Year End 2018: Top 5 Music Books I Read

This year, I decided to add a new portion to my year end lists: books. At first, I was just going to do books in general, but I decided since my blog is music based (though if you'd like a general book list, let me know in the comments, whoever my one reader might be), I should probably keep the books within a musical area. These are also books that I read in 2018, not books that were released in 2018.


Michael Azerrad: Our Band Could Be Your Life
This book is a very interesting profile into a baker's dozen of highly influential underground bands in the 1980s. It may surprise some of you, but alternative music did exist before Nirvana, and it wasn't just college rock fare like R.E.M. For those who want a little bit more history of this era in underground music, especially the beginnings of hardcore punk, I highly recommend this book. It also turned me on to a few groups that I had been overlooking, and for someone who didn't live through this period, it was really cool to hear about this scene through various interviews with band members, label mates, producers and scenesters.



David Keenan: England's Hidden Reverse
The groups Current 93, Coil, and Nurse with Wound are often shrouded in mystery, and though I am a fan of their work, I knew very little about the people behind the music before reading this book. You can only glean so much from their musical output, and learning about the workings behind the scenes was very illuminating. It also provides a lot of information into the personnel's musical influences and literary heroes. I think I came out of this book with a large listening list and a huge reading list in order to decipher the bands' often challenging and cryptic oeuvre (I tried to learn a little of Sahidic Coptic to decipher Current 93's webposts, with little success). Having just finished, I look forward to reading a lot of David Tibet's favorite authors, in order to decode his own personal philosophy put forth in his lyrics.


Tom Mullen: Anthology of Emo Volume 1
This book is a collection of interview transcripts from the Washed Up Emo podcast, and essential reading for those who would either like to bask in the nostalgia of their old scene, or for people like me, who missed the scene by a few years and want some deeper insight into the world of '90s emo. Through interviews with the main minds behind groups like Mineral, Rainer Maria, and American Football, it helps to foster a bit of understanding into the inner workings of this underground subculture. Also, a lot of the photo submissions of tour flyers and live concerts happened to be taken in a city near me, State College, Pennsylvania, which I found incredibly interesting, since I had no knowledge that they had ever had an underground scene.


Nick Soulsby: Swans- Sacrifice and Transcendence (The Oral History)
This is the most comprehensive history of Swans that there has ever been, at least until Where Does a Body End? is finally released. This book is exhaustive and cohesive in its archiving of Michael Gira, the man, as well as his artistic endeavors, through print references and countless interviews. This book will attempt to answer any question you've ever had about the band, as well as make you a little envious of living in New York during the 1980s. Rent was how much?!




Steve Turner: Trouble Man- The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye
I picked this and a similar book by Frankie Gaye, Marvin's brother, up at a thrift store in order to learn about Marvin Gaye's life, as well as compare the books' visions of the man, and see if his brother's book gave him the "rose colored glasses" treatment. Surprisingly, both were pretty gritty and honest recollections of his life, though I think the more comprehensive method Turner applied when writing his book eventually won out. As someone who was born after Gaye's death who knew about him purely through his music, a lot about his life came as a shock, and those who aren't afraid of metaphorically killing their idols should give books like this a shot.


So, that was my top 5 music books that I read this year. If you are an avid reader like myself, what are some books that captured your interest this year?  For the next post, I'll be sharing 10 albums that I either first discovered this year, or recently rediscovered and placed into heavy rotation.



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