So with this move to St. Paul, Minnesota, and the requisite unpacking, I’ve had the opportunity to review the various books about rock and roll I’ve acquired over the years.

Here are the ones I consider personal favorites (and I’ll leave out the Guralnicks, Marcuses, etc., etc.). Maybe not actually the best, but I’ll leave the title as is to capture more links

Best rock book overall: Pamela Des Barres, I’m with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie. This is awesome because the account is from the present, but it’s punctuated (or maybe I should say perforated) by unvarnished journal entries from the period, and teaches well how absurd adolescent hero worship can be. Des Barres does a great job of critiquing yet acknowledging her younger, stupider, and more hormonal self.

Best history by way of interviews: McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Everything in this book has to be read with a grain of salt, because the subjects tend to play around with their memories. Still, quite a read.

Best book on routine rock depravity: [Tie] Rawlings and Diggle, Steve Diggle’s Harmony in My Head; Bonomo, Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band. Great bands, questionable choices.

Best roman-a-clef: Thomas, The Big Wheel [about Elvis Costello and the Attractions, by the bassist]. Could have been subtitled: The Ego and the Id. This one was out of print for quite awhile: No doubt they were laying low fearing lawsuits from Declan MacManus.

Best book about a style: Davidson, We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001.

Best reference: Robbins, The Trouser Guide to New Wave Records (first edition). Until this came out, it was impossible to figure out anything. Here and there are odd little mistakes that don’t exist nowadays in the era of Wikipedia, making the book all the more charming if you read it today or tomorrow.

Best book about collector scum: Milano, Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting.

Best scene book: Gordon, It Came from Memphis.

Best book about obscurities: Unterberger, Unknown Legends of Rock and Roll. Someone reading this today would probably deny that a lot of these are “unknowns,” but that is partly due to the impact of this book.

Best coffee-table book: Matheu and Bowe, Creem: America’s Only Rock & Roll Magazine.

Best serious memoir: Wareham, Black Postcards. From the Galaxy 500 / Luna front man.

Best serious biography: Ravenscroft, John Peel: Margrave of the Marshes. This began as Peel’s memoir, but was so ably completed by his wife, I’ll count it as a biography.

Karla Bonoff’s “I Can’t Hold On” is co-written with Difford and Tilbrook (Squeeze)!? Who knew?

I think this is just allmusic.com being confused about two songs with the same name.

Dave Thompson, London’s Burning: True Adventures on the Front Lines of Punk, 1976-1977 (2009). $18.95. [Amazon]

The history of UK punk has been told so many times, and so well, that it’s hard to believe that the story can be told again. But it can. Dave Thompson’s London’s Burning is a recollection of his mid to late teenage years, when he saw all of the groups in their earliest gigs: The Sex Pistols, of course, but also those a bit more afield, such as the Adverts, and the ones you haven’t heard of who were in the orbit of punk but didn’t get much attention — such as Masterswitch.

There are a few things that really stand out in this memoir. The first is the radical importance of reggae. English music was in a dead period, and white kids needed their revolution. The music at hand in 1974 and 1975 with the revolutionary message was reggae. Each chapter starts with a list of tunes in “heavy rotation” in the author’s mind, and until we get well into the 1976, it’s dominated by reggae. The lists are very interesting as well, because it is a distinctly “street” collection of reggae tunes. I think you’d have a hard time finding all of these as downloads.

Thompson is always well aware of the circumambient economic situation. Of course, all of the other books talk about how there were no jobs and workers were miserable under Maggie. But Thompson remembers that in the late 70s, no one had a theory; they just had misery:

[F]or anybody looking to draw conclusions from the events which ultimately cause 1976 to shape the landscape of the decades to come, it is only the sweet fortunes of hindsight that sllow even a vague hypothesis to take shape. For the people on the ground, in the frontline, at the sticky end of the pointed stick, 1976 was the same as 1975 was the same as 1974 was the same as 1973 and so on ad infinitum.

There were still no more than three channels on the telly; the programming still ended around midnight with the rousing chords of the national anthem. Some shows were still being broadcast in black and white. The pubs closed at eleven . . . [However, hindsight] might view the mid-1970s through a monochrome lens, but life was not gray, it was not flat, and it was not grim. A lot of people had a lotof fun in the 1970s . . . The big difference between “then” and “now” was that people were making their own fun then, as opposed to waiting for some multimedia conglomerate to package it up and deliver it to their door. (pp. 102-103)

Thompson is also good at pinpointing how 1976 was different from 1982: In 1976, Thompson says, the situation of the miserable economy “was not merely without precedent, it seemed to be without remedy as well” (p. 98). By 1982, punks had a pattern. So . . . 1976 becomes all the more interesting because it was all improvisation and invention.

The last thing I would say about this nifty book is that it’s great on the bands that got lost: Roogalator, the Rumour (who had a great album without Graham Parker), Tom Robinson Band — they’re all here, and will compel you to dust off the old singles and LP’s, if you have them.

