33 1/3 has been publishing some of the smartest and sparkiest music books for just shy of a decade. These slim volumes can be devoured in a single hit but the best of them roll around your mind for days. David Barker is series editor. We asked him to colour in the background behind the […]
Insight, Imagination and Innovation: Taking Your Place in the Modern Music Biz
Across the span of 85+ interviews and within the wisdom of 100,000+ words, a cast of characters across all strata of the music industry reveals an astonishing diversity of paths and purposes in It All Begins with the Music: Developing Artists and Careers for the New Music Business. Spike asked the author Dan Kimpel for […]
Bringing It All Back Home: Dylan at 70
As Dylan turns 70, Robert O’Connor travels back up Highway 61 to untangle the myths and legends “Where did you come from, Cotton-eye Joe?” That’s the first question Studs Terkel asked Bob Dylan on his legendary radio show in 1963. Bob didn’t really answer then, and he hasn’t really answered since. He’s given hints, and […]
Positively 4th Street
Robert O’Connor reports from the Minneapolis Dinkytown and West Bank scene where Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan The University of Minnesota’s main campus is divided into two campuses – one in St. Paul, the other in Minneapolis. The one in Minneapolis is divided in two again, straddling the east and west sides of the Mississippi […]
Sound Advice: Phill Brown’s Musical Odyssey
Sound engineer Phill Brown has an astonishing musical CV. He tells Jason Weaver how to keep it rolling “I was there!” exclaims James Murphy in LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Losing My Edge’, before listing his crucial interventions in the history of rock music. But Phill Brown’s ‘right place and right time’ memoir of his career in the […]
David Nobakht: Suicide: No Compromise
Chris Mitchell Suicide: No Compromise – David Nobakht See all music by Suicide at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Just finished the top notch hardback edition of David Nobakht’s biography of synth-rock pioneers Suicide. I would have loved to have written this book. Very much a band biography rather than a personal history of Suicide’s two members, […]
Mark Simpson – Saint Morrissey
Ben Granger This book is not for people who’ve never, even briefly, fallen under Morrissey’s spell. Don’t bother; it’ll only convince you further of the psycho-obsessive nature of Morrissey fans in general and the author in particular. Don’t bother either if you’re looking for new facts about The Smiths or Morrissey, anything to do with […]
The Fall: Mick Middles – Hip Priest: The Story of Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Simon Ford
Ben Granger weighs up two attempts to explain the wonderful and frightening world of The Fall These two new books are a timely reminder of a group whose shocking individuality has been obscured by virtue of their sheer longevity. A reminder this band is not that nauseatingly cosy term "an institution", but a force distending […]
Andrew Goodman: Gilbert and Sullivan’s London
Budge Burgess When General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, complained that ‘the devil has the best tunes’, he meant the sensual, drunken pleasures of the working class pub and music hall, not the elegant appeal of Gilbert & Sullivan. Yet Arthur Sullivan’s light operas deliver enduring, popular tunes, and the words of W.S.Gilbert embody […]
Paul Stump – Unknown Pleasures: A Cultural Biography of Roxy Music
Stephen Harper Yesterday, Bryan Ferry nearly killed me. Lost in the music on my car stereo, I took a sharp corner on the A7 south of Edinburgh at a foolish speed. Unable to turn quickly enough, I lost control of the car and skidded to a stop on the wrong side of a road, nanoinches […]
Jim DeRogatis : Paul Morley : Let It Blurt : Nothing : Critical Mass
Brian Dillon on the lifechanging journalism of Lester Bangs and Paul Morley Lou Reed’s magnificent “Rock’n’Roll” recounts the peculiar tale of a five-year-old girl living in a blank suburb where there’s ‘nothing happening at all … not at all … Then one fine day she turned on a New York station, she couldn’t believe what […]
Kodwo Eshun: More Brilliant Than The Sun
Chris Mitchell Technology is often seen as having a negative influence on music. Ever since the advent of sound generated by machines rather than traditional instruments, there have been dire predictions about the death of the Song. More Brilliant Than The Sun takes the opposite attitude and celebrates these strange new technologically-based forms of music, […]
Tupac Shakur and Death Row Records : Have Gun Will Travel and Rebel For The Hell Of It : Murder Was The Case
Gary Marshall on the history of gangsta rap as documented in Tupac Shakur: Rebel For The Hell Of It and Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records Under the guidance of its founder Marion “Suge” Knight, Death Row Records became one of the most successful and most talked-about […]
Peter Guralnick: Careless Love: The Unmaking Of Elvis Presley
Gary Marshall I was five years old when Elvis died and, like most of my generation, my knowledge of Elvis is derived largely from muck-raking biographies, shockingly bad films, sightings documented in supermarket tabloids and documentaries about brain-damaged Elvis impersonators. With the exception of U2’s embarrassing fandom no modern bands list Elvis as an influence […]
Jonathan Hale: From A Great Height
Gary Marshall Access is always a problem for the would-be biographer and the phrase “unauthorised biography” is usually a sign of a cut-and-paste job written by a bored hack who has little or no affection for the band. The notoriously private Radiohead suffer more than most from this syndrome and a number of piss-poor biographies […]
Alexander Poznansky : Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man : Enigma Variations
Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man Alexander Poznansky Lewis Owens More than a hundred years after his death, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky remains a greatly loved but still deeply enigmatic figure. However, in his comprehensive and illuminating biography Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man, Alexander Poznansky has brilliantly employed the personal correspondence and documentation […]
Ulf Poschardt: DJ Culture
Chris Mitchell In the last 30 years, the role of the DJ has transformed from being a mere purveyor of pop music to being the creator of pop music. This transformation is due almost solely to the humble analogue technology of the record turntable, which still thrives in the midst of this supposedly digital decade. […]
Liz Evans: Girls Will Be Boys: Women Report On Rock
Jason Weaver Now, here’s a conundrum. Liz Evans has edited a volume of journalism on contemporary rock music written exclusively by women and here am I, a man, sent out to review it. Ideologically thin ice. I have to confess, I’m tripping over every nuance. A wrong-footed phrase is going to sound like an alibi, […]
Marcus Gray: It Crawled From The South: An R.E.M. Companion
Chris Mitchell This is the second edition of Marcus Gray’s definitive encyclopaedic guide to R.E.M., one of the few intelligent bands capable of regularly packing stadiums. Conceived as a comprehensive reference source for the diehard R.E.M. fan rather than the usual sycophantic rawk biography, It Crawled from The South features self- contained and cross-referenced chapters […]
