33 1/3 Book Series

[EL the Famous]

They announced the 21 books they'll be signing up for publication during 2008 and 2009 on their blog (those in bold are the ones i'm really stoked about)...

 

In no particular order:

 

Funkadelic: Maggot Brain - by Matt Rogers

Slayer: Reign in Blood - DX Ferris

Tori Amos: Boys for Pele - Elizabeth Merrick

Fleetwood Mac: Tusk - Rob Trucks

Nas: Illmatic - Matthew Gasteier

The Pogues: Rum, Sodomy & the Lash - Jeffery Roesgen

Wire: Pink Flag - Wilson Neate

Big Star: Radio City - Bruce Eaton

Pavement: Wowee Zowee - Bryan Charles

Madness: One Step Beyond - Terry Edwards

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole: Facing Future - Dan Kois

Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions... - Christopher R. Weingarten

Van Dyke Parks: Song Cycle - Richard Henderson

Weezer: Pinkerton - Jessica Suarez

Black Sabbath: Master of Reality - John Darnielle

Wu-Tang Clan: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - S.H. Fernando, Jr.

Afghan Whigs: Gentlemen - Bob Gendron

Flying Burrito Brothers: Gilded Palace of Sin - Bob Proehl

Elliott Smith: XO - Matthew LeMay

Outkast: Aquemini - Nick Weidenfeld and Michael Schmelling

The Flaming Lips: Zaireeka - Mark Richardson

 

I'm toying w/ the idea of going completist and just collecting the whole series. Also noted that nobody has pinged to do one on 'Three Feet High & Rising'...just as historically important (and good) of an album as 'Paul's Boutique'. I'd love to have the time and literary clout to do that.

[Analogman]

The library here has the one about Big Pink - I started to read it - but it seemed like some dude's made-up story about doing drugs with The Band. I did not bother with it after I got that far.

[EL the Famous]

A-man, it seems each author has had kind of a different approach. The one on the Beastie Boys 'Paul's Boutique' was so meticulous and detailed on the actual recording process, whereas the one i'm reading now on the Stone Roses 'Stone Roses' has a lot of stuff about how the album shaped the author's personal life thrown in w/ a track by track story/analyzation. The Pixies 'Doolittle' is kind of constructed around the author spending some time w/ Frank Black and his feedback on the album interwoven w/ the actual background on it's recording. I think you'd like some of them, depending on the subject and approach.

 

Interesting, these were all the proposals they received...

 

AC/DC

[Analogman]

I was wondering what the deal was - I have heard about these books - but never really sought them out. After years and years of reading rock books and magazines, I suppose I probably know most of this sort of thing. I was looking at a LZ IV book like this - which I was going to buy - but it was 25 bucks or some such thing. I may ILL some of these at some point.

[EL the Famous]

I like the fact that most 'rock books' read more like an overall career retrospective and these really focus in more on a specific body of work...allowing the reader to really get a more detailed view on what may be one of their favorite albums.

 

Good review of the series and some of it's (per the writer) better offerings from the Chicago Trib...

 

Small Wonders

Continuum's book series celebrates classic albums

By Bob Gendron

Special to the Tribune

March 18, 2007

 

Everybody has favorite records. To this degree, we're all proud defenders of sonic delights no matter how dated, flawed or unpopular they seem to others. When discussion turns to such matters, too much information is never enough, particularly when outsider opinions vehemently concur -- or disagree -- with our own.

 

Which is why Continuum's 33 1/3 book series is among the best music-themed literature going. Personal, obsessive and clever, the paperbacks celebrate older, sales-proven classics as well as equally influential albeit less commercially successful works.

 

Every 33 1/3 is devoted to a single album and written by a different author, whose approaches are as varied as the artists they explore.

 

Uniform consistency is maintained via layouts and logistics. All of the pocket size books feature elegant block patterns and color schemes that correspond to the cover art of the album; like vinyl LPs, the spines feature a chronological number.

 

The books are relatively short (100 to 170 pages) and inexpensive ($9.95-$10.95). And because the topics have yet to hit a sour note, they beg to be collected.

 

Continuum has released approximately 40 titles since 2003. Additional books are scheduled before the year's end, including takes on Steely Dan's "Aja" and Sonic Youth's "Daydream Nation," both due this spring. While not every volume in the series rates a five-star review, the majority are impossible to put down and inspire extensive listening.

 

10 Exemplary entries, each distinguished by individual bents and fresh ideas:

 

"Harvest," by Sam Inglis (2003)

 

A study that's as much about Neil Young's 1972 LP as it is about the notion of whether records embraced by casual listeners are necessarily "classic" or representative of their makers. Journeying through Young's past and outlining Nashville's country traditions, Sam Inglis outlines the album's genesis and formation while considering whether "Harvest" is as mainstream as it appears. The overarching themes of finesse, product and art are pertinent to a society fixated on TV shows such as "American Idol."

