Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

As the clock winds down to Christmas, there are some go to gift ideas that I always turn to; this time out it’s the best music book choices for the rockers on your gift list and a roundup of some of the wide range of choices for all musical tastes.

Bon: The Last Highway: The Untold Story of Bon Scott and AC/DC’s Back in Black – Jesse Fink (ECW Press)

There is a real fanboy quality to Jesse Fink’s Bon: The Last Highway: The Untold Story of Bon Scott and AC/DC’s Back in Black, as he delves into the seemingly, ages old debate about the untimely death of original AC/DC vocalist Bon Scott and what if any contributions he made to the band’s breakthrough album Back in Black.

The is a no stone left unturned quality to the research and writing that went into this book and Fink isn’t afraid to rub elbows with the band’s earliest fans who became a part of the entourage and hangers on that were part and parcel of Scott’s life on the road.

So does Fink solve the case and give fans a definitive answer to the questions about Bon Scott’s contributions to Back in Black? If I am honest, I would have to say the answer is no, but he certainly sheds light on bits of information that propel the question forward and make it even more legendary. Perfect the AC/DC diehards among us.

AC/DC: Album By Album – Martin Popoff - (Voyager Press) –

Speaking of AC/DC diehards, the ultra-prolific music journalist Martin Popoff dishes out the dish on the Australian heavy metalists with a detailed breakdown of each of the band’s sixteen studio albums, in AC/DC: Album By Album. 

The book is chock full of great anecdotes and in depth conversations about the band’s evolution to become one of the most legendary outfits in the hard rock realm.

Popoff takes an interesting approach as he gathers and curates the thoughts of seventeen rock music artist, journalists and authors to give as diverse as possible a range of opinions and insights about the thunder from down under.

To cap off this comprehensive look at the band, the book features dozens and dozens of photographs culled from the studio, the stage and the life of the band. With the aging band dwindling and passing, this is a tremendous capstone on a prolific career.

Led Zeppelin: All the Albums, All the Songs – Martin Popoff (Voyager Press)

As I said, there may be no other rock journalist who comes close to matching the prolific output of Martin Popoff. Just thinking about the daunting concept Popoff undertakes in Led Zeppelin: All the Albums, All the Songs, a personal accounting of the nine albums and eighty-one songs that make up the Led Zeppelin discography can seem like a staggering task, but it turns out to be something he handles with his usual adroitness and economy of writing.

When you consider all of the diverse range of musical and cultural influences that comprise the musical swath that Led Zeppelin cut through the world of rock and roll, it takes someone uniquely armed with a vast knowledge of the ingredients that went into the making of the band’s sonic onslaught. Popoff matches up well with the task at hand has he pairs things down with a laser focus, cutting into the nuts and bolts of the band’s approach in the studio and the role their influencers played on their sound.

Add to that a group of stellar essays on the band’s album by album output, considering the sum of all of the parts before breaking things down to the more granular, song by song level. Again a vast collection of photos and art accompanies and adds the perfect spice to this wonderful collection. This one would find a comfortable place in any Zeppelin fan’s collection.

Hendrix: the Illustrated Story – Gillian G. Gaar (Voyager Press)

One of my first professional job experiences was working for a local concert promoter. One the early tasks that I was charged with was to gather a catalog of all of the shows that the company had booked, in preparation for their 25 anniversary in business. The archivist and music fan in me just gravitated to the task as a spent countless hours combing through file after file to pull together the chronological story of the business.

One of the early shows that jumped out at me from the dusty files was a booking at a large, local arena that featured TV pop rockers The Monkees. While the made for TV “group” was certainly an interesting story, it was the opening act that really jumped up and caught my attention. Slotted to warm up the crowd for the TV moppets, was the then relatively unknown, but soon to be guitar legend, Jimi Hendrix. Talk about and odd couple!

Hendrix career, short as it ended up being, was loaded with such oddities and they get recounted in Seattle music journalist, Gillian G. Gaar’s new book, Hendrix: the Illustrated Story. While Gaar recounts Hendrix’s life and career in finite detail, the focus here is clearly on the images and art that track guitar God, from his earliest entry into the music world.

The pictures not only tell the story they are the story throughout Hendrix: the Illustrated Story. While Gaar is a skilled practioner when it comes to music writing, the dominating reason to add this book to your shopping list is the comprehensive and varied collection of illustrations that tell the Hendrix story.

Experiencing the Beatles: A Listener’s Companion – Brooke Halpin (Rowman & Littlefield)

Experiencing Black Sabbath: A Listener’s Companion – Nolan Stolz (Rowman & Littlefield)

As a long time collector and voracious reader of music based books, there is a point at which you think that you have literally read it all and that there are no new concepts out there. When it comes to some bands; the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the like, you couldn’t possibly convince me that there is a stone that has been left unturned and firmly rooted in place.

One of the more interesting stabs at breaking new ground has been the Experiencing series from Rowman and Littlefield publishers. Two of the latest entries in the set are Experiencing the Beatles: A Listener’s Companion, by Brooke Halpin and Experiencing Black Sabbath: A Listener’s Companion, by Nolan Stolz.

Both books bring an almost text book quality depth and clearly illustrate the authors background as writers, musicians, professors and artists in their own right. They bring an in depth knowledge about the subjects they that offers the reader/listener often new insight into the musical works of the subjects they cover.

I found myself reaching for the vinyl or the compact discs from the Beatles and Sabbath as I worked my way through the books and the subject they were espousing. That alone made for an interesting new experience for much of the material I was VERY familiar with. While not for every fan, if you have one of those gung ho completeist types on your shopping list, these will make great additions to their collection.

Lou Reed: A Life – Anthony DeCurtis – (Little Brown)

As I worked my way through a lot of very familiar ground in the new bio, Lou Reed: A Life by Anthony DeCurtis, the thing that struck me the most about the tale of the true iconoclast was not the intimate detail of Reed’s life and career, but the fact that veteran writers with the skill, the depth of subject knowledge and the passion for the music like DeCurtis are an aging and dying breed.

While there are certainly are skilled practitioners of rock journalism still out there, to me none stack up against the like of legendary writers like DeCurtis, Dave Marsh or the late Lester Bangs. The snarky, low rent internet cabal can’t hold a candle to these giants of the form. That begs the question, who will deliver the retrospective look back at the likes of musical legends like Lou Reed.

DeCurtis clearly leans on his decades of interactions with Reed and those in his orbit to deliver a stellar accounting of one of the most interesting men in the rock world. It is that relationship and the trust built over the course of multiple interactions that give Lou Reed: A Life, the vibrancy and pulse that make this story tick.