The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock
John Harris | 2003
Selected by Stephen Lee Naish
Ozzy Osbourne, David Bowie, John Lennon, to name but a few, were of British working class stock. They were also international rock stars, loved and adored by millions who could identify with their humble backgrounds.
British Politicians of the same era, for the most part anyway, were privately educated intellectuals or bawdy policy burners, usually of upper middle class origin. They were far removed from the masses and the cultural explosions that occurred.
When New Labour’s Tony Blair was elected to the Prime Ministerial office in 1997, there was a sense, arguably along with Bill Clinton in the U.S., that here was a guy who had been young enough to have grown up listening to rock music in the 1960s and 1970s, who had grown his hair long, wore flared jeans, picked up a guitar and maybe even smoked a joint or two.
Blair was the perfect Prime Minister to usher in the new era of “cool Britannia” and the thriving Britpop scene that surrounded it. As discussed in John Harris’ outstanding The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock, merging two institutions that ordinarily and historically were on opposing sides was a disaster and ultimately led to the destruction of both. The image of Blair and Oasis’ Noel Gallagher shaking hands in Downing Street would be the beginning of the end for any image of rebelliousness that Oasis and their ilk tried to sell. Power had co-opted pop music.
Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever
Will Hermes | 2011
Selected by Sarah Paolantonio
There are a lot of books about the music of the 1970s. There are also a lot of books about New York City. No other book marries the two perfectly like Will Hermes’ Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years In New York That Changed Music Forever.
Between years of reporting and reflecting on his time growing up in Forest Hills, Queens, Hermes provides elegant details to so many genres as they were starting, changing, and steadying themselves. Organized chronologically between 1972 and 1977, Hermes explores the downtown scenes of punk, new classical, and loft jazz up to the South Bronx where salsa and hip-hop began (and how they informed disco).
Hermes captures the essence of gritty New York City with an understanding of a true New Yorker and the handle of a seasoned reporter. He effortlessly splices himself into scenes as a kid catching shows without lingering too long. The details in these pages make it a textbook—it should be on ever music lover’s shelf. But Hermes writes with passion. You will fly through the story, whether any part is familiar to you, as if you’re cruising the gutters of Lower Manhattan with him.
Hermes is a veteran music journalist and a senior critic for Rolling Stone. His reviews and criticism appear within NPR and The New York Times. Last time I checked, and was transcribing interviews for him, he’s at work on a biography of Lou Reed.
The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic
Jessica Hopper | 2015
Selected by Sarah Paolantonio
The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper is just what it sounds like. This collection spans a decade of the writer and editor’s work featured in publications big and small, corporate and independent, from the Chicago Reader to The Village Voice, from LA Weekly to SPIN, to her personal Tumblr TINYLUCKYGENIUS and the Chicago zine Punk Planet that ran from 1994 to 2007. It also contains a paper Hopper wrote for the EMP Pop Conference in Seattle from 2005 about her relationship with grunge.
From her early beginnings in Chicago, a city close to her upbringing as an individual, audience member, and writer, to her stint as Editor-in-Chief for Pitchfork, Hopper demands you look at music and its scenes through gender, accessibility, and politics. Her early piece ‘Emo: Where The Girls Aren’t’ dissects the genre’s standards of men writing songs about women and those female fans swooning from the sidelines.
These pieces cross genres and widen the net of what it is to be a fan between Dinosaur Jr. and Miley Cyrus, from Cat Power to Chief Keef. Hopper turns her eye as a journalist inward but never rests there long enough to be self-serving.
High Fidelity
Nick Hornby | 1995
Selected by Justin Chadwick
“What came first—the music or the misery?” the restless, thirty-something malcontent and London record store owner Rob Fleming contemplates in the opening of Hornby’s debut novel. “Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listen to the music?”
The prototypical music geek whose obsession manifests as unabashed yet endearing snobbery at times, Rob suffers from what might be best classified as a pre-midlife crisis, spurred on by the romantic failures and misguided impulses that continue to haunt him. Hornby—a self-professed music obsessive himself—masterfully develops the duality of this love story, as Rob ultimately taps into his love for music to salvage his relationship with his girlfriend Laura.
The 2000 film adaptation set in Chicago and starring John Cusack captures the essence of the original story and remains essential viewing for music heads of all stripes.
My Infamous Life
Albert “Prodigy” Johnson | 2011
Selected by Daryl McIntosh
Fans of the Queens, New York bred rap duo Mobb Deep, particularly the group’s front man Prodigy, had grown to expect two consistencies: the raw and gritty street music that helped define the sound of East Coast hip-hop in the ‘90s and an infamous amount of controversy. In 2011, shortly after his release from prison after serving nearly three years for gun charges, Prodigy set the rap world ablaze with the anticipation of his book entitled My Infamous Life.
