MOG Presents... Read Up, Rock Snob: The Top 20 Music Books of All Time (#10-1)

Edited by Brittany Flynn and Andy Phillips

Contributors: Eric5776, emscee, Jules09, Jonh Ingham, tynansanger, Brittany Flynn, Cody B

We know your reading list is already exploding with MOG's Top 20-11 Music Books, but time and tome wait for no man. Let's round this sucker out, already!

MOG's writers and editors have calculated, re-calculated, and argued late into the evening to painstakingly assemble MOG's guide to the Top 20 Music Books of all time. Some are well known, others are shamefully under-applauded, but they all share one thing in common: a deep and abiding obsession with the music and musicians of our age.

Read on as we reveal the top 10 Music Books of All Time, followed by a list of honorable mentions too packed wih rock wonder to leave unread.

10. Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music
by Greg Kot (Buy It)

A startlingly readable exploration of technology's often-uncomfortable marriage with music, Ripped delves the recent digital revolution from the perspective of artists, music labels (big and small), and casual music consumers. Through anecdotes and fictionesque narration, Kot addresses both the conventional and non-conventional methods all three parties have used to advance their (increasingly competing) agendas.

Whether exploring the fan revolution behind Death Cab for Cutie's rise or the curious case of Napster's illegal evolution, the book masterfully captures the industry's madness as it struggles to adapt to new technologies. It explores reasoning behind copy protected CDs. It leaves the reader to decide whether Radiohead's pay-what-you-want plan was genius, crazy, or just another failed attempt to reinvent the wheel. It gives a third-person, non-condemning, perspective on downloads (legal and illegitimate) through digital mediums such as iTunes, Rhapsody, and Napster.

Once Kott has outlined the issues, he goes on to make the compelling case that quality will ultimately reign in the face of over-saturation, and that the future holds better artist compensation and decreased consumer cost. -Eric5776

9. I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie
by Pamela DesBarres (Buy It)

While there is quite a bit of sex and drugs in infamous '60s groupie Miss Pamela's memoir, her life is really the story of the adventure that comes when a person becomes irredeemably swept up by rock 'n roll. Between accounts of crushing on The Beatles, lusting after The Byrds, discovering The Doors, jetting with Jimmy Page, and babysitting for Zappa, DesBarres' memoir is deeply personal, personable and utterly unique.

The books reads like Almost Famous from the Penny Lane perspective, a warm (and charmingly told) recollection of a time when the options for young women entranced by rock were pretty limited. As DesBarres admits, there was one surefire way for a girl to get backstage. She loved being on the arm (and in the bed) of a rock god (or just a guy from Iron Butterfly). As a result, her writing is filled with breathless delight at the strange and exciting wonder of it all. -emscee

8. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock'n'Roll Music
by Greil Marcus (Buy It)

With Mystery Train, Marcus places rock 'n roll in a proper cultural context, and, in the process, more or less redefines the way we read about it. His literary background provides the perfect framework for a deep-dive into the familiar archetypes present in American society, while at the same time offering new perspectives on legends like Robert Johnson, Harmonica Frank, Randy Newman, The Band, Sly Stone, and Elvis Presley.

While Marcus' focus is on the evolution of rock music in tandem with the American Dream, he's still able to expertly capture the heart of the cultural movement. Prior to this book, rock music had yet to be painted as a powerful, compelling force all its own. Marcus' ingenious ability to shift the gigantic lens of rock music to the even bigger picture of American society makes this book one of the most quintessential studies of rock 'n roll ever put to print. -Brittany Flynn

7. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
by Peter Guralnick (Buy It)

Next to this book, all other biographical examinations of the entity that is 'Elvis Presley' seem almost superfluous. Sure, the King cracked the culture of the 20th century in two, but by the time Peter Guralnick's book - the first of two massively detailed volumes - came out in 1995, the story had been told many, many times. The impoverished childhood, the first shy steps into Sun Studios in Memphis, the entrance of Colonel Parker, and the signing with RCA -- what more is there to say?

Plenty, it turned out. At nearly 600 pages, Last Train opens wide the King's rise, stopping the story just as he goes into the army. Guralnick's methodical, knowing, and appreciative story of the improbable climb is pop literature at its most informative and inspired. No, it won't tell you everything you need to know about Elvis, but no one has cared as much about getting it right, and no one has written about it better. -emscee

6. Cuba and Its Music
by Ned Sublette (Buy It)

Weighing in at close to 650 pages, Sublette's tome unearths a thousand years of Cuban sound, touching on social, political, and musical themes in the kind of depth one would only expect from an academic. Even more impressive, he does it with a passion that makes the book easily accessible to the less academically inclined.

A musician who is not Cuban, but has clearly fallen in love with the music, Sublette attacks the history with a convert's zeal. He has the sense to steer away from issues of authenticity, arguing that music is a "contagious and evolutionary process." With that in mind, he lays out the Iberian and African roots of Cuban music. Once Africans and Spaniards reached Cuba (and other Caribbean islands), the evolution of music continues, and Sublette credibly argues that the forms and styles that incubated there (mostly because of the triangle slave trade) went on to influence all forms of Western music, including classical. -Cody B

5. White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s
by Joe Boyd (Buy It)

A jack-of-all-trades, American Joe Boyd discovered, produced, befriended, and gave guidance to everyone from Fairport Convention and The Incredible String Band to the legendary Nick Drake. He brokered psychedelia at the UFO club, giving Pink Floyd a home and producing their first single. As a kid he he staged shows with blues legends and took them on tour. He introduced the members of The Lovin' Spoonful to each other and Mike Bloomfield to The Butterfield Blues Band. He was watching from behind the board when Dylan went electric.

