Reading Diary (33 1/3 Edition)
a) You're Living All Over Me by Nick Attfield
It'd been a while since the last time I read these 33 1/3 books regularly, but some new ones I was interested have been published lately, and I got one of them as a Christmas gift (thanks, John!). Sometimes it's harder to read the volumes in this series that are about albums that are really important to you and set aside expectations, and I love You're Living All Over Me and occasionally worried that I was judging the album harshly because of that. But honestly I felt like this book had some really interesting insights and stories about the band's history and songwriting (never really thought about the linear structure of a lot of these songs and totally have a new appreciation for them now that Attfield has pointed that out), but the overall tone and the way the guy had to kind of frame every section and point in a self-conscious meta way got a bit wearying.
b) Radio City by Bruce Eaton
I was apprehensive about this book because while I like Big Star and Radio City is my favorite of their albums, I kind of feel like the worship of this band and the mythology around them have become deeply dull cliches of rock writing. So I was pleasantly surprised that this turned out to be an incredibly dense and illuminating account of both how the band and this album came together and how they had the unusual career arc they had, told by seemingly the best suited guy in the world to tell that story.
c) Born In The U.S.A. by Geoffrey Himes
I've been reading Himes for ages and kind of run in the same Baltimore print media circles and write for some of the same paces, but don't know the guy at all. And I really enjoyed this book, a very passionate and well researched look at Springsteen as a songwriter that gets past the usual narratives and into some real granular detail and analysis. One thing Himes does lapse into, which I think is unfortunate and actually kind of rare among 33 1/3 authors, is the tendency to circle back to the assertion that the album at hand is the artist's best and why anyone who prefers a different album is just plain wrong, over and over (he even inserts a critical breakdown of Springsteen's discography at the end of the book, just to hammer that point in one more time). I don't think I'll ever prefer U.S.A. to Darkness or anything, but he certainly put the album in a new light for me, and really made me think hard about not just Springsteen's songwriting but the art of songwriting itself.
It'd been a while since the last time I read these 33 1/3 books regularly, but some new ones I was interested have been published lately, and I got one of them as a Christmas gift (thanks, John!). Sometimes it's harder to read the volumes in this series that are about albums that are really important to you and set aside expectations, and I love You're Living All Over Me and occasionally worried that I was judging the album harshly because of that. But honestly I felt like this book had some really interesting insights and stories about the band's history and songwriting (never really thought about the linear structure of a lot of these songs and totally have a new appreciation for them now that Attfield has pointed that out), but the overall tone and the way the guy had to kind of frame every section and point in a self-conscious meta way got a bit wearying.
b) Radio City by Bruce Eaton
I was apprehensive about this book because while I like Big Star and Radio City is my favorite of their albums, I kind of feel like the worship of this band and the mythology around them have become deeply dull cliches of rock writing. So I was pleasantly surprised that this turned out to be an incredibly dense and illuminating account of both how the band and this album came together and how they had the unusual career arc they had, told by seemingly the best suited guy in the world to tell that story.
c) Born In The U.S.A. by Geoffrey Himes
I've been reading Himes for ages and kind of run in the same Baltimore print media circles and write for some of the same paces, but don't know the guy at all. And I really enjoyed this book, a very passionate and well researched look at Springsteen as a songwriter that gets past the usual narratives and into some real granular detail and analysis. One thing Himes does lapse into, which I think is unfortunate and actually kind of rare among 33 1/3 authors, is the tendency to circle back to the assertion that the album at hand is the artist's best and why anyone who prefers a different album is just plain wrong, over and over (he even inserts a critical breakdown of Springsteen's discography at the end of the book, just to hammer that point in one more time). I don't think I'll ever prefer U.S.A. to Darkness or anything, but he certainly put the album in a new light for me, and really made me think hard about not just Springsteen's songwriting but the art of songwriting itself.
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