Get Lit: Neil Diamond is Forever: The Illustrated History of the Man and His Music by Jon Bream
Get Lit: Three More for That Already Groaning Springsteen Bookshelf
| Daniel Kramer |
| The Big Man, the Boss and Mighty Max Weinberg at Toyota Center, April 2009 |
Get Lit: Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life By Wynton Marsalis with Geoffrey Ward
Get Lit: To Live Is to Die - The Life and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton by Joel McIver
Get Lit: Joe Vitale's Backstage Pass
Get Lit: The Girl's Guide to Rocking by Jessica Hopper
Get Lit: Bill Bruford: The Autobiography by Bill Bruford
Get Lit: I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto by Dave Thompson
Get Lit: The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson
Get Lit: Storms: My Life With Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac by Carol Ann Harris
Get Lit: Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan 1957-1973 by Clinton Heylin
Get Lit: Delta Blues by Ted Gioia
Get Lit: Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, The Band, and the Basement Tapes by Sid Griffin
But the legend and impact of the so-called "Basement Tapes" (actually recorded in three different locations) would way outstrip the casual way in which they were recorded. In the process, they would turn the Hawks into the Band, drive Bob Dylan to a new direction (John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline) and, years later, help give birth to the alt-country movement.
After his 1966 motorcycle crash and relocation of his family to pastoral Woodstock, New York, Dylan found pleasure in simply enjoying nature or walking his daughter to the school-bus stop while rumors of his death and disfigurement swirled. Eventually, he wanted to do some playin' and singin', and gathered the then-Hawks (still on retainer as his backing band) for some musical messing around.
Get Lit: On the Road with the Ramones
From their 1974 live debut in New York City to their final 1996 show in L.A., eight bruddas in leather have claimed the surname Ramone. But if there were a ninth member of the punk-rock godfathers, he would of course be Monte Ramone. For 2,263 performances in front of crowds ranging from a handful of bored club employees in the Bowery to stadiums packed with tens of thousands singing along in foreign countries, Monte A. Melnick saw it all.
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He was the Ramones' road manager, procurer, party pal, confidante, soul brother, problem solver and much, much more. Melnick shares his experiences - and gets more than 50 players in the Ramones story to do likewise - in On the Road with the Ramones. Originally published in 2003, packed with more than 250 rare photos, it has recently been reissued in an updated edition.
Rocks Off spoke with Melnick, who now works at the Audio Visual Associate at the New York Hall of Science, about his years with pinheads, 1-2-3-4 countoffs, Dee Dee's syringes and gently navigating the explosive Johnny/Joey axis.
Get Lit: So You Want to Be a Rock 'N Roll Star: The Byrds Day-by-Day, 1965-1973 by Christopher Hjort
With the release of their 1965 debut record, these five fine feathered friends were hailed as "America's Answer to the Beatles." The tag was both misleading and, well, pretty much inappropriate. That's because Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke - and their music - was nothing like what the Fabs were up to, much less some sort of planned Uncle Sam "response" to mop toppled hordes popping up and reselling American R&B to eager Caucasian teens.
And, as Martha Stewart would say, that was a good thing. McGuinn's chiming 12-string Rickenbacker, the Dylan covers, the raga-rock space-age songs and harmonies had pretty much nothing to do with whatever the Lads from Liverpool were up to at the time.
Get Lit: Hot Burritos: The True Story of the Flying Burrito Brothers by John Einarson with Chris Hillman
Texas supergroup the Flatlanders (although it still exists) may have been "more legend than a band" but the same could also be said for the Flying Burrito Brothers (above, with female friends). The pioneers of country-rock were a short-lived act that went though numerous lineup changes, but records like The Gilded Palace of Sin and Last of the Red Hot Burritos are consistently cited by alt-country/No Depression/Americana acolytes as sonic holy grails.
However, the band and its story have been overshadowed by the live-fast-die-young/corpse-burning story of co-founder Gram Parsons. Like Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison before him, the doe-eyed Georgian (in all his marijuana-decorated-Nudie-suit glory) has become larger in death than he ever could be in life.
Rock journalist and radio host John Einarson, who has penned books on Neil Young, Randy Bachman, Buffalo Springfield and Gene Clark, wanted to set the record straight. He collaborated with Burrito co-founder Chris Hillman on this, the most comprehensive ever look at the story and music of the band. Rocks Off spoke with the Canadian scribe during a break in his current project, a biography on Love leader Arthur Lee, about Burritos myth, reality, and "Grampires."
Get Lit: Beatles for Sale by John Blaney
Another Beatles book? Doesn't the world already know everything it possibly can about the Fab Four, from the nickname of their favorite Hamburg pill dealer to the mustache style of the cab driver who took George through the streets of Rishikesh?
Well... no. And as long as interest in the band continues to flower - and pass along to new generations - Ye Olde Beatles Bookshelf will continue to groan under the accumulated weight of its tomes. Beatles for Sale, though, is the first one to make a comprehensive study of the group through the prism of its finances. Publishing, record contracts, Apple, Inc., merchandising, management, movies and even their fan club are studied with an accountant's eye.
The result is actually not dry and pretty fascinating - mostly how the biggest group in the world, before or since, made blunders that even today's MySpace minions wouldn't fall for. You never give me your money? Not unless it's in the contract, baby.
Rocks Off spoke with Beatles for Sale author and all-around Fabs expert John Blaney (Lennon and McCartney: Together Alone - A Critical Discography of Their Solo Work) about a wide range of money matters that would make a Liverpool taxman orgasm with delight.
Get Lit: The Pitchfork 500

