33 1/3 Series of books

the hermes book is just perfect, kind of the "lock thread" for that type of book.

My favorites are zoso and master of reality

Flappy bird would hate both of them

― demonic mnevice (Jon Lewis), Wednesday, June 3, 2015 10:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

John Darnielle is an exception, i'll read anything he has to say with glee

"Could you recap the juicy REM stories from Party Out of Bounds?"

It's hardly Hammer Of The Gods, but there's some youthful sex 'n drugs n' rock 'n roll stuff that tends to be left out of the more sober REM biogs like Tony Fletcher's Remarks. Athens did sound like a really fun place to be at college in the late 70s and the book does a great job of filling in the context for songs like Nightswimming and Deadbeat Club.

REM were happy to give interviews for the book, so it's clearly nothing they didn't want to come out. The most interesting stuff is about how ambitious they were from the early days, which tends to belie the band's usual 'aw shucks, we're just nice Southern boys and there was never any plan' line. I've not seen the story about Michael Stipe's teenage years as the singer in a locally popular covers band anywhere else and I also wasn't aware that Bill Berry worked for a booking agency run by one of the Copeland brothers. Not that there's anything bad in this - everyone needs to make connections - but it does show how quickly they went from being a college party band to a serious prospect. There's inevitable local scene bitching that comes with that too.

Yes, Stipe's band Gangster! And the story of him etching a bunch of hard rock band names into a candle, and said candle coming back to haunt him later.

Not juicy at all, more dorky and endearing.

Haha, the candle story is classic. Bless.

i'd like one of these on the great rock 'n' roll swindle OST.

Zoso was really well written, but maybe just a little too dense and packed with detail. i would have preferred a bit more breathing space.

Use Your Illusion was an entertaining read, but from memory, almost wilfully lacking in a serious analysis of the songs themselves and the ideas and context informing them.

Shoot Out the Lights was very weak.

Use Your Illusion was an entertaining read, but from memory, almost wilfully lacking in a serious analysis of the songs themselves and the ideas and context informing them.

but he analyzes each song one by one

idk man, it kinda reminds me of the skeptical, arms-length, designedly uninformed analysis that people go on with when they think the whole GNR juggernaut is comical & beneath them.

Axl Rose is a muppet.

idk man, it kinda reminds me of the skeptical, arms-length, designedly uninformed analysis that people go on with when they think the whole GNR juggernaut is comical & beneath them.

I haven't read the book, but this was the impression I got from reading about it.

I didn't get that impression at all from reading it. He is however skeptical about every Izzy-sung tune.

IIRC, he writes about the albums from memory before relistening and reassessing. It's an interesting approach. I liked it.

the B-52s bio goes into detail on them firing Byrne, right?

"I've not seen the story about Michael Stipe's teenage years as the singer in a locally popular covers band"

tom smith of to live and shave in LA has tapes of the band he was briefly in with stipe pre-r.e.m. have no idea what it sounds like though.

okay, i gotta get party out of bounds. my interest in the B-52's has reached new heights in my golden years.

i'm listening to Whammy! right now in fact...

Live And Shave... Party Out of Bounds mentions Stipe being in a couple of shortlived noise/art bands Stipe. Might be that.

B-52s would make a fantastic 33 1/3 on so many levels. Obviously the retro-futuristic trash aesthetic is fascinating, the queer sensibilities etc, but they're also hugely undervalued for their unusual musicality and sonics. If you want to get super geeky, there's an interesting Gearslut thread where his guitar tech talks about his unique approach to tuning: putting each guitar in a weird tuning, getting them at concert pitch and then tweaking them a touch sharp by ear.

sorry, Ricky Wilson's unique approach to tuning I mean.

There's a nice article in the new Pitchfork Review about being queer in Georgia and loving The B-52's.

Just the ticket, I'll check it out. Thanks!

I've never read anything that goes into very much detail on Byrne's dismissal from the Mesopotamia sessions. I always just chalked it up to differing personalities and working styles, and the old adage that if you can't say anything nice about someone... (xpost)

the one sort of expanded piece on it I saw vaguely alluded to 'differences', but as for the sessions with Byrne, they remixed all his stuff and used the other handful on Whammy!.
They didn't throw him under the bus but it wasn't too hard to read between the lines.

Some more early B-52s stories from one of their pals

Yeah, that's a wonderful reminiscence.

