It was always inevitable that I eventually would pick up some Lester Bangs, seeing as he could be considered the king of all music snobs and is one of the most influential figures in music criticism.  Best known for his album reviews in Rolling Stone and the more underground Creem, Bangs starting getting published in 1969 and was still working all the way up to his death in 1982.  Lester started writing on Rock N Roll just as the hippie dream of the sixties was dying.  For Lester the 70's were a tough time for music but a great time to establish himself as an eccentric music critic.  By the time he had made a name for himself by blasting the music industries status quo, Punk (a term that he has said to have coined) started bubbling out from under America's rough urban areas.  Punk rock was visceral and exciting and he wasted no lime wading into the thick of it.  By the time of his tragic death in 1982 Lester was still truckin', albeit a little less enthusiastically as he had to adjust to another shift in popular music  – this time the "new wave". 

Lester's comes from an unconventional place as he wrote record reviews and cultural critiques that were influenced by drugs, drink and the beat authors whom he read heavily in his early years.  Surprising at first, as it usually doesn't have much of a form.  Instead of giving you straight criticism of albums or bands, Lester tells you a story, or come from the opposite angle completely by employing fake praise and searing sarcasm.  Additionally Lester had a rather inconsistent view point at times and if you look at his writing as a whole you will find many contradictions.  He would constantly flip flop on certain bands, or write a cultural piece that would come in clear conflict to other things he had said or written.  Definitely a complicated and talented figure.  I found his writing for the most part to be funny, confrontational, insightful and extremely bizarre.  While most of it is enjoyable, a lot of it comes off as over complicated, muddled, confusing and completely absurd. 

This book in particular is far from a complete work.  It is just a collection that was edited and compiled by Lester's friend and colleague Greil Marcus.  Marcus took great pains to sift through Lester's  unfinished scraps and unpublished works to include along with his selections from published writing.  The works are not presented chronologically as one might expect they are put in sequence by shared themes.  The bands you will find material here are Lester's staple groups such as Iggy Pop and the Stooges, The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed, Richard Hell, Rod Stewart, and some more obscure garage rock bands such as Question Mark and The Mysterians, and the Troggs (just to name a few).  You will also find some great criticism of David Bowie, James Taylor, Grand Funk Railroad, The Guess Who, and again Lou Reed.  The segments on Lou Reed are some of the most enjoyable in the book, as you read all about Lester's love/hate relationship with this artist.  Particularly great is Lester's depictions of several of interviews between the two in which they go back and forth being incredibly insulting to each other.  

For those who are looking to go beyond the definitive collection of Lester's writing, you can find a more expanded compendium of his writing in Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste:  A Lester Bangs Reader.  In addition there is also a biography available entitled Let It Blurt:  The Life and Times of Lester Bangs – America's Greatest Rock Critic by Jim Derogatis.

I also included a playlist featuring a bunch of songs that were discussed in the book or that I know to be some of Lester's favorites.  Towards the end of the list as an added bonus is 5 tracks from Lester Bangs himself as he produced and recorded some music towards the end of this life.  If you can not see the embedded playlist below, follow this link. 

Published in 2002 and written by author Robert Gordon, Can’t Be Satified is a biography of Muddy Waters.  The book is a loose chronological telling of Muddy’s life which is broken up into 15 chapters, each featuring a set number of years.  Gordon does a great job piecing together the history of a man for which there wasn’t many living subjects or decent records.  The author does his best with what remained which included old news paper & magazine articles, recordings, video, and interviews with any and every living relative, friend or business colleague.  The book is mostly given in story form but breaks from this quite a bit to include references to other related notes, or excerpts from actual interviews or sources.

Through out the book Gordon takes time to flesh out many of the supporting cast including his influences and Delta Blues founders like Son House, Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Sonny Boy Williamson.  You get a little closer look at the many musicians that made up Muddy’s band members and fellow Chess Records artists including Willie Dixon, Son Simms, Otis Spann, Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, Howlin’ Wolf… just to name a few.  Gordon takes a lot of time exploring Muddy’s career as a recording artist and performer but also takes time to flesh out his family life.  He documents what he could of his relationship with all his wives and what childern that he claimed from those marriages and from other affairs.

At first glance the book is fairly thick and unless you page through the end you will be surprised to find out the last quarter is actually just notes, acknowledgements and an index.  Included are a detailed bibliography, chapter by chapter notes, guide to Muddy’s recordings, and a few other interesing tidbits.

