33 1/3 Series of books

Not to derail, but, John, "Lovecraft In Brooklyn" is one of your best songs ever!!

and yes i'm psyched to read this as well...

i'm off to berlin for the first time next month. how is the bowie 'LOW' book?

yes, the Bowie book by Hugo Wilken (sp??) is one of the best I've read in the series - good research, concise, evocative, and smart.

agreed.

I finished reading my copy of the Black Sabbath book last night and it left me emotionally cleaned out. Wow. Don't think I've heard that particular voice articulated so clearly and so movingly before.

Very much looking forward to reading that and Drew D's TG one.

Yeah, I wrote about John's book on my blog yesterday. It's fucking brilliant.

Is it actually officially out now?

I tried to get the Master Of Reality book at Easy Street last night, and they didn't have it, never got it in :(

well Easy Street aside (shame to hear that) yes the book came out yesterday! thank you for your kind words pf & emily, really appreciate it, book was hard to write so if it works for people then it was totally worth it

I can't wait to read this.

Now that this thread's resurfaced, I've gotta drop props for David Smay's Swordfishtrombones. Fun read.

the LOW one is ace agreed.

Totally agree about the Tom Waits book - it's a toss-up between that one and the Zeppelin book for the funniest/wittiest book in the series.

carl wilson's celine book really is as phenomenal as everyone says, great great book.

already posted this to the NB, but hell, while I'm at it . . .

I am having a reading from my 33 1/3 book tonight, and I am DJing a Throbbing Gristle happy hour beforehand around the corner from the bookstore. Please come!
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2360/2420504677_dce63f9a21.jpg

The Minutemen book isn't much more than extended liner notes for Double Nickels, which I finally realized was just the approach I wanted taken. Lots of inside references explained by Watt, though Hurley didn't participate. Anyway, the author gets huge credit-to-humanity points for bringing MacKaye to his punk rock class for show and tell:
Who Brought the Cool Kid?
Download

I gleaned a lot of fun and useful information from that book--and the interview he published with Watt is priceless. But, man, if you're using that 33 1/3 book as a model, make sure you do a better job of checking all of your facts and figures, including the spelling of songtitles, the lyrics as they appear on the lyric sheet (and as they're actually sung), and the real-world stuff that anyone writing a nonfiction book should know.

Like that "500 thousand" in "Viet Nam" can't correctly refer to "North Vietnamese dead," which was greater than 1 million (maybe D. Boon goofed, but more likely he was referring to the number of U.S. troops deployed, which at one point was around 500,000). And if you're stumped by the meaning of a song, ASK SOMEBODY. Is it really that tough to figure out that "Maybe Partying Will Help" is about decadence?

I heard <I>Metal Machine Music</I> for the first time last night and was totally enraptured and all "OMG 33 1/3 MEGAPITCH IDEA!!!" and then i looked at the blog this morning and discovered that three pitches for that were turned down in the last selection round. now I'm wondering if I should really try to write this thing. seriously, who else publishes this sort of single-album-centric stuff?

p.s. carl wilson's celine book was FANTASTIQUE, and delved way deeper into notions of taste and opinion than i could've hoped for.

The Celine book isn't just the best 33 1/3 I've read, but one of the better books I've read in a while. Maybe just because it's a viewpoint that I'm very sympathetic to.

J0hn D., 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.

I still haven't seen J0hn's book anywhere. It's out everywhere now, right? Read the Popmatters interview earlier today.

Deric, what did you like about the Celine book (what viewpoint are you sympathetic to)?

You brought up something in your post that I've been wondering about -- the part about what you're looking to get out of the series. It seems like fans of these books fall into two camps; ppl who want to read opinion or even more personal writing (crit equavalent of "perzine"? haw) and people who want fact-packed, historical accounts of the makings of the records.

I think I've wanted different things from different books, though. I read Matos's book and am interested in Darnielle's because I like their writing (I've never even heard a Black Sabbath album), whereas I read the Aja and Court and Spark books because I like those albums.

Never read Matos's, but it sounds like a nice combo.

Deric, what did you like about the Celine book (what viewpoint are you sympathetic to)?

I'm sympathetic to the idea of taste being subjective and often based largely on negation (i.e. in terms of that which repels us and threatens our self-identity) and how approaching art from that standpoint can be incredibly limiting. Also, on a related note, I'm intrigued with the schism between individual interaction (as experienced by the critic/connoisseur) and social interaction with art (as experienced by the "unwashed masses").