I'm getting a 403 forbidden page for that link...

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/9676-the-33-best-33-13-books/

maybe I'm the only one but I thought the one on Born in the USA was terrific. I think a lot about things I read in that book every time I listen to that album now.

Still need to read that one. The volume on Dangerous is the one I missed the most from the list, though I have to wonder if the writer's feelings towards the albums in question had a lot to do with his selections; the one on Loveless, for example, I thought was fine but hardly revelatory.

just an update to say that thanks to recommendations here i got franklin bruno's volume on 'armed forces.' it's by far the best one of these i've read and i came away thinking i had learned something and that bruno is very sensitive to the right things: nuances of arrangement and lyric, interaction of elvis costello's public profile and his music, etc. that said, the organization of the book--pretty much an "alphabetical," but really more or less random, assemblage of mini-essays--was a bit of a cop-out. i thought t hat bruno had a few threads in there that would have made really excellent, linear arguments that would have been much better served by a traditional structure that provided some context, walked through the album's production and discussed the songs one by one, then talked about relevant subsequent developments, then some kind of summary. maybe that's a little square of me, but it seemed like bruno had so many great observations but failed to develop a structure that wouldl show them off to best advantage.

i'm a nonlinear thinker and i often get a lot out of nonlinear writing (and franklin bruno is just awesome to start with).

i think writers have to make a lot of tough decisions in doing a project like this, where there are space constraints and no real compensation for all the extra work that would go into chasing those more interesting tangents.

i just finished the Tusk one and it sucks so bad i want to throw it away

i'm a nonlinear thinker and i often get a lot out of nonlinear writing (and franklin bruno is just awesome to start with).

― A Smedley Adoption (get bent), Wednesday, July 1, 2015 3:08 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not sure what it means to say someone is a "non-linear" or "linear" thinker (don't we all think more or less the same way, broadly speaking?) but in any case, i wasn't making a general claim about the efficacy of non-linear writing, just that i thought /in this particular instance/ his points would have come through with more force and clarity had he hammered them into a more traditional argumentative structure.

Linear thinkers are often very logical and cite information that they have found useful in the past to solve problems. Because of this approach to the world, linear thinkers often excel in the fields of mathematics, accounting and other technical fields. A linear thinker will likely prefer consistency and be predictable, which makes her excel in jobs that involve processes that are repeated regularly. You will be able to count on the linear thinker to get her work done when it is supposed to be done.

Nonlinear thinkers are creative, emotional thinkers. They will think of different ways to do things and come up with new, innovative ideas. Nonlinear thinkers can use their passion for originality to produce transformational products or services. If you run a business that's looking for fresh ideas that will break established patterns and challenge competitors, consider a nonlinear thinker.

i don't think "linear" vs. "non-linear" is the best way of characterizing the distinction you're making. it sounds like pop psychology to me. kind of like the whole "chinese think this way, europeans think that way" stuff that used to be really popular.

but this is an argument for another thread, i guess!

i'd like to say that i'm a linear thinker with over 8 hours of sleep, non-linear without :)

i think it's my way of saying that i get restless with the "and now we cover this, and now we cover this" rigidity of a lot of nonfiction, and the storytelling i relate to most doesn't always make its motives or dot-connecting that obvious. i respond to finding the answers in unconventional ways. but some people really like rigid conventional narratives!

i just finished the Tusk one and it sucks so bad i want to throw it away

― Cory Sklar, Wednesday, July 1, 2015 9:14 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

Someone gifted me the Beach Boys Smile one and it was so bad/useless I did throw it away! It didn't even deal with the music for some mysterious and thoroughly incomprehensible reason -- only the band's career up to that point!

I've been having trouble getting into the SAWII and Fear Of Music ones, even though I love these albums. Much as I admire and like the idea of the 'personal take' form of book, it only works well every so often.

Yeah, I can't imagine getting much out of the SAWII one. Seems like a really strange choice for the series.

cool idea, but some stuff is better off not being interpreted

I have not read the SAWII one yet but the author is an excellent writer and thinker IME

i just got a copy of Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! you ever see that thing? that thing is a whole lotta Smile action. put out by Last Gasp in the 90's.

it's really good. don't really see the point in a 33/3 book about Smile when so much has already been written about it in such vast detail.

The SAWII one is the only one I've felt like tossing out a window.

I know I'll know it, but I'm drawing a blank on what SAWII stands for.