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.

Another must read that I stumbled on in the past year.  This book chronicles a choice selection of underground music from 1978 to 1984, deemed Post Punk by the author and the music press of the time.

I always found the term hard to classify as most designations of rock music are.  In recent times it has been an oft used term; thrown around to describe a ton of newer bands influences.  Alway a cool tag word but never really explained, much like Punk itself and Proto-punk.  Simply put Post Punk is the underground music that sprung up after Punk met an early end and imploded in its original true form with the Sex Pistols rise and fall.  Post Punk would carry on that legacy along with all the off shoots of straight ahead punk rock including British Punk, West Coast Punk, Hardcore, and Oi.  This new music would shed all that was overwrought about the music that they grew up on, expand sonically and turn image and politics inside out.

Reynolds splits the book into two parts, sectioning off the early heavily punk influenced stuff in the first part and then tackling the more pop and guitar band driven music in the second part.  He breaks it up into easily digestible chunks that focus on a geographical or ideological scene (or covers whatever bands he feels are strongly related sonically together, which may or may not be in the same area).  Each chapter is full of his own insights into what made the band what it was and why the music sounded as it did.

He fills out the landscape by explaining what was going on in the world in each respective area at that time.  Included in this landscape was of course the bands but also a rich drama including fledgling record labels, record label heads, managers, Svengalis, producers, fans, and groupies.  A huge number of bands are included, some of them might be a little surprising at first because of their status as 80′s pop music, one hit wonders or their seemingly non-relation to Punk Rock or Rock N’ Roll.  Below is the long list of band/labels that are covered in the book (please note some of the bands only get a few paragraphs).

Playlist:  Post Punk Part One

Playlist:  Post Punk Part Two – New Pop & New Rock

www.simonreynolds.net

There is an actual CD compiled by Mr. Reynolds which was only released in the UK and is rather rare. Rip It Up And Start Again companion CD compiled by Simon Reynolds