 

"The Velvet Underground and Nico," by Joe Harvard (2004)

 

"Today, the kind of lives deemed permissible for art to reflect upon seem more and more to resemble those that the Velvets explored in their songs," writes Joe Harvard, assessing the milieus surrounding the Velvet Underground's debut, virtually ignored upon release in 1967 and now considered a watershed statement. A Boston producer, Harvard brings a musician's perspective to evaluating song structures, album sonics and band chemistry, while balanced views on Nico and Andy Warhol's roles reinforce the record's cultural impact.

 

"Live at the Apollo," by Douglas Wolk (2004)

 

Divided into short vignettes, Douglas Wolk's true-fiction account of the night that James Brown recorded his seminal concert album flows with the breathless pace of an episode of "24." While Wolk wasn't present at the show, his urgent language, meticulous character sketches and contextual devices -- backgrounders, flashbacks and biographies -- convey what likely went down in Harlem in late October 1962. Minor falsehoods and subtle discrepancies are uncovered via scrutiny of the set list and recording; for extra oomph, Cold War drama unfolds as a subplot. Riveting.

 

"Led Zeppelin IV," by Erik Davis (2005)

 

Rather than recycle tales that have been told umpteen times, Erik Davis sheds fascinating light on one of rock's superlative albums by probing the symbols, images, roots and legends that surround it. In addition to the band members, Aleister Crowley and J.R.R. Tolkien hover as primary figures. Ultimately, Davis lets readers form their own conclusions based on the evidence.

 

"Ramones," by Nicholas Rombes (2005)

 

By inspecting the Ramones' debut amid its mid-'70s landscape, English professor Nicholas Rombes examines how the New York quartet preserved an underground ethos in a movement whose values were fuzzy and diluted. Equally fascinating is a dissection of punk that encompasses its contradictions, associations, attitudes, iconography and performance. After establishing basic parameters, Rombes dives into the music and asserts that the band's sounds are a defense against definitive interpretation -- the very notion of punk.

 

"In the Aeroplane Over the Sea," by Kim Cooper (2006)

 

Exhaustively researched and warmly narrated, Kim Cooper's Cinderella story of the 1997 Neutral Milk Hotel album that has sold upward of 150,000 copies primarily through word of mouth and caused its primary creator to withdraw from the public-eye functions as an indie-rock doctrine. Tracing the evolution of the band's main participants back to their childhoods and following their paths through the culmination of their final tour, she debunks myths and humanizes developments along the way.

 

"Doolittle," by Ben Sisario (2006)

 

Ben Sisario tears into the Pixies' "Doolittle" with an enviable combination of cunning prose, exacting detail and theoretical conviction. His colorful descriptions serve as analytical contexts for the narrative as well as accessible entry points into briefs about Surrealism, Dadaism, Christianity and apocalyptic paranoia - themes echoed by the record. Stemming from a one-on-one road trip with Pixies icon Frank Black, various interviews, song-by-song appraisals and article research, the watertight approach provides insight into just where Black's mind was.

 

"Paul's Boutique," by Dan LeRoy (2006)

 

Drawing upon first hand interviews with Beastie Boys members and producers, Dan LeRoy mines the 1989 album that because of sample-clearance laws could not be legally released today. In-depth accounts of the trio's controversial split with Def Jam Recordings, juvenile antics and their relationship with Capitol Records lead up to a summary of why the sophomore effort initially bombed.

 

"Bee Thousand," by Marc Woodworth (2006)

 

Akin to Guided By Voices themselves, Marc Woodworth's homage to the band's 1994 breakthrough is fun, wordy, spirited and peculiar. Lengthy discussions with group leader Bob Pollard unscramble the patchwork songwriting and recording processes, and multifaceted interpretations of lyrics make for convincing notions about meanings. While Woodworth might not change detractors' minds regarding the band's value, his abstract thinking and quirky organization justify the lo-fi rockers' enduring appeal and polarizing aesthetic.

 

"69 Love Songs," by LD Beghtol (2006)

 

Assembled by one of the album's collaborators, this field guide to Magnetic Fields' 1999 triple-disc opus is the most unconventionally designed 33 1/3 Evoking the scholarly liner notes that accompany Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music" box, LD Beghtol's lexicons, pictures, timelines, discographies, question-and-answer sessions and puzzles exemplify "fanatical" and bestow Stephin Merritt's epic a permanent place on the cult bookshelf.

