Reading Diary (33 1/3 Edition)
a) It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back by Christopher R. Weingarten
Chris is someone I've spent a lot of time bullshitting with on AIM and message boards in the last couple years. So I was mainly excited to read this to see what he'd been working on all that time, since I'm not a huge Public Enemy fan and only got this album last year when another friend was selling off a bunch of old CDs. And to his credit, this book makes the album feel a lot more fascinating and fun than I'd previously given it credit for, and I like the approach of not just breaking down the samples on the record but tying them into PE's own lyrics and message and kind of constructing a narrative out of the music history they drew on. Hopefully people will stop giving Whiney so much shit for having a popular Twitter and recognize that he can do longform criticism pretty well. It's nice to read a really strong volume about a hip hop album in this series after the somewhat disappointing Illmatic book, too (anyone read the Tribe book?).
b) Aja by Don Breithaupt
I'm a big fan of Steely Dan in general and especially the Royal Scam/Aja era, but to be honest I figured after reading a ton of stuff about the Dan and watching the "Classic Albums" episode about this record, that I wouldn't necessarily get a lot out of reading this and it was just be kind of a pleasant time-killer. But really this is tremendously well written and engaging, definitely in the running for the best 33 1/3 book I've read so far. The writer really makes a strong case for why it's not just his favorite Steely Dan album but his favorite album period (it's still only my 3rd favorite Dan, but that's still high praise for me), and manages to really detail the complexities and subtleties of the album's arrangements, whereas so many writers simply pay lip service to the idea that it's complex and subtle. Also he has the right idea about how to discuss their lyrics, which is to avoid the rockcrit autobiographical analysis angle altogether, and gets some decent, fresh answers out of Donald Fagen in their interview.
c) Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard
The Use Your Illusion albums hold so much more fascination for me than the undoubtedly superior Appetite. And though part of that is that it was one of the first records I got into as a 9-year-old burgeoning rock fan (my stepdad had II, and I was among the first CDs I owned myself), Weisbard looks at it from more or less the same angle that still holds interest for me, which is as the last time a band as big as Guns'n'Roses released a blockbuster album of that magnitude with that kind of level of anticipation -- I was almost disappointed as I got older and realized that bands didn't do huge ridiculous top-of-their-game statements like that, with 2 years' worth of big even videos, all the time. Weisbard also kind of strikes the perfect balance of blithe irreverence and genuine studied interest, which is really what you need to talk about GNR without sounding condescending and/or seduced by the legend. I was pretty consistently annoyed, though, by his tendency to view the album through the lens of Axl's cult of personality, to the point that he downplayed and straight up dissed the songwriting contributions of the other band members, something I, as a proud owner of Izzy Stradlin & The Juju Hounds, will not stand for. Overall this set has been much stronger than the last trio of books I read in this series.
Chris is someone I've spent a lot of time bullshitting with on AIM and message boards in the last couple years. So I was mainly excited to read this to see what he'd been working on all that time, since I'm not a huge Public Enemy fan and only got this album last year when another friend was selling off a bunch of old CDs. And to his credit, this book makes the album feel a lot more fascinating and fun than I'd previously given it credit for, and I like the approach of not just breaking down the samples on the record but tying them into PE's own lyrics and message and kind of constructing a narrative out of the music history they drew on. Hopefully people will stop giving Whiney so much shit for having a popular Twitter and recognize that he can do longform criticism pretty well. It's nice to read a really strong volume about a hip hop album in this series after the somewhat disappointing Illmatic book, too (anyone read the Tribe book?).
b) Aja by Don Breithaupt
I'm a big fan of Steely Dan in general and especially the Royal Scam/Aja era, but to be honest I figured after reading a ton of stuff about the Dan and watching the "Classic Albums" episode about this record, that I wouldn't necessarily get a lot out of reading this and it was just be kind of a pleasant time-killer. But really this is tremendously well written and engaging, definitely in the running for the best 33 1/3 book I've read so far. The writer really makes a strong case for why it's not just his favorite Steely Dan album but his favorite album period (it's still only my 3rd favorite Dan, but that's still high praise for me), and manages to really detail the complexities and subtleties of the album's arrangements, whereas so many writers simply pay lip service to the idea that it's complex and subtle. Also he has the right idea about how to discuss their lyrics, which is to avoid the rockcrit autobiographical analysis angle altogether, and gets some decent, fresh answers out of Donald Fagen in their interview.
c) Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard
The Use Your Illusion albums hold so much more fascination for me than the undoubtedly superior Appetite. And though part of that is that it was one of the first records I got into as a 9-year-old burgeoning rock fan (my stepdad had II, and I was among the first CDs I owned myself), Weisbard looks at it from more or less the same angle that still holds interest for me, which is as the last time a band as big as Guns'n'Roses released a blockbuster album of that magnitude with that kind of level of anticipation -- I was almost disappointed as I got older and realized that bands didn't do huge ridiculous top-of-their-game statements like that, with 2 years' worth of big even videos, all the time. Weisbard also kind of strikes the perfect balance of blithe irreverence and genuine studied interest, which is really what you need to talk about GNR without sounding condescending and/or seduced by the legend. I was pretty consistently annoyed, though, by his tendency to view the album through the lens of Axl's cult of personality, to the point that he downplayed and straight up dissed the songwriting contributions of the other band members, something I, as a proud owner of Izzy Stradlin & The Juju Hounds, will not stand for. Overall this set has been much stronger than the last trio of books I read in this series.
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