While Boyd's modest recollections of his countless escapades are excellent, what White Bicycles really reveals is a talent for the written word. A wry and funny writer, he has a knack for being self-deprecating while simultaneously aware that he was at the center of important events. -Jonh Ingham

4. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991
by Michael Azzerad (Buy It)

To a certain breed of music fan, the world didn't exist before 1977. For its ex-pats, Our Band Could Be Your Life has became biblical in its account of the birth of the American indie movement. Michael Azzerad's book breathes real life and real people into the mostly legendary stories of bands like Mission of Burma, The Minutemen, and The Replacements, adding humanity to a heroic era in music history.

No other book chronicles the ways in which indie rock, hardcore punk, and grunge - for all their depravity, weirdness, and sporadic wonder -- mattered so much. In addressing the changes to the scene after Nirvana, the book's epilogue, produced the famous line that "the struggle was more fun than the victory." It's a poignant reminder that, as much as things have changed, pop music's Sisyphean song remains the same. - tynansanger

3. Chronicles: Volume One
by Bob Dylan (Buy It)

The more Bob Dylan tries to retreat from the world, the more public fascination reels him back in. In Chronicles, Dylan tries to tell his own story from his own perspective, and the results are much like the man himself: witty, intelligent, and sometimes confusing.

Chronicles isn't an autobiography per say, more like a self-interview. There are no anecdotes about doing drugs with The Beatles. His family is barely mentioned at all, and he mostly skips over his mid-'60s Blonde on Blonde period, preferring to talk about his later, lesser-known albums. The book follows no chronological order, but Dylan strings the stories together masterfully. His writing style is smooth and conversational, and his descriptions (especially those of his early days in New York City) are richly detailed, instantly transporting you back to those renowned times and places through an insider's eye. -Jules09

2. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
by Lester Bangs (Buy It)

Legendary music critic and Lou Reed-instigator Lester Bangs died in 1982, but we still wonder what he would've made of modern music. Eminem? 'American Idol'? The White Stripes? It's not like we always agreed, but readers always wanted his take: he was unpredictable, combative, and his writing came from what you might call a pure place. There aren't many 'rock writers,' then or now, that you can say that about. Re-reading his early Rolling Stone reviews, it's clear that he really did define a new language for rock writers. He wasn't afraid to call bullshit on things MC5's debut, or write at length about The Box Tops. He was mean, but he was funny.

I knew Lester casually, and we hung out a bit when he moved to NYC. But as much as I'd like to call him (or e-mail him? he might've dug that, at 2 am) and ask if he's heard something, I miss reading him more. -emscee

1. High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby (Buy It)

On page 26 of High Fidelity, Rob Fleming begins a passage by listing a number of his favorite songs, all linked by the subject of heartbreak, longing, and loss. He asks, "What came first, the music or the misery?...Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?"

Nick Hornby's 1995 novel burrows (affectionately) into the cracked soul of the music obsessive. Most books dealing with pop music are about process, or personality. Or history and analysis. High Fidelity is about the way the rest of us integrate music into our lives: making lists, organizing our records, digging through LP's at second-hand stores. The staff at Championship Vinyl is always talking in terms of Top Five's; they argue about the superiority of The Righteous Brothers' "Little Latin Lupe Lu" over that of Mitch Ryder's.

At the center of High Fidelity is the mission to understand the past (Rob decides to file his albums in the order in which they were purchased, as a kind of audio-biography), and get back the girl, with the help of a deejay gig and a record by Solomon Burke. - emscee

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Honorable Mentions

Lost In the Grooves
edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay (Buy It)

The ultimate compendium of obscure albums, Scram magazine's Lost in the Grooves combs the depths with a fresh filter, meticulously combing away the crap. Where other nerdly guides focus on unknown names or unwavering homage to rock's early era, Grooves' goal is to unearth approachable oddities. In this way, it succeeds by both ensnaring the casual listener's interest in off-the-radar albums and feeding the rock snob's unquenchable thirst for obscurity.

Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture
by Simon Reynolds (Buy It)

By far the most thorough study of contemporary electronic music's evolution, Simon Reynolds' landmark history manages an all-encompassing account. Whether meticulously parsing sub-genres, tracing techno back to old-school originators, compiling an exhaustive listening guide, or giving raunchy, backroom accounts of raves, Reynolds approaches the gargantuan task -- contextualizing an entire universe of sound - with an academic's understanding and a journalist's eye for excitement.

The Rest Is Noise
by Alex Ross (Buy It)

As a music critic, The New Yorker's Alex Ross is perhaps singular in his ability to make classical composition exciting to the uninitiated. An irreverent historian of 20th-century sound, Ross moves in and out of his comfort zone in The Rest is Noise, simultaneously addressing the untold tales of contemporary classical movements and exploring their fascinating intersections with pop. In an age where classical music has largely become the province of stodgy old men, it takes a writer of immense skill, humor, and drive to keep a work like this afloat (let alone get a bestselling book out of it).

How The Beatles Destroyed Rock N Roll
by Elijah Wald (Buy It)

An upside-down account of twentieth-century music culture, Wald's groundbreaking book upends pretty much everything we've come to accept. In the vain of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, the stunning work snatches authority from revisionist critics and gives power back to the populace. Whether controversially assenting that jazz was driven as much by whites as African Americans or contending that the Beatles ruined rock, his commentary is startlingly compelling and expertly argued.

Heroes and Villains
by Steven Gaines (Buy It)

Who knew psychedelics, barnyard animals, Charles Manson, schizophrenic paranoia, physical abuse, power struggles, and indoor pianos surrounded by sand were all related? A no-holds-barred account of the Beach Boys' unbelievable (and at times, clinically insane) ascendance, Heroes and Villains more than lives up to its title. Its ever-evolving characters grow well beyond the bounds of the band's sunshiny public persona, eventually pushing themselves to the point of implosion.

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