thursday april 17
Back in the day, it was called Alternative Music. Since then, the name has changed many times--College Rock, Indie Rock or Pop, New Music, etc.--and this library has done a commendable job of keeping up with many of the polymorphous group of artists who make up this genre, or collection of genres. If you want to learn more of the nomenclature and history, Wikipedia has an interesting article on Alternative Rock. It is a chunky topic, as a subject search in the library's catalog for "alternative rock" yields 375 titles. Like all of my blogs and lists, this one will be highly selective, subjective, and lacking a bunch of great music I have overlooked. If you feel personally offended or frothing-at-the-mouth enraged by something I have left out, please feel free to comment. I have listed the most recent library-owned release to date by each band/artist (or the most comprehensive/representative in some cases).
So here's yet another list from me to you:
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thursday december 13
Joe Boyd has written an amazing book, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. Joe Boyd is a music producer, who, in the years 1966-1974 produced records by the following luminaries: The Incredible String Band, Shirley Collins, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, John & Beverly Martyn, Nico, and Maria Muldaur, among others. For a bit more information on some of these folks, check out a couple of my other blogs, one about 1960s British folk rock, and another on Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original songwriter. More than a roster of Boyd's accomplishments, White Bicycles is part memoir, part social history, and partly an intimate portrait of some very colorful, talented, and often tragic, individuals. Due to feeling a strong connection to Sandy Denny and Nick Drake, I was particularly moved by the chapters written about them. Poignant social commentary permeates the book as well, and he pulls no punches in describing his take on the myriad of differences between the world back then and what it has become. He even gets on the soap box for a superb chapter on the virtues of old school analog recording techniques versus today's omnipresent computer-based music making. I cannot say enough wonderful things about this book or recommend it more strongly...I was sad to see it come to an end. If you think you might be interested, put yourself on the holds list. If you like folk, folk rock, or 1960s/early 1970s music in general, wrap your head, ears first, around the companion cd, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. You won't regret either move.
wednesday september 19
Ok--I am breaking a longstanding blog silence. It took another best-of list, this one from a webzine, to make it happen. This particular list really gets me going: The 50 Greatest Rock Drummers from Stylus Magazine (for some strong opinions and lively expletives, see the comments at the end of the article). I am going to exercise great restraint and not complain about how one defines "greatest," or why only 50 drummers, or the overt subjectivity of such an exploit. It is obviously in the nature of some people (librarians among them) to make lists. I will also refrain from the arrogance as to suggest that I am an expert on anything (public librarians are generalists, remember) but, being a drummer for 30 years and listening intently to other drummers for even longer allows me at least a few additions. For other remarks on librarians, music fans, and lists, please see this blog.
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tuesday january 30
I am not one of those crafty hobbyist people. But in the last year or so, I have found a hobby that is fun, rewarding, and serves both the creative, right-brain person and the left-brain, analytical science guy within. I am talking about brewing beer. Though not an alkie or a weekend warrior, I do enjoy beer. Good beer, that is, as I am a serious beer snob. Enough about me, though, let's talk about brewing. It is simpler than you might imagine. Just hop (pun intended) in the car, drive down to
Listermann's, buy the gear and a kit, bring ‘em home, and brew it up right in your very own kitchen. Three weeks in the fermenter (a five-gallon bucket with a lid), three more weeks conditioning in the bottle, and you have two cases of yumminess to imbibe. Time for a party!
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friday january 12
There has been a popular folk music movement brewing for several years known as “Freak Folk”, consisting of people such as Devendra Banhart, Vetiver, Faun Fables, Joanna Newsom, Espers, Josephine Foster, Six Organs of Admittance, Animal Collective, Akron/Family, and others. Freak Folk will more than likely be the subject of a future blog. Why then bring it up now?
Because FF simply could not exist without the creative fusion of styles that occurred in the UK in the 1960’s and 1970’s, described in mouth-watering detail by ethnomusicologist Britta Sweers in her Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music. I would strongly recommend this wonderful book to anyone interested in folk, folk rock, or the music of the British Isles, and for those curious about the lesser-known, more traditional musical/cultural revolution of the 60’s that was (among other things) a reaction against the pop music of the day. Sweers wrestles with the problematic definitions and history, paints a vivid sociocultural portrait of the scene, discusses the main players therein, elaborates on the many ongoing musical revivals, and speculates about future fusions of traditional and “new”.
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tuesday december 26
Need a reading suggestion for that special oddball in your life? I may have a perfectly esoteric recommendation. If the person has an interest in the 1960's, the occult, eccentric people, and strange tales, Gary Lachman's intriguing Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius might be just the ticket (to ride). This fast-paced and highly entertaining reader of otherworldly and sometimes sordid activities alleges connections between many colorful figures such as: L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley, Charles Manson and the Beach Boys, Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey (founder of The Church of Satan), and other strange bedfellows too numerous to mention here.
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friday december 01
Flann O'Brien (one of many pen names--real name Brian Ó Nuallain) wrote a phenomenal novel, At Swim-Two-Birds, in the late 1930's. It is a whacked out, hilariously psychedelic, and nearly indescribable work of postmodern metafiction. The fact that it was originally published almost seventy years ago makes it even more mindbending. I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room, reading this book, laughing out loud to the extent that others must've thought I was nutty. Because I enjoyed it so much I read four others by him--The Third Policeman, The Dalkey Archive, The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor, and The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life.