That Pitchfork chieftains Scott Plagenhof and Ryan Schreiber chose that year is both telling and utterly predictable. Anyone familiar with the Web site knows its authors believe popular music was born that year, with the Velvet Underground serving as damn-near lone voice of cool in the wildernesses of hippiedom and dad-rock that came before.
You won’t be surprised to learn that there’s no country or Latin music in here, nor anything rooted in any tradition that dates beyond that all-important first year of the Carter Administration when disco, indie and punk Changed Everything Forever and Ever.
Today: We Are Devo! Author at Domy Books
There is a lot more to Devo than whips and silly hats. Other than the band, no one knows this better than Jade Dellinger, co-author of the book We Are Devo!: Deviants in a Post-Modern World. (Currently, it’s the only biography about the post-punk/New Wave pioneers.)

What many music fans don’t know is that Devo’s first intention was to not have a hit. When the members met at Kent State University in Ohio, their guiding principle was de-evolution, the theory that mankind is regressing instead of moving forward. This is driven home lyrically in several Devo songs, but most listeners never get past the yellow jumpsuits and quirky yet amazing synth-heavy dance beats.
Get Lit: The Clash by the Clash

Isn’t a lavish, coffee table hardcover book on “The Only Band That Mattered” something of a sell-out, a blatant attempt at a cold cash grab reaching out to middle-aged men whose Mohawks have turned grey or mall kids who think the Ramones are too soft?

You know what I say? Bollocks!
For any real fan of the Clash, this heavy effort is a must-have for the bookshelf, coffee table, or dilapidated squat. And as for Strummer, despite his proletarian beliefs, he always wanted to be a rock star. So he’d probably be quite proud that his band is worthy of such an effort almost 25 years after disintegrating. Recent releases like Strummer documentary The Future is Unwritten and the Live at Shea Stadium CD seem to bear this out.
Get Lit: Riot on Sunset Strip -- Rock 'n Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood

And in those venues in front of the mostly teens and young adults who came to them, the careers of an awful lot of now-staple classic rock bands took flight, including the Doors, The Byrds, The Mamas and the Papas, Love, Buffalo Springfield, The Turtles, and Frank Zappa.
The Strip also served as the unofficial birthplace of garage rock (The Seeds, The Electric Prunes, The Music Machine) as well as home to bands with only-of-the-times names like the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, the Chocolate Watchband, and the Peppermint Trolley Company.
Get Lit: Skydog: The Duane Allman Story, by Randy Poe

When he died in October 1971 in a motorcycle accident on the streets of his hometown in Macon, Georgia, the 24-year-old had already made a huge impact on both fans and fellow musicians. Nicknamed “Dog,” and then “Skyman” (the latter given to him by Wilson Pickett), his moniker then morphed into “Skydog.”
Fittingly, Skydog is the first biography on the slide guitar master, and features a forward by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. Randy Poe is a longtime music journalist and current president of Leiber and Stoller Music Publishing. The paperback version of Skydog with revisions and updated info has just been released. Rocks Off spoke with Poe via cell phone while the author was at his son’s sports practice—hopefully dodging any fast-moving hardballs.
Rocks Off: Although he’s #2 on the list of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest guitarists of all time, if you ask the average person to list the greatest rock players, you’d get Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Townsend, Richards…but Duane’s name would probably never come up. Why?
A Review of Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music by Dana Jennings

Although he’s a little too juiced-up by middle-age poverty-nostalgia, Jennings does write passionately and intelligently about the classic honky-tonk music that shaped his hardscrabble working-class upbringing. Born a “whiskey baby” to teenage parents in 1957, Jennings reflects on the musical roots of his raisin’ in the snake-infested ponds, outhouses, dumps and tar-roof shacks of Kingston, New Hampshire. Along the way, we learn that New England can be as hick as anywhere below the Mason-Dixon (and that the term “hick” can even be used non-pejoratively).
As Jennings sees it, from 1950 to 1970 country music was made strictly by poor, hard-livin’ drunks for poor, hard-livin’ drunks. Not surprisingly, he just cant get it up for contempo cock-knockers like Keith Urban, or any other god-durn Nashville countrypolitan sumbitch. And if you enjoyed that previous line’s hickory-smoked colloquial quality (or if you’re a fan of, say, Jerry Reed’s citizens-band jabberjawin’ in Smokey and the Bandit) you’ll enjoy the corny rube-speak Jennings often integrates into his prose; he’ll sometimes strategically omit the preposition “of” to assumedly mimic his native North Appalachian tongue—e.g. “he got out the car”; a song “jumps out the speakers.” Instead of being born, he was “borned.” And you didn’t drive a truck; rather, you “drove truck.”
Get Lit: Being Young, by Astrid Young