Nick Hornby, Juliet, Naked (2009) $25.99. [Amazon]

Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked is about a cult musician, his fans, and his legacy. Tucker Crowe recorded what fanboys seem to think is the greatest break-up album of all time, “Juliet.” Then Crowe dropped out of the music business. One of his biggest fans is a musical trainspotter in a sleepy seaside town in England. When the demos of Crowe’s great album are released as “Juliet, Naked,” the fan writes a celebratory review, motivated largely by the fact that he is one of the first to hear the CD. Then his girlfriend reviews it — and pans it — and, miraculously, the elusive Crowe begins to re-emerge from his obscurity.

All of the musical “notes” in this book are pretty much perfect, from the fake Wikipedia entries to the self-regard of the fanboy. Meanwhile, the musical Crowe is immediately recognizable as something like an early Alex Chilton; after his “retirement” from music, Hornby takes the character a little further into obscurity than most cult figures go.

Where the book is pretty weak is around the relationships. Hornby can lay down a nice streak of almost weepy sentimentality. The book practically ends in a group hug. I liked the book, but, really, the music bits are the best bits. Even a brief appearance by a couple of the last Northern Soul fanatics has more life than some of the romance material.

At work my younger colleagues put on the tunes, and it has been great — I’m hearing a lot of new stuff. Still, there have recently been a few things I’ve wanted to listen to again that I once had on vinyl and that really show my age. Two of those are “Talking Heads: 77″ and “More Songs About Buildings and Food.” So I recently got them as a Father’s Day gift to myself . . . It’s hard to over-estimate the impact these albums had on me. I encountered “More Songs About Buildings and Food” first. One summer when I was doing research at the college science center, I was also babysitting Harriett’s record collection, and they were a group I had heard a lot about but hadn’t heard. I listened to it all summer. The cover was just amazing, a mosaic made of of SX-70 instant photos. The songs were great, and I know enough about soul and R&B to know that their version of “Take Me to the River” was something special.

But it was the earlier “Talking Heads: 77″ that really sold me. One reason was that the players were recognizably about my age (though preppier). And the sound was way stripped down, something I could imagine myself almost playing (if I could almost play the guitar . . .). They weren’t smiling. They had just a hint of wry grins. And Tina Weymouth looked like a boy.

And what were those lyrics about? Art school. Living in New York. Worrying about air travel over the boondocks. Consoling (ironically) the listener about the government:

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I’m a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along

Back in that era, I listened some to the albums after these, but it had become big rock and now I don’t feel much of a beckoning to revisit them.

You enter a CD into iTunes, and it goes off to the Gracenote CDDB to determine the album and song names. But wait, you have to pick from a list of choices! Hope you pick the right one . . . Recently I picked the wrong match. I think I got the English version of the album instead of the American, and the song titles weren’t right. So what to do?

The matches are stored in /Users/jgn/Library/Preferences/CD Info.cidb, but I couldn’t figure out an easy way to edit it. Fortunately, there is a program that lets you edit your CDDB data: iCDc, available here. Whew!

Doubtless there is something you can press when inserting the CD into iTunes that will force a new choice from Gracenote — or perhaps you can do it through “Get Info.” But as usually the documentation is minimalist, and it’s nice to have an editor anyway.

Here’s a Mixwit mix-”tape.” Neat idea.

Dean Wareham, Black Postcards: A Rock & Rock Romance (2008). $25.95. [Amazon]

This is Dean Wareham’s story of his experience as the lead singer and principal songwriter of two of indie rock’s greatest bands, Galaxie 500 and Luna. It’s a memoir told in historical sequence, and seems to pretty honest (for a lead singer/songwriter . . .) about the joys and miseries of collaboration in music. If you have even passing interest in either of those two bands, you must read this book. If you’re interested in indie rock from the 80s and 90s, you’ll enjoy it as well; he relates provocative stories about Damon and Naomi (the rhythm section, and much more, for Galaxie 500 and beyond), the producers Kramer and Tony Visconti, the scenester Terry Tolkin, and many others. It’s also a good read if you’ve wanted proof of intelligence out there in rock world. It’s well written, and frequently droll. Wareham has a nice stylistic tic of deflating a phony with the final sentence in a paragraph:

Neil Hagerty of Pussy Galore was hanging around during our sound check. I’m not sure what he was doing at CBGB at five in the afternoon, but he seemed to be out of it on smack. His eyes were pinned and he stood by the side of the stage, scratching his legs and telling about the suede pants that he had picked up on the street for $5. Admittedly, that is a very good price for suede pants. (p. 58)

For each band there is a narrative arc from inception though self-discovery and self-knowledge, down to acrimony, depression, and boredom. A parallel story is how it has become increasingly hard since the 80s to stick out from the crowd even if your band is great, and to make any decent money — Wareham tells this story with frequent acknowledgement that with the advent of digital music downloads, you just can’t get the big advances anymore. And by “big advance,” we mean: Big enough to live without constant touring. There are incidental comments along the way about the awful economics of rock nowadays: For instance, clubs will ask for a cut of t-shirt sales (see pp. 290-291) . . . Now that’s sick and greedy. There are loads of stories here about hotels and clubs all over the world, drugs, people lost all along the way: I’ve read a lot of rock books and Wareham’s story of the routinization of road pleasures is perhaps the best. Wareham is good, too, about recovering details that were doubtless hugely significant in their moments: E.g., the relative merits of a Dodge Dart vs. a Datsun B-210.