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monday october 23
As library people we love lists...Especially booklists. So if you happen to love rock music and lists, like some of us libraryfolk, below you will find Blender music magazine's "40 Greatest Rock 'N Roll Books", from their October issue. I am also pleased to report that we own most of the books on the list (and ordering those we do not, if in print).
Having stated that lists are lovable, it must also be said that they can be problematic, causing negative reactions in some by what they include and exclude. Blender's list rose the ire of music blog/zine Stereogum. Having read through the flames and rants, I discovered three books that Stereogum readers were most dismayed by Blender's omission: Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991, Cash: The Autobiography, and "Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes".
On the other hand, Kirkus Reviews agrees with Blender's choices, and reviews 13 of the 40 picks in this article from The Book Standard.
Kind reader, what about you? What's missing from the list? What's on it that shouldn't be? Comments...?
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thursday october 05
Some of the most requested books in the Art & Music Department are those on the music business and associated topics, i.e., management and booking, career advancement, marketing and promotion, record labels, recording, and legal issues. For the first time in three years, a bibliography of these books has been revised and updated. It is now available as a printed brochure and online: The Music Business: Basic Sources of Information. There will also be a selection of these books displayed in the Atrium Friday, October 6 through Saturday, October 14. The timing is not accidental...
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thursday august 24
"Intriguingly beautiful works of art." Not words most would associate with graffiti, that blatantly vandalistic and incomprehensible scourge on our fair cities. Maybe the naysayers should see the book DF: Idiots On Parade. Published by Shake It, Ink. (as in the Northside record store), this book displays legal and illegal creations by the notorious DF graffiti crew. The DF group has been around for over twenty years, with origins in New York, though now claims members across the country (including Cincinnati). These folks are also successful--some have attended the best art schools, scored design jobs with high-dollar accounts such as Nike, been on television, and had their works shown in galleries around the world. Local DF artist Rapes, & possibly Scribe (from Missouri) will have several pieces displayed in the Main Library as part of Listen To This!, a Hip Hop-oriented music business program scheduled for Sunday, October 15. Check it out. Other library materials on graffiti art include: Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents by Nicholas Ganz, GV4, Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City by Joe Austin, Chicano Graffiti and Murals: The Neighborhood Art of Peter Quezada by Kim Sojin, and Graffiti, Post-graffiti.
tuesday august 01
This gorgeous book, Libraries, by Candida Höfer, arrived in the Art & Music Department today and I cannot stop looking at it. The book consists of photographs of libraries from around the world--a few in the U.S., though none of Cincinnati or Seattle. Some are lush, some austere, and very few of the photos contain people. Her work is also featured in Typologies: Nine Contemporary Photographers. Umberto Eco, best known as author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, introduces the book with an essay. What more could you possibly want? Highly recommended.
monday july 17
What follows is excerpted from an online conversation between two friends about
Syd Barrett, founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd, following the news of his death.
Friend 1 wrote: I went through some Syd Barrett lyrics online today after getting the news and was struck by how many of them were -- to the degree one can filter through the strangeness -- about lost love. Maybe it wasn't the LSD that drove him over the edge after all.
The poppy birds way
Swing twigs coffee brands around,
Brandish her wand with a feathery tongue
My head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
Please, please, please lift the hand
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain
I tattooed my brain all the way...
Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all? (from "Dark Globe")
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friday june 23
For the first time ever, Cincinnati is having a three-day outdoor indie music festival, the Shakespearian-monikered
Desdemona Festival, June 23-25 at Sawyer Point. This event has attracted the interest of the local media for its size and for the geographic and musical scope of artists featured.
I am happy to see that the library owns releases by some of the performers:
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friday june 09
"I like to fiddle with the idea of basic categories of reality, such as space and time, breaking down." (
Philip K. Dick)
As librarians we enjoy categorizing things, and in squirrelly realms such as the work of Philip K. Dick, this endeavor quickly becomes problematic. Do we place him in Science Fiction? Magic Realism? Postmodernism? Speculative Fiction? Was he a hack philosopher/theologian, a “poor man’s Pynchon” as a Village Voice reviewer once suggested, or a “homegrown Borges” as Ursula K. Le Guin opined?
I proclaim PKD to be all of the above and then some. The man and his work have been described as visionary, paranoid, brilliant, and mystical, among many other terms. If you enjoy slippery metaphysical slopes and shifting realities with their attendant philosophical quandaries, I heartily recommend Philip K. Dick’s work. Despite the thematic weightiness, however, he is eminently readable, and his addictive page-turners often feature “common man” characters (even androids) possessing warmth and humor uncharacteristic of the genres he straddles.
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friday june 02
Enlightening nonfiction for those curious about the food they put in their bodies, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods, by Gary Paul Nabhan, fascinates and provokes. In summary, prize-winning essayist and ecologist Nabhan returns to his homeland, is inundated with the indigenous foods of the old country by his extended family, and describes the effects triggered by this experience. Among many other scary facts, the book elucidates that “The food we put into our mouths today travels an average of thirteen hundred miles from where it is produced, changing hands at least six times along the way.” Gardening, anyone?