That’s right. Because despite the fact that the front cover features a huge honking photo of Neil (he’s on the back as well) as the selling point, there’s shockingly precious little about the author’s brother on the pages inside. Actually, Neil is Astrid’s half-brother, as they shared a father [noted Canadian journalist and commentator Scott Young] but not a mother. And since sis is about 16 years Neil’s junior and grew up in a completely different household, those hoping for anecdotes about a teenage Shakey bent over his guitar working out lyrics (“Down by the river…I smacked my baby? No, I need something stronger…”) will be sorely disappointed.
“As I write this book,” Astrid offers early on. “I’m hoping to enlighten myself as to who this Neil Young guy is.” Not the most promising of openings, to be sure (shouldn’t she have figured this out a bit earlier?) - and one that is left unfulfilled. “He is truly rock and roll royalty, which makes me, I suppose, a princess of sorts,” she continues. Uh, yeah…
Get Lit: Re-Make/Re-Model: Becoming Roxy Music by Michael Bracewell

Roxy Music emerged in 1971 out of art-school England. The first pop group to use artistic concepts such as collage in their music, Roxy helped define what would become known as art-rock, but at the time, they neatly completed glam-rock's glittering triad alongside David Bowie and T.Rex. Roxy influenced everyone from Bowie himself to the Sex Pistols and Scissor Sisters. Even today, Googling “Roxy Music” yields new band after new band citing them as an influence.
Named for the portentous first cut on Roxy Music’s self-titled 1972 debut, Michael Bracewell’s Re-Make/Re-Model offers a Proustian textbook examination into the formation of the concept behind Roxy Music rather than a more conventional look at the life of the band. Its begins in the 1950s and '60s, microscopically focused on the art and ideas being born and spontaneously taking seed at two art schools in England, well in advance of any eventual band members’ involvement in this web.
Review: Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974-2001), by Don Felder with Wendy Holden

In this book’s early chapters, Felder relates his childhood growing up in poverty in Gainesville, Florida, his difficult relationships with his father and brother, and his path-crossing with a later who’s who of classic rockers who lived near the area: Stephen Stills, Duane and Gregg Allman, and Bernie Leadon – who as an original Eagle would open the door for his friend in the group. Oh, and there was this teenage guitar student of Felder’s – a certain “Tommy” Petty – who would go on later to do pretty well for himself.
Once Felder joins the already-successful Eagles to add a little rock edge to their peaceful easy feelings, he’s thrown immediately into a contentious group where politics and power plays abound. With the songwriting/singing team of Glenn Frey and Don Henley (whom Felder mostly refers to as “The Gods”) taking more creative and financial control, Felder feels the double-edge sword.
Get Lit: A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, by Suze Rotolo

And though their relationship lasted on and off for about three years, Suze Rotolo has kept mostly silent. However, appearing on-camera to reminisce in Martin Scorsese’s recent Dylan film No Direction Home certainly seems to have opened the door for this book.
In the chapters B.B. (Before Bob), Rotolo tells of her unique upbringing as a “Red Diaper Baby” whose pro-Communist parents flooded her with a tsunami of books, music, and political ideas (though her father would tragically die early). She fought for a number of progressive social causes, though relating her experiences lead to the occasional purple prose here (“White people were looking at themselves and what their history had wrought, like a domestic animal having its face shoved in its own urine.”)
Like a Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of a Tribute Band, by Steven Kurutz
Why would a group of men—often firmly slid into middle age—spend their full or part-time music careers aping the sound and/or look of another band? On one hand, you’ve got a built-in audience ready to party and sing along with all you play, and you might even get famous or laid by connection. On the other hand, you’re playing someone else’s music over and over, and the audience is not interested in hearing the introduction “and now for something we wrote…”
Like a Rolling Stone is at times screamingly funny, sad and joyous, and is ultimately an affectionate look at musicians and bands who make a living (or not, as it sometimes seems) being something they’re not.
Much of the narrative covers the year that Kurutz spends tailing two Rolling Stones tribute bands—Sticky Fingers and their rivals, The Blushing Brides—as they shadow the real Stones on their Bigger Bang tour. Expect substituting venues like radio station bar parties and frat houses for stadiums and theaters, often with Spinal Tap-like occurrences.
Get Lit: W.A.R.: The Unauthorized Biography of William Axl Rose, by Mick Wall

Of course, every jerk-ass celebrity eventually gets the biography he or she deserves, and Rose is no exception. Enter Brit hack journo Mick Wall and W.A.R. Let’s just say that whenever a biographer feels the need to explicitly state how committed he or she is to objectivity, it’s time to watch out.
Wall’s a sloppy writer and a lazy biographer (think Andrew Morton with tattoos, writing for Circus magazine) with an obvious agenda—much like the vengeful Victor Bockris had in his 1995 hatchet job Transformer: The Lou Reed Story. It’s safe to say that if Rose was a regular visitor to children’s hospitals or participated in benefits for blind amputees, you wouldn’t read about it in this book.





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