y'all recommend? (definitely getting the Super Mario Bros. book)

whiney's Public Enemy and Doug's James Brown and Elizabeth's Abba are all good.

Would love to do one on Bill Dixon's Vade Mecum, seen as a game-changer in some circles, but those circles are likely too tiny to support/justify such a publication.