Last CD you bought/ Book you read (6 Viewers)

'Still Life America '81'? I don't have it but I'll put it on my list. I've got 'Flashpoint' though. There's a great version of Satisfaction on it!
I bought their 'Singles Collection - The London Years' last Friday. That's one of the few ways to get hold of songs like 'Tell Me', 'Little Red Rooster' etc.
I have'nt read Charone's book on Richards, but I'll keep an eye out for it. Which book on the Stones would be the best to buy?
 
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I got Flashpoint too . Oh man , there are so many books of The Stones .For my interest it`s Charone`s . She lives with Keith and Anita for this time . I`ve got a Songbook from Omnibus Press , a book over Altamontconcert and two biographics of them . And a lot of albums and soloalbums .
It`only rock`n roll and i like it !
 
Charone's book sounds interesting since she lived with Keith for a time. It's about time I read a book or two about The Stones. I've got about a dozen of their albums and some of their concerts on VHS: Altamont ('Gimme Shelter'), the Hyde Park concert ('Stones In The Park'), 'The Rolling Stones Rock 'n'Roll Circus' and a Stones documentary, plus a DVD called 'Sympathy For The Devil' by Jean-Luc Godard and The Stones. Since VHS is on the way out, I have to buy them all on DVD - damn!
 
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As well as my memory serves me the Stanley Booth book on the Stones, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, was good. I'll have to read it again someday.

Found, bought and read Spitting Off Tall Buildings by Dan Fante over the weekend.
 
That's a great compilation. :)

Absolutely! Right now I'm on a "Shine a Light" trip. Bought both the DVD and the 2-CD. I think it's a great Stones concert.

As well as my memory serves me the Stanley Booth book on the Stones, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, was good. I'll have to read it again someday.

I'll make a note of that book. I have'nt read any book on the Stones yet...
 
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Last CD downloaded-> Camper Van Bethoven's 1st one + Key Lime Pie

Books-> Just finished Howe's Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (much I admired, much I would change)
and about to start either Pynchon's Inherent Vice (what a cover!)
or Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply
(and still have Geoff Dyer's new one, as well as Carlos Ruiz Zafon's... and won on e-bay 60 Years Later by J.D. California Coming through the Rye (yeah, think Salinger sequel)).
Ah, so many books!, so little time!
 
young hearts crying richard yates
because they wanted to mary gaitskill
the sorrows of an american siri hustvedt
 
Just bought the latest album by Luke Slater (under his Planetary Assault Systems guise). Not sure if many of you lot are into minimalist techno but if you are it's a good one :)
Also just started reading David Simon's non-fiction book 'Homicide...' which provided a lot of what he later used in 'The Wire'. It comes in at an intimidated 600+ pages but it's very readable and I'm enjoying it so far. Depressing stuff at the same time though.
 
Last book read: Gonzo, the life of Hunter S. Thompson


Just started reading: the Night of the Ripper, by Robert Bloch (so far not very impressive, but I'll give it a few more pages because Psycho was a good read.)

Last cd I listened to was, Show your Bones by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs...
 
SMEAR,
what did you think of Gonzo? i read it recently as well, and i enjoyed it, even though many people claimed that Jann Wenner was slamming HST with lots of negative stories after his death. i believe Thompson's widow withdrew all contributions to the book because she strongly disapproved of the tone of it. I guess i liked it for all the reasons she didn't: it showed much of Thompson's negative side: drug binges, temper tantrums, his inability to finish stories, therefore his assistants had to, etc.....
 
I'm reading the new Nick Cave book, The Death of Bunny Munro. So far, I'm not too impressed. About 1/3 of the way in. Where his protagonist from "and the ass" was to be pitied (and he was a real mess), this one is just an annoying asshole. I hope that it gets better. I have waited over 20 years for a new book from him...

Bill
 
Well after I happily made it through Women, I went ahead and picked a book off the shelf I have had sitting there for a while.

41H8UgQjL7L._SL500_.jpg


Finished it in 4 days, and that's not a good thing or a bad thing, I actually have enjoyed all 4 books by Chuck Klosterman.