Having an almost twenty year career of acclaimed music, paralleled with rap beefs and legal troubles, a “tell-all” seemed interesting to fans while threatening to Prodigy’s industry contemporaries. Delving into the pages, Prodigy actually shows a great deal of depth for those who chose to view him objectively and skillfully narrates from vulnerable perspectives, sharing stories of his lifelong battle with sickle cell anemia.
The book does offer the expected controversy, as Prodigy details accounts of alcohol and drug filled nights around popular New York City nightclubs, and takes readers inside the intimate apartments of North America’s largest and most notorious housing project, the Queensbridge Houses.
My Infamous Life is a very unique but equally entertaining memoir, which serves as a perfect companion to Prodigy’s extensive and revered discography.
Blues People: Negro Music in White America
LeRoi Jones (a.k.a. Amiri Baraka) | 1963
Selected by Daryl McIntosh
In 1963 it wasn’t as convenient to learn the accurate details of the African-American experience. For instance, you couldn’t simply walk into any university, community college or public library and access the etymology of African-American music in general or one of its specific genres.
That’s why LeRoi Jones’ Blues People was received—and has endured—as a shining encapsulation on cultural expression. Already an acclaimed poet and playwright when he wrote it, Jones, who would later become known as Amiri Baraka, used both his literary gifts in the West African tradition of the griot to effectively asses the development and social impact of Blues and Jazz music on the overall identity of American culture.
Blues People traces Jazz, which many proclaim to be America’s initial artform, back to the expressive traditions of Africa. In dissecting most of Jazz and the Blues’ sub-genres, such as Bebop and Swing, Jones gives readers one of the first in-depth lessons on African-American artists as vocalists, composers, and instrumentalists who brilliantly draw inspiration from America’s dark cloud of racism.
Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender
Rhian E. Jones | 2013
Selected by Stephen Lee Naish
Where are our class heroes? Where is the representation of gender in pop music? These are the prime questions in Rhian E. Jones’ short and punchy Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender. And whilst not many books on modern popular music stop for brief lectures on class identity, gender politics and feminism, this book does just that and it is most welcome.
Jones neatly ties her political analysis to trends of class and gender representation—or lack thereof—in the modern era of indie music. Today our folk heroes are poshos Mumford and Sons, who wear the uniform of raggedy austere that was never theirs to own, whilst two decades ago we celebrated and sneered at the debauchery of working class lads Oasis. Jones’ book argues beautifully that we have buried the working class voice under a veneer of fakery and parody.
Killing Yourself To Live: 85% of a True Story
Chuck Klosterman | 2005
Selected by Sarah Paolantonio
When Chuck Klosterman wrote Killing Yourself To Live: 85% of a True Story in 2005, he was editing SPIN magazine. He pitched to his editor that he’d drive all over America to the actual location where famous rock stars died—murders, crashes, fires, accidents, suicides—to find out: why is death such a great career move? Klosterman sets the tone with two key decisions before pushing off alone on his journey: which CDs to bring and how much pot to have on hand?
Full of dead rock history and asides about traversing the American countryside, from Chelsea in Manhattan to Minneapolis, Mississippi, and Seattle, this is the Klosterman book music fans embrace more than all his others, of which there are many. (Side note: I’ve read his six other nonfiction titles and have met him twice. He’s also authored two novels.)
Unlike any other music critic, Klosterman packs references into sentences like clowns in a car. His voice is his brand. It’s smart and sarcastic, definitive and unsure. This book explores the limits of death in music and just how far the human mind can wander given enough interstate. Don’t skip the footnotes.
Between Each Line of Pain and Glory
Knight, Gladys | 1997
Selected by Daryl McIntosh
Delving into the lines of my mother’s all-time favorite artist brought me closer to understanding not only the richness of one of soul music’s most endearing vocalists, but the entire rhythm and blues genre as a whole.
Between Each Line of Pain and Glory offers an intimate vantage point of Ms. Knight’s career, which she began as a child prodigy, receiving tutelage from industry icons like Sammy Davis Jr., B.B. King, and Ella Fitzgerald, singing alongside her brothers The Pips. Her story details her evolution in becoming a cultural matriarch, whose soul food recipes where revered by generations of younger artists and signature vocals have been sought the world over.
Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor: 1980 - 1983
Tim Lawrence | 2016
Selected by Terry Nelson
Life and Death on The New York Dance Floor: 1980-1983 covers a very special period in time in New York City when rappers, graffiti artists, aspiring stars and punks all converged downtown in various clubs and galleries, creating a scene that was glorious and like a comet, short-lived. Author Tim Lawrence’s valentine to the New York City club life of the early ‘80s features a cast of charismatic characters that includes Deborah Harry, Fab 5 Freddy, Madonna, Jean-Michel Basquiat and legendary DJ/entrepreneur David Mancuso. With Mancuso as its centerpiece, Life and Death offers us a detailed look at how these different subcultures got together, partied, danced and left indelible marks on each other’s work. It was a great time to be in New York and on the dance floor.