Poptimist Books?

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I've just finished reading Pet Shop Boys: Literally, which I rather liked. It felt wonderfully anachronistic to sit on the tube with 1989-era Neil and Chris staring out from the cover, and, as the PSBs were the first band I really liked back when I was wee, to get little insights behind the songs and image. They do come across as a pair of big whiny jessies, though. Guess it goes to show how quickly one gets accustomed to the money and the tedium of popstardom...

Anyway, it's made me want to read more pop books. Trouble is, I feel I've either read all the good ones or can never find what I'm looking for on the library shelves. Past favourites have included:

Feel by Chris Heath
Lost in Music by Giles Smith
Living Through Pop, ed. Andrew Blake (read this for my degree, but it's a good mix of academe and the anecdotal)
The Shoe by Gordon Legge (a novel, but sums up the effect of music on a young boy's life better than anything else I've read)
You Don't Have To Say You Love Me by Simon Napier-Bell
The Look by Paul Gorman
Tainted Life by Marc Almond 
Love Is The Drug, ed. John Aizlewood (I'm quite fond of the Dexys chapter)
Hell for Leather by Seb Hunter (approx 1000x more entertaining than I expected) 
EDIT:
Forgot The Nation's Favourite - one of my favourite books ever, for shame - and Bill Drummond's 45, which isn't really all about music but does have nice pieces in about Crystal Day and the Bunnymen's rabbit ears tour.

I have Saint Morrissey, Rip It Up... and England's Dreaming sat on my shelf, taunting me. I'm after something a bit more, well, suited to reading on the bus in the morning, though. 

What's your favourite pop book? And, even better, what made you throw it across the room with irritation?

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Once In A Lifetime... Crazy Days Of Acid House is a cracking read.

Was k-disappointed with Hip Priest (MES & The Fall biog) though. So badly written as to make an interesting band sound dull.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Awopbopaloobopawopbamboom by Nik Cohn - the best book about pop in the 50s and 60s that I've ever read, never losing sight of the music's roots in commerce and fashion (he acknolwedges the mythic power of the stuff too, and also in his Rock Dreams, which is also awesome).

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Ah! Hip Priest is in the box of books under the stairs. Only £3 from Fopp, though, so there's a limit to how disappointed with it I'll be allowed to be.

YES! I've read Once In A Lifetime, it's great.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Altered State by Matthew Collins is excellent on the rave and dance music explosion of the late 80s/early 90s. Simon Reynolds' Generation Ecstasy digs deeper into the same music and is compelling on how underground scenes evolve, but I think Collins is better on the cultural impact of E and rave.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's total bus reading too - very short chapters, very easy reading.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Is it accessible enough for someone who knows naff all about rave itself and a bit about the subculture?

[celentari.livejournal.com]

Black Vinyl, White Powder is quite good fun: the link between drugs and music, decade by decade, through the big gay eyes of Simon Napier Bell.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I quite fancy I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch.

ARGH

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I can't understand why people like Lost In Music so much, I found it INCREDIBLY IRRITATING!

A quite amusing read by the way is Pete Waterman's autobiog, it's so blustering that it's hilarious.

You're missing out The Boy Looked At Johnny! England's Dreaming is how punk WAS, TBLAJ is how it FELT - ie annoying/GREAT/snotty/silly etc etc.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

It's worth buying even just for the bit about Flowered Up!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I remember Seb Hunter from school (I was a pupil at the school he describes working at in the book). I think I had already got over my love for poodle metal by the time he was there though.

Re: ARGH

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Is it easy enough to get hold of?

I read Lost In Music at fifteen, when I was the only person I knew who was really really into music. Not re-read for a few years, but I'm still very fond of it. I still love the line about Cupid and Psyche '85: 'an album on which nobody does anything unless a computer tells them to"

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I v.much liked England's Dreaming by Jon Savage. There's something marvellous about the way he transmits his desire that the story should have ended differently. V.similar in feeling to that chapter in Mason and Dixon where Pynchon imagines the two of them not turning back at the Ohio, and going on to run the line forwards to the Pacific and then back across the Atlantic, finally coming to rest in a sort of new Atlantis, midway between Britain and America.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

What's put me off picking it up is that I always found the Pistols over-rated - not culturally, obviously, but musically. I was so disappointed when I actually heard them for the first time...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The Collins is very accessible yes - as long as you're prepared to believe that rave was something quite exciting and dynamic rather than just a load of pilled up nutters! If not you might find it a bit annoying.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

may i suggest not trying to read aesthetics of rock by R Meltzer on a bus. it is a small book, so easy to carry, but COMPLETELY BRANE-BENDING...

Morley's words and pictures music is a bit too big for bus reading i'd sa, not quite as big as rip it up, but still quite hefty. speaking of rip it up, i did find it quite disappointing, simon rarely gets going in it, there are swathes of chapters (most of the ones about america for eg) that almost certainly belong in geeta's another book...

how about 45 or The Manual by bill drummond? they're a good size and both aces.

Re: ARGH

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Oh, I dunno, I think England's Dreaming is v.good at getting across how being a certain sort fan feels in a show-don't-tell sort of way.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Ronnie Spector's Be My Baby is very good, you get a good bit of Wall Of Sound era gossip, lots of dirt on Big Phil (Spector, obv) and much amusing rivalry between himself and Brian Wilson.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

My brother was always going to 'warehouse parties'. A bit of background might be nice.

Re: ARGH

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

lost in music is grate, maybe you have to have hung around with musicians to get it...

...my favourite bits are the NIK KERSHAW bits.

Re: ARGH

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah it's good, but it's the Coke Zero to TBLAJ's Power Shandy innit. I'd still say it's 100% worth reading!

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Well, I do like 'em, so my POV is maybe not the best one, but I reckon Savage's belief in the whole project is enough to pull you along even if you think 0 of the Pistols music.

[dansette.livejournal.com]

The most poptimistic book is the Very Best of Smash Hits if you can get it!

[mippy.livejournal.com]

45 is ACE! How could I forget that? Probably because I'm swearing at journalists.

We have a house joke about Words and Music...everytime Can't Get You Out Of My Head comes on tele one of us intones 'Kylie Minogue is speeding into the heart of pop...' I started reading it once but thought it best to buy my own copy and work through at a slower pace rather than in the three weeks Manchester Libraries allowed. Not got round to it yet, though.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I've not managed to finish Rip It Up... I've still got it in my desk drawer actually, I came to a halt just after the Human Leg chapter I think. There was a bit of a "yeah, I know... I know... yep....", and then I think I may have stopped at the Fall chapter as I'd just read something else on the Fall (probably Stuart Lee)!!

Seconded the Bill Drummond!