P.S. Bill I didn't know Cave's new book was out. So I picked that up off Amazon last Friday, hopefully it will get better the further you get into it...

Oh and the last CD I bought, well I bought the new Pearl Jam album on vinyl. I really don't buy CD's anymore, does anyone? Beyond all the new Beatles stuff...
 
I'm reading the new Nick Cave book, The Death of Bunny Munro. So far, I'm not too impressed. About 1/3 of the way in. Where his protagonist from "and the ass" was to be pitied (and he was a real mess), this one is just an annoying asshole. I hope that it gets better. I have waited over 20 years for a new book from him...
I have to read the two !
Is that true that And the ass saw the angel is a faulknerian novel ? That's what they say in most of the reviews I read and I thus re-read The Sound and the Fury (which I've hated in my teens) to prepare myself to it because the main character is often compared to Benjy.

I really don't buy CD's anymore, does anyone?
I still buy my fav bands' discs ! The next one will be Eiffel's new album, in october.

Oh and the last CD I bought, well I bought the new Pearl Jam album on vinyl.
This one I'll only listen to ! :D
 
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The last book i read was The Grass Arena by John Healy. An excellent autobiography. The author was an alcoholic and living rough in London untill he learned to play chess whilst on a stint in jail. He replaced one addiction with another and went on to become an excellent player, challenging some of the greatest players of his day.

The last CD i bought was David Gilmour Live in Gdansk
 
Ah, John Healy. I read his autobiography late 80ties.
I also replayed some of his chess games when I was an active chess club player myself.

Good book, although I do remember I didn't like the fact that he gave up drinking...
 
the debut album from Scottish rock band We Were Promised Jetpacks, called These Four Walls. I've played it about 10 times this week and 3 and half times today (so far), and I just can't stop. Irony is overrated, anyway. The last book I read was Lamb by Christopher Moore, or as I like to call it, The Gospel According To Laugh Your Ass Off.
 
I've recently read a congolese author who quotes Bukowski among his favourite writers. His name is Alain Mabanckou and the book I've read is untitled Verre Cassé (Broken Glass). Verre Cassé is the nickname of one regular client from a bar of ill fame located in Brazzaville and he has been asked by the owner to write the story of it because Verre Cassé writes well and drinks a lot, just like this drunkard writer - guess who - he one day happened to mention to the owner. It looks like a long monologue through which Verre Cassé depicts the bar and its freakiest clients. Bukowski is referred to two times without his name being dropped. That's an ode to alcohol and misfits, the writing is virile and the punctuation is free ; the similarities with Buk stop here. That was a pleasant reading, I nearly had the feeling of hearing an african griot telling his stories. Alain Mabanckou's work is available in english since, after properly beginning his writing career in France, he moved to the States where he's now teaching at UCLA.
 
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i am reading HALF A LIFE and THE MIMIC MEN by V.S.NAIPAUL simultaneously. naipaul really talks to me because i am indian and the stuff he writes about inferiority complex and the constant need of indians to mimic others reasonates with me a lot. naipaul is a lion. he really bashes hindus and hindu culture in HALF A LIFE.
 
I read a few of Naipaul's "travel" novels.
That must have been at least 20 years ago.
I believe I found them not too bad.
When did he get the Nobel price again?
 
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just started it, but so far it's excellent.

here's some info.

anyone who loves music should get this book.

o, for my friends in the UK, the original title was/is The Long-Player Goodbye: The Album from Vinyl to iPod and Back Again
 
I'm all over that one, thanks for the tip.

I recently finished this:

bassculture.jpg


540 pages of chewy goodness. If you're even marginally interested in how reggae music was created and evolved, this book is easily the best history I've read. It's major. He really covers all the bases and gets it right and tight.

---

Also consumed recently, Beatles Gear, a large format book full of pictures and stories about the Beatles guitars and amps! Ha. A specialized thing, for sure, but page after page of guitar porn if you're interested in the band and guitars. And if you want to know which tracks Paul played the Hofner violin bass on (answer: all of them --- okay, not really, but just about).