[Analogman]

"Led Zeppelin IV," by Erik Davis (2005)

 

Rather than recycle tales that have been told umpteen times, Erik Davis sheds fascinating light on one of rock's superlative albums by probing the symbols, images, roots and legends that surround it. In addition to the band members, Aleister Crowley and J.R.R. Tolkien hover as primary figures. Ultimately, Davis lets readers form their own conclusions based on the evidence.

 

This must be the one I saw.

[Jay]

I am excited about the Afghan Whigs book. I've read Let it Be (Replacements) and have Meat is Murder and Bee Thousand but haven't read them yet.

[TCP]

I read the Harvest book. It was okay but I would have liked more detail about the recording.

[EL the Famous]

$25?! You can get it on Amazon for $9 and some change. deepdiscount.com has some for as low as $6+. I have a list of these I want to get to, but I only get a chance to actually sit down and read every so often as of late.

 

Think i'm going to start ordering these in 3's and in sequence of what interests me the most...just work my way through them like that. Probably:

 

Sign

[Sir Stewart]

Sign

[Analogman]

$25?! You can get it on Amazon for $9 and some change. deepdiscount.com has some for as low as $6+. I have a list of these I want to get to, but I only get a chance to actually sit down and read every so often as of late.

 

Think i'm going to start ordering these in 3's and in sequence of what interests me the most...just work my way through them like that. Probably:

 

Sign

[DrNo]

The ones Joe Pernice and Colin Meloy wrote (for The Smiths' Meat Is Murder and the 'Mats Let It Be, respectively) were both good. I just purchased the ones for Music from Big Pink, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and 69 Love Songs last week. It's a cool series as far as music writing goes.

[EL the Famous]

How'd you do that?

 

I have no other explanation other than i'm a sexy motherfucker (shakin' that ass, shakin' that ass).

 

The ones Joe Pernice and Colin Meloy wrote (for The Smiths' Meat Is Murder and the 'Mats Let It Be, respectively) were both good. I just purchased the ones for Music from Big Pink, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and 69 Love Songs last week. It's a cool series as far as music writing goes.

 

Yeah, as a Mats nut, there's no way I can't read that. I like how some of the authors delve into how the labum affected them personally outside of a textbook examination of the work, but that's one of those albums/bands i'd prefer to get more detail about everything that went into making it. Especially since there isn't a freaking book on the Mats out there and I really don't care that much about Colin Meloy's childhood. That said, i'll probably tee it up next...the one from Joe will be up there too.

 

Really is a pretty diverse series...they aren't just churning out books on the same rehashed 'Greatest Albums of All-time' that Rolling Stone dusts off every other year. It's one of things I like about it.

[EL the Famous]

That's Barnes & Noble for you - also home of the $18.00 + cds.

 

Regardless, should still only be a little over $10 versus $25. Don't let them rob you, beaver pelt.

[SarahC]

I'm excited for the one about "XO".

[Oil Can Boyd]

I'll put in a plug for Bill Janovitz's (from Buffalo Tom) book on Exile On Main Street. It goes through the album song by song and is definitely written from a musician's perspective. It's well written and well done.

[Sir Stewart]

I like the physical size of these books.

[EL the Famous]

I like the physical size of these books.

 

I also like the little extra design flair of corrdinating the color to the main color of the album cover being written about.

[bobfrombob]

3 proposals to do Cheap Trick at Budokan? "We played in Japan, they recorded it, girls threw stuffed animals at us. We released a promo only, many people liked it, we put out an album. Did we mention that two guys in the band look better than the two other guys in the band?"

[WaronWar]

I am pretty excited about the books on Wire's "Pink Flag" and Van Dyke Parks's "Song Cycle". The latter is quickly becoming a favorite album of mine and of course the former is an amazing that is also a personal favorite.

[dannygutters]

John Darnell on black sabbath should be pretty good, you wouldn't guess it from his cannon but that guy loves his metal on his blog.

 

I read the colin meloy one on 'let it be' (replacements) which was pretty good too.

[EL the Famous]

3 proposals to do Cheap Trick at Budokan? "We played in Japan, they recorded it, girls threw stuffed animals at us. We released a promo only, many people liked it, we put out an album. Did we mention that two guys in the band look better than the two other guys in the band?"

 

@ Budokan > Kicking Television X 100

[Adam2]

something tells me you're still waiting for the second coming with a jean jacket and mullet.

[bobfrombob]

@ Budokan > Kicking Television X 100

Even if that is so, it's still not worthy of a book

[drag ass snag]

i'm so glad they chose aquemini instead of the overrated stankonia. aquemini: best hip-hop album ever? closely followed by illmatic?

 

i wonder why they went for radio city over sister lovers, the recording details and influence of which is surely much more interesting?

 

i'd propose xtc's skylarking...