While an exhausted record industry takes a long nap on the couch next week in that post-Thanksgiving food coma, a terrific stack of new rock-and-roll books gives good reason to stay down a little longer and balance a good read and another piece of pie on your belly. The Beatles add two terrific selections to their wing of the sophisticated rock library, and a long-lost moment in time from the late 1960s is given a new life. Almost as large as the visual punch of a 12-inch LP jacket, Boxigami Books has just released the perfect coffee-table gift for any fan in Beatles Art: Fantastic New Artwork of the Fab Four. Featuring more than 200 pages of visual interpretations both joyfully touching and quietly sad, the glossy pages jump and cross-cut the band's iconic imagery, both real and imagined. Highlights include the quartet portrayed as sloths, hip-hop homeboys, a Spanish Colonial retablo, and wild beer-keg-sized ceramic busts. Want to taste immediate jealousy? Check out the 250-square-foot murals in the home of a California musician.
More psychedelic visions are found in The Beatles: Illustrated Lyrics, originally published in 1969 and now issued in paperback by Black Dog & Leventhal. More than 200 songs are given the treatment, featuring Peter Max's kaleidoscope peek through "Glass Onion," Ralph Steadman's take on "Oh Darling," and underground cartoonist Victor Moscoso's M.C. Escher-like look at "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da."
Beatles obsesives get plenty to knaw on in Backbeat Books' The Unreleased Beatles: Music & Film, dissecting every rare outtake session, home demo, and live performance in nearly 400 pages. Year by year, and practically day by day, author Richie Unterberger places the reader as a fly on the wall with illuminating detail. If you've stumbled upon the plethora of Beatles bootlegs on LP and CD, this history is a must-have companion to answer why each of these collectible recordings is so special. Also of note is a chapter dedicated to the "songs the Beatles gave away" to Badfinger, Peter & Gordon, The Applejacks, Mary Hopkin, and more.
San Francisco's RE/Search Publications is back with Pranks 2, a new volume of anti-corporate and anti-stupidity shenanigans meant to teach a little and laugh a lot between the lines of social protest. Two rockers find their way inside: Entertaining malcontent and spoken-word sage Jello Biafra hacks off about hacking scenarios, and Ministry's Al Jourgensen shares tales of subversive resistance within his major-record-label deal. Other political artists turning everything sideways include the Yes Men, John Waters, painter Ron English, comedian Margaret Cho, master satirist Paul Krassner, and those brilliant modifiers of the advertising landscape, the Billboard Liberation Front. Highly recommended, this is smart stuff for those witty enough to throw ideas instead of bombs.
Cool cars and rock-and-roll go together like peanut butter and jelly. With enough songs written over the past 50 years about the need for speed, XM or Sirius could easily format a radio station on the subject. Author Paul Grushkin, whose Art of Rock ushered in the new age of rock posters, has done it again with the visually explosive Rockin' Down the Highway: The Cars & People That Made Rock Roll. With the beauty of vintage hubcaps alongside the beauty of vintage 45-RPM records, this 240-page thriller tells the intersecting tale of the hot rods and the mack daddies who drove and designed them, and the rock-and-roll (and later hip-hop) scene that fueled the engines in spirit and song. If you can dream it, it's in here: "Rocket 88," Rat Fink mania, eight-track tapes, rockabilly car culture, Detroit pride, eerie deaths behind the wheel, pimped whips, ZZ Top's CadZZilla, and Ken Kesey's 1939 International Harvester cosmic school bus - all gorgeously electrified in rare archival photography, record sleeves, album jackets, magazine covers, and concert posters. Most fun are the photos of touring musicians' lives on the road and in the van, and wealthy rockers proudly flanking their four-wheel obsessions. If you've got a gearhead on your gift list, this is pure, orgasmic, hemi-powered delight.
Looking to screw down your thinking cap and dive into the heady world of music and social anthropology at the grad-school level? It might hurt a little, but The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest from the Ashgate Press is an insightful collection of essays written by college professors from around the country, each passionately offering a discourse on anomalies in popular music. Topics range from the failure of straightedge to women in rap to reggae and the ideology of Rastafarianism to the undead of Gothicism to heavy metal as a community. I was particularly engaged by Sean Kelly's essay on cassette culture and its influence on the Pacific Northwest grunge scene in the early 1980s and Russell Potter's look at postmodernism in today's hip-hop.
A new book by Gregory Davis, the eldest son of Miles Davis, tells the ups and downs of his father's life in Dark Mingus: The Jekyll & Hyde Life of Miles Davis on the Backbeat Books imprint. Between his mad, impulsive genius, the dope, and the women, Davis' legacy was peppered with destructive demons, all told here among the tender moments and personal photographs from the family album.
Television Alert:
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno hosts Nelly Furtado tonight and Snoop Dogg on Tuesday; The Late Show with David Letterman welcomes John Mayer on Thursday, Tom Waits on Monday, and The Decemberists on Tuesday; Late Night with Conan O'Brien boasts Billy Talent this evening overnight, Brand New Heavies on Thursday overnight, and Jet on Monday overnight; Last Call with Carson Daly drafts an Army of Anyone on Thursday overnight; Jimmy Kimmel Live serves up Bowling for Soup on Friday overnight and Chris Daughtry on Tuesday overnight; and Austin City Limits' musical guest this weekend is Franz Ferdinand.
New Releases Coming Tuesday, November 28:
... and like the winds, young grasshopper, are subject to change.
The Babys - The Official Unofficial Babys Album (RPM Records) import-only remastered reissue of this rare collection of early recordings from 1978
Thomas Dolby - The Sole Inhabitant (CD Baby) live concert CD and DVD, touring now with co-headliner BT
Faithless - To All New Arrivals (Sony) featuring the first single "Bombs"
David Gilmour - On an Island (Columbia) deluxe edition featuring a bonus DVD of Abbey Road and AOL sessions from earlier this year
Incubus - Light Grenades (Epic) featuring the single "Anna Molly"
Johnny Action Figure - Asks the Room to Please Stop Spinning (DRP Records) seven-track CD EP of peppy, harmonic emo-pop featuring a drummer named Mr. Wonderful
NRBQ & the Whole Wheat Horns - Derbytown Live 1982 (MVD) DVD filmed in Louisville
The Pennies - 10,000 Things (Darla/Ear X-tacy Records) from Louisville, Kentucky
Public Enemy - Beats & Places (Slam Jamz) collection of 15 previously unreleased tracks