---

I also read an out of print book that I've been trying to find for years that was written by Michael Bruce, the guitar player for the Alice Cooper group. But it was so stupefyingly awful that I won't even mention the title here. I'm glad I was patient and didn't pay collectors prices for the thing. I read it in about an hour standing at the kitchen counter. Not real long-winded, Bruce. Thankfully. One of the worst rawk n roll books I've ever read, and that's saying something.

---

Oh yeah...and this:

Tom_Cruise_An_Unauthorized_Biography_by_Andrew_Morton.jpg


All very literary books, I know.
 
Jack London - People of the Abyss

Has anyone read that book?

I was just surfing around for info on his book about alcohol ('John Barleycorn') and came to see the 'Abyss'.
Made a few paragraphs into chapter 1 and it sounds interesting.

Is it worth going ahead and buying a book-version?




another one, that I will read soon:

Moscow-Petushki by Venedict Yerofeyev
(for Germans: Die Reise nach Petuschki von Wenedikt Jerofejew <- different spelling!!! )


When I called my local bookstore today, to order it, I was trying to speak the name of the author, then stopped, said "okay, maybe I better give you the title first..." -- now the guy from the store (who knows me, as all clerks do there) interrupted me and said: "That's 'Moscow-Petushki', right? It's a classic."

Here I was - having never heared even the name of this author, and the salesman comes up with the right book, when I not even have given the author's name in a proper way! Well, tomorrow it will be here.
 
I just ordered the Yerofeyev book. looks right up my alley. thanks for the tip, roni.
 
My impression was that London's Abyss read more like research, a sociological study, rather than what I would call a first-person literary account on poverty in the way that Bukowski or Hamsun would do; but there's a certain grace of writing and humanity - after all it's the great Jack London in the salad days of his career that renders it above the ordinary. He had deep convictions about these conditions of catastrophic lack and felt that it was the result of the mismanagement of civilization's vast industrial resources by those in power. Moreover, he felt strongly that something could be and should be done about it - later to evolve into his strong idealistic views and convictions on the superiority of Socialism over Capitalism. While sincere, this approach made the book somewhat less readable for me because it was more about "their' sufferings rather than his own. (I was never in doubt that he would come off the dunghill perfectly fine.) Still, there's something timeless about the situations he describes as the current global economy creaks along and people are being bankrupted by huge medical expenses, unemployment or other such dire losses, and being thrown out into the streets like dogs; the food banks are overflowing with demands in Sedona and elsewhere. George Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris is a more personal "literary' account of his experiences in poverty, but from a sociological standpoint the Abyss was written by a man who cared deeply about the impoverished people he was describing in the coffee-shops and elsewhere. It's just that I wouldn't exactly describe it as literature in the usual sense of the word and it's somewhat fatiguing to read because it seems more like a study of poverty in the abstract idealized sense of the word rather than Jack being fully impacted by the squalor he himself experienced.
 
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hooch:
you're welcome! I hope the book holds its promise. Will find out soon. Let's change oppinions then.



pop:
thanks for your thoughts.
I don't want to sound offensive - but there's one thing, where mjp is right: it really IS annoying to read such one long paragraph, esp. on a computerscreen.
I understand, this is kinda 'personal style', but sometimes, when there are reasons, one can work his style over and change little parts of it.

The reason I say this is:
I (too) usually only have a quick flight with my eyes over your posts, even though they seem to be intelligent. I really AM interested in reading them. I simply can't. But I would like to!

So, how about just giving it a try and making distinguished paragraphs now and then? Just to see how that works?
Please?
 
mjp, I read Bass Culture after reading your post and I'm really glad I did. Fascinating read. The most coherent explanation of Rasta I've read, too. I think I'll skip the Cruise bio and find a good one on Bob Marley instead, though. Any suggestions?
 
And if you want to know which tracks Paul played the Hofner violin bass on (answer: all of them --- okay, not really, but just about).