You brought up something in your post that I've been wondering about -- the part about what you're looking to get out of the series. It seems like fans of these books fall into two camps; ppl who want to read opinion or even more personal writing (crit equavalent of "perzine"? haw) and people who want fact-packed, historical accounts of the makings of the records.

I think the best books in the series kinda hit both notes at once. The Guns n' Roses book being a perfect example, wherein Eric Weisbard writes around the album and doesn't even listen to it until before writing the last chapter.

The only entries I've avoided were the fictional ones (which I'm re-thinking now) and anything heavily technical (Murmur kind of turned into an audio engineering guide in places and my interest waned). But that's about it. I'm interested in reading ones about albums I don't even like.

hey everybody I am giving a reading on Saturday at Housing Works so if you are in NY and would like to see me read my stuff please come out! here is where the deal is: http://www.livefromhome.org/events/

Holy shit, thats right around the corner from me. I'll for sure be there. Just bought the book last night, almost done with it. It is really amazing J0hn.

I have trouble articulating how stunned I am by John's book. My wife, who shakes her head and leaves the room when I play Sabbath, was equally moved.

It seems my reaction may not be universal. Some people just don't get it:

PSU Vanguard

That review is stupid. I finished the book last night. Fantastic work!

what's the average word length for these books?

Just got the Reign in Blood book today. Judging by the big "outtake" chapter that appeared in Decibel a few months ago (http://www.decibelmagazine.com/features/apr2008/slayer.aspx), this is going to be a good one...

Upstairs in Foyle's bookshop in London, as you enter the music section (which is aces btw), there is a whole set of shelves devoted to the series, I has most, if not all of the books and they look so damn cool all racked together.

Good stuff in that Slayer excerpt. Lombardo sounds like the metal version of Doug Christie, totally pussy-whipped.

I didn't get that impression at all.

I have trouble articulating how stunned I am by John's book.

me too, although "outcast teens fucked over by the system" stories ALWAYS tug at my heartstrings.

The Slayer book didn't make me as happy as I hoped it would, though frankly anything traveling in the wake of John's book was gonna be pretty much fucked from the get-go.

anything traveling in the wake of John's book was gonna be pretty much fucked from the get-go.

Can't argue with that.

This series is coming along nicely. I've got some catching up to do. Also really looking forward to Geeta's Another Green World.

i cant get the AJA book anywhere.

I'd buy a Sherburne or Tim Finney contribution to the series.

can't wait to read j0hn's

Bought Drew's "20 Jazz Funk Greats" yesterday and started it on the subway this morning. It's excellent so far. Thanks, Drew!

There are a lot of good things about reign in Blood, but being a typical, nitpicky metal fan, a lot of stuff stuck in my craw. Like how so much emphasis is placed on Slayer, Rubin, and Wallace getting Grammy awards, facts nobody should ever care about, let alone a Slayer fan. It's a neat change that he bookends the analysis with views of the album from a hardcore perspective, but at the same time he almost glosses over the impact the album had on the people who adore it the most: the metal community. And although there are some fabulous quotes from people like Gene Hoglan and Page Hamilton, so many of the musicians interviewed have litlle to nothing original to say about Slayer and the record, aside from that Slayer Rules and "Angel of Death" is awesome, which the entire world knows already. And what really bugged me was when he finally gets to dissecting the album at the end, when he gets to "Postmortem", the coolest song on the album and arguably the most complex piece the band has ever recorded, he just goes on and on about the "Do you wanna die" line and little else, going off on a stupid tangent involving the Toadies. That part just made me mad.

Overall it's enjoyable, but argh, it could have been even better in my opinion.

Oh, and Matos's review of Master of Reality in this month's Decibel has the best assessment of the book I've read so far: "Forget the other 33 1/3's, this belongs next to The Catcher in the Rye."

Extremely high praise, and totally OTM.

drew daniel's "20 jazz funk greats" is genius

it really is!

the book on theres a riot is dissapointing. seems like it was done in a rush job.

I'm pissed that I just realized I missed the deadline (Dec. 31) for the latest round of submissions. I had a great idea ... :(

EXILE IN SPIDERLAND

597 proposals submitted. See January 11th posting

http://www.33third.blogspot.com/