Here are some interesting facts about Muddy Waters:

• His real name is Mckinley Morganfield which he changed to Muddy Water later in life and then finally to Muddy Waters after a record company misprinted his name on one of his early recordings.
• It was not a secret that Muddy was a womanizer.  Through Muddy’s life he married 3 times and had many children with his wives and other women (I could not find an exact number).  One of his children is Blues musician Big Bill Morganfield.
• Obviously Muddy’s Chicago shows were highly sexually charged, so much so that its said that Muddy would frequently expose himself to the audience after being goaded into it by the ladies in audience.
• One New Years Eve, Muddy obviously getting a little out of control partying it up accidentally shot his friend and employee Bo (Andrew Bolton) in the leg.
• Shortly after the death of Leonard Chess in 1969, while on tour in 1970, Muddy got into a bad car accident in which left 3 people dead including tour mate John Warren.   Muddy suffered 3 broken ribs, a broken pelvis, sprained back and a shattered hip; he was bed ridden for months.

Check out more about Muddy Waters at the following links.

Muddy Waters Allmusic.com page

Muddy Waters Wikipedia page

www.muddywaters.com

There is also a companion video to this book called Muddy Waters – Can’t Be Satisfied released in 2003 on DVD.  It’s not great but it does the trick if you want to see footage of Muddy or if you just want a quick overview of his life.  There was also supposed to be a companion CD released which would compile the authors favorite tracks across Muddy’s whole career but I don’t think he was ever able to work out all the licensing.  If you are interesting in hearing Muddy’s best, check out my related post about Muddy’s music featuring a embedded playlist with all of Muddy’s best stuff (career spanning) here.

For the last couple of months I have had the great pleasure of reading this book and re-examining the catalog of Neil Young.  I have been a fan of Neil’s music ever since a friend turned me on to Decade (1977 career retrospective) in high school.  This book allowed me to literally dissect Neil Young’s immense body of work piece by piece, learning the background of what I was hearing.

The material is extremely interesting, or as Young would say "innaresting".  The format in which the information and story is delivered is genius.  The book surpasses what your garden variety biography would deliver with a mish mash of chronological story telling, excerpts from interviews with Young himself, short biographies and quotes from the large cast of characters that have occupied Young’s life, all mixed in with commentary from the Author.

The book covers Neil’s life up to around 1998 including a quick but detailed history of his Grandparents and Parents lives.  Once you get to his High School days you will learn all about his influences and his early musical ventures.  Moving further on though his musical career the bulk of the book is about the music he created as a solo artist, with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Crazy Horse, and the many other incarnations of his backing groups.  Among the characters that are covered include his manager Elliot Roberts, the producer for many of his albums David Briggs, early collaborator Jack Nitzsche, and most of the members of the bands he was involved with.

My only qualm with the book is that I think Jimmy McDonough is a little heavy handed with his opinions about some of Young’s work and decisions.  Most of the time he is right and he tells Young to his face, but I do think he has some pretty high expectations.

I have always found Young to be a fascinating character, and I was surprised by some new facts.  For example before he moved to America, Young was in a group called the The Mynah Birds with Rick James (Beotch!) of all people.  They even recorded an album for Motown which sadly has never seen release.  Another strange connection was his involvement with Devo which I covered in a recent post which you can see here.   The last little tidbit I’ll offer is his involvement in the toy train industry.  In the early 1990’s Young purchased part of the Lionel toy company and eventually bought them out.  Also check out the ever eccentric Young’s newest projects on this recent post.

Usually I include a playlist with each of my music book reviews and I fully intend to do so for this one as well.  Actually it will be more like 3-4 playlists, each covering a different era of his recording career.

Our Band Could Be Your Life:  Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981 -1991 by Michael Azerrad

Published in 2001, Michael Azerrad’s 3rd Rock book chronicles the early histories of 13 original American Indie rock/Hardcore bands.  Including the following:

Azerrad deftly puts together each of the bands histories, explaining their background, how they laid the ground work for today’s network of independent labels and venues, and explained how they influenced the world around them.   He makes careful note to qualify his decisions to cover only certain bands and out of those band to focus on their independent releases.  For example, he limits his coverage of The Replacements (one of my favorite bands) up to just after the release of Pleased To Meet Me.  One obvious omission from the book is R.E.M., having come into existence around the time the book is covering and being on independent label IRS.  Azerrad explains that he purposely did not include R.E.M. since they were one of the first Indie groups to sign to a major label and become hugely popular.  The title of the book is taken from a song by the Minutemen.

Check out some of my favorite tracks from the bands below.