The Beatles recorded 212 album tracks from 1962-1970 (187 originals and 25 covers). This does exclude outtakes and all, but those run the gamut from mainly '65-'69; over the operational lifetime of several basses (not to say that they were beat after that; they were just used during very discrete periods with the Beatles).

Most of these tracks had bass parts, but not all (Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, She's Leaving Home, Revolution 9, Julia and Mother Nature's Son are examples off the top of my head). The, there were tracks such as Hey Jude, on which George played the Fender Bass VI and Let it Be, on which John played Fender Jazz bass. Let's say, for the sake of argument (we love those!), that 200 had McCartney bass tracks.

From Please Please Me through Help! (I'm including singles and EPs in these ranges), McCartney used a Hofner "violin bass" exclusively (he had two; a '61 and a '63 that differed mainly by pickup placement). They cut 85 album tracks in this period.

On Rubber Soul, McCartney used the Hofner on perhaps half the tracks, so there's 8 more for the Hofner. His Rickenbacker 4001S was used on the rest (say 7 tracks). From Revolver through Magical Mystery Tour, he used the Rick exclusively except perhaps for Paperback Writer and Rain, on which it has been hypothesized that he used a Nu-Sonic bass. Still, not a Hofner. During the Revolver - Mystery Tour period, they cut 63 album tracks.

On the White Album, McCartney used a fiar bit of Fender Jazz bass as well as his Rick. Let's say that 25 of these had Paul on bass on a non-Hofner. THat put's us at the end of 1968 in a dead heat:

85 on Hofner, 85 not on Hofner.

On to Let it Be, where we'll assume Paul used the Hofner on 9 of 11 tracks (John played bass on the title track and The Long and Winding Road is a real ?). On the final 20 tracks, we need to leave out Her Majesty, so let's divide the track up to 8 Hofner and 11 Rick.

That's a final tally of 102 tracks with Hofner and 96 on The Rick 4001S, Fender Jazz and Nu-Sonic. Just working off the top of my head (except for the total number of album cuts), that gets me to 198. Not too bad considering my initial estimate of 200.

So, to quote Bill Clinton: "Define just about all." ;)
 
The, there were tracks such as Hey Jude, on which George played the Fender Bass VI and Let it Be, on which John played Fender Jazz bass.

In Ian McDonald's book about the Beatles, 'Revolution in the Head - The Beatles'Records and the Sixties', in which he goes through all their songs, it says Paul played bass on 'Hey Jude', and George lead guitar. However, it does say John played bass on 'Let It Be'. Of course, McDonald could be wrong about who played bass on 'Hey Jude'.
 
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I don't buy that. There is no lead guitar on Hey Jude, just rhythm parts. Paul played piano, and laid down a bass track on August 1, 1968 that was scrapped in favor of an extra string part from the orchestral work (source: Mark Lewisohn, 1988. The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions.) Lewisohn was the recording engineer for almost all of the Beatles stuff after Rubber Soul.

Lewisohn does not indicate where the bass part comes from, but if you watch the "live broadcast" with all the hippies and such, George is playing the Fender Bass VI, John the Epiphone Casino, and Paul the piano. The problem here is that it appears that the bulk of the music in that performance is a lip-synch; and George had no real part in what was recorded or being recorded during that session, so he played the bass.

Whether he was actually playing it or not is unknown, but it looks as if he was. Whether that was recorded then is another story. But just listening to the bass part on Hey Jude tells me, with pretty good certainty, that Paul did not do it. Too root-based; no real melodic movement, and the sound is not that of a Rick or a Fender Jazz.

Of course, I could be totally full of crap.
 
mjp, I read Bass Culture after reading your post and I'm really glad I did. I think I'll skip the Cruise bio and find a good one on Bob Marley instead, though. Any suggestions?
Yikes. I've been reading about Marley for 30 years and surprisingly, I don't think a really good bio has been written yet.