A fair amount of the book is devoted to mentions of the decline of his marriage and his affair with Britta Phillips, a latter-day bass player for Luna; now, after Luna, Wareham is half of Dean and Britta. I won’t spend much time on that here, but the emotional story is a bit thin for a memoir. Balancing this thinness, though, are copious quotes from the songs. So when you’re wondering whether Wareham felt much about anything or anyone, it is worth pondering the lyrics he quotes near these scenes (which Wareham discusses on p. 259). Or, perhaps obviously, the true emotional story is about the “family romance” of being in a band: Wareham represents the two other band members in Galaxie 500 as acting like his parents (and thus making him yearn for a certain kind of freedom from them), and later acknowleges that break-up, and that of Luna, as a kind of divorce.

There’s also some rock wisdom in these pages:

Good drummers tend to come from the suburbs. They have a distinct advantage–garages, basements, extra rooms–all things that are in short supply in New York City. (p. 119)

Towards the end:

You can generally add a star to the review if you announce that the band is breaking up. (p. 283)

I read this fine book on a plane to Arizona without access to my tunes; but the narrative is so compelling that I could hear them in my mind as I read.

I rip my CDs on Windows . . . for my own personal use, of course. I used to use MusicMatch because I loved the “all you can eat” streaming subscription. But since MusicMatch got absorbed by Yahoo Music, it hasn’t been an option (Yahoo Music’s selection isn’t as good, and I don’t think the player is tied to AllMusic.com).

So anyway . . . A huge frustration with MusicMatch was that its CDDB sucked big time. Anything new or even slightly obscure would not be found, and I’d have to type in the songs myself. Plus, the MusicMatch ripper would not keep the per-track artist, which was deadly for anthologies.

In looking around for an alternative, I noticed that WinAmp pro throws in a subscription to Gracenote (probably the best CDDB out there – they were the orginators), and the Pro version of WinAmp is only about $20.

Wow, what a change. It has matched much more stuff, and WinAmp respects the per-track artists: So, particularly for quasi-historical anthologies (such as Mojo’s) I’m not always going back to the CD case to see what they heck I’m listening to.

Meanwhile, Mighty Baby’s track “Egyptian Tomb” (1969): Good grief, why didn’t this get wider circulation!?

Besides being being wired as a pagan at an early age, vocal jazz — indeed, vocal music with the exception of opera and the occasional joke polka — was banned in my childhood home. My father was a trained musician who had played on occasion with some of the names in big band jazz, and he just wasn’t into the cult of vocal personality . . . while he could celebrate hardcore instrumental musicianship. I’d say the turntable was 70% classical, 20% dixieland, and the rest big band jazz. To be sure, we had the odd rock albums which his friends had recommended, including such rare oddities like “Trip Thru Hell” by the C.A. Quintet (which he still has on vinyl, and if you know what that means, no, it’s not for sale).

So anyway, I grew up to listen to a lot of rock and jazz, especially with vocals, because I suppose children just have to depart from parental guidance (the paganism stuck, though). And I have to say, there is nothing quite like cheesy jazz at holiday time, hence my listening to “Christmas with the Rat Pack” (Capitol) and Diana Krall’s “Christmas Songs” (Verve). Both of these albums have really quite spectacular full band arrangements, but both will stoop to . . . pop flute (yeech) . . . to accent a song. I have little doubt that Krall is deliberately evoking the rat pack era of pop jazz. There’s some swinging on “White Christmas,” but, really, the arrangement doesn’t let her out. It would be interesting to see her do these live. Oh, and Krall scats (so to speak) on Jingle Bells. An oddity of the Krall is that her piano is rather second rate compared to what her best stuff. But that’s ok, right? On the rat pack album, Sinatra picks are just great. Dean Martin gets “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” and Sammy gets the fun stuff like “Jingle Bells” and the thoroughly secular “The Christmas Song,” in an arrangement that he manages to make sound good and also not like Nat King Cole. So . . . having said all that . . . recommended for a cold winter’s eve with egg nog (spiked with Maker’s Mark, Kentucky-style). [Rat Pack - Amazon-CD, Amazon-MP3; Krall - Amazon]