Timothy White's Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley was first, but like the first major Bukowski bio (Cherkovsky's), it's not entirely accurate. I guess for an overall picture in a single book I'd go with Stephen Davis' bio, Bob Marley, but I think it's out of print. Looks like it has been retitled: Bob Marley: Conquering Lion of Reggae.

I would stay away from the books by people who knew him - Rita Marley, Don Taylor - unless you plan on reading every book you can find.

So, to quote Bill Clinton: "Define just about all." ;)
I don't have the recording sessions book, but when I was reading the Beatles Gear book, it seemed like every recording description ended with; "...and Paul played the Hofner bass." But that was just an impression.
 
Lewisohn does not indicate where the bass part comes from, but...

I see! - Lewisohn's book ranks among the very best books about The Beatles'recordings, as far as I know. I've often thought about buying it.
Apparently, it does contain some errors. Here's part of a review on Amazon:

"Addictive, but in dire need of revision, September 20, 2006
By Chris Federico (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
I can't give it all five stars, due to the errors that could have easily been corrected between the first edition and this (fourth?) one -- new things have come to light since the book's initial appearance, thanks to the Anthology episodes and the great book, Recording the Beatles.

Much of the information in this book is erroneous, although nothing more was known as of 1988. So it's not a bad job; it's just out of date. The sheer work and research involved deserves a revision, and not just a reprint to cash in on the recurrent waves of Beatles interest.

One little problem is that Mark doesn't seem to know much about the writing or recording of music; he often uses confusing terminology that doesn't quite fit (he seems misguided about what a middle eight is, for instance, and has no idea what the difference is between an "overdub" and an "edit piece").

When he tries to interject his own opinion -- which isn't indicated in a book of nonfiction data like this -- he's often comically out of line. One instance that stands out is when he claims that "Martha My Dear" is not about Paul's sheepdog. It obviously is (not only judging from Paul's comments, but also considering that lyrics like "Hold your head up, you silly girl" were certainly not written about a human being!)."

- Lewisohn has also written a much larger book about The Beatles, including the recording sessions, but it seems to be out of print judging from the inflated prices Amazon sellers offers it for. The title is:

"The Complete Beatles Chronicle: The Only Definitive guide to the Beatles' entire career on stage, in the studio, on radio, TV, film and video"
- 365 pages, 2006.

- And then he wrote this one too. I wonder which one of the three books one should buy. It seems like this one is about the recordings only:

"The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970"
 
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Hey Bukfan: You are correct about the Lewisohn errors. Apparently The Lads weren't the only ones burning funky shit back in the day.

Just to let you know, your citation of

"The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970"

is the same book that Chris Federico was writing about. At least as far as I can tell. That's the book I was citing from Lewisohn.

I go by what Lewisohn wrote and what my ears tell me. If Paul McCartney played bass on the Hey Jude track, I'll eat my hat. The bass part totally smacks of that on She Said She Said, which was likely also played by George as Paul has a hissy fit about something and stormed out of the studio as the Beatles continued recording.

Listen to She Said She Said and tell me if the bass part sounds anything like other McCartney lines from the Rubber Soul/Revolver/Pepper period.
 
I'll give 'She Said She Said' a listen. I'm not a McCartney bass specialist, but maybe I can tell the difference between that song and the other songs from the Rubber Soul/Revolver/Pepper period anyway.

That's the book I was citing from Lewisohn.

I see! It seems like he's published 2-3 books about The Beatles'recordings. I gather some of the books are just augmented or updated versions of his first book.
 
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Listen to She Said She Said and tell me if the bass part sounds anything like other McCartney lines from the Rubber Soul/Revolver/Pepper period.
The sound is the same, but that's thanks to the engineer Geoff Emerick I suppose. Revolver is the record that really brought out the bass for the first time. For me.

But that isn't McCartney playing. I don't know if he could have played that part. He was not what I'd call an economical bass player. ;)
 
Book to read

Just a quick post here. Driving home from work one day I heard this author being interviewed on the radio. It blew my fuckin' mind and I knew I had to read her book. I wasn't disappointed. The author's name is Xinran and the book is called The Good Women Of China.
 

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