Ferndale Library Staff Recommends: Top 5 New Books, Old Favorites

We pride ourselves on our music collection here at the — not just the CD section (which includes a fortified catalog of all local artists) — but our nonfiction literature, from instruction on audio equipment and recording/engineering to our histories and biographies.

Top 5 for March

My top five picks for March include three new publications, one old favorite and a newly discovered treasure.

1. The Man Who Recorded The World: Alan Lomax — John F. Szwed
   “I’m sticking up for Rock n’ Roll,” says Alan Lomax, “because even though some of it is destructive and crude, it is essentially a creative American impulse.” That new treasure, for me, is this definitive biography on ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, an oral historian and folklorist who helped compile the Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music and collected field recordings and conducted interviews with seminal folk/blues troubadors including Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and Muddy Waters. (published in 2010)
2. (New) The Wrecking Crew — Kent Hartman
   Reminiscent of the 2002 documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which spotlighted the personalities and stories of the unknown backup group The Funk Brothers, The Wrecking Crew gives credit to the heretofore uncredited studio musicians who “secretly ruled the Top 40 charts” of the early 1960s by performing songs to bolster numerous Phil Spector productions, from The Beach Boys to the Crystals.
3. (New) Everything Is An Afterthought — Kevin Avery and Nick Tosches
   This musical memoir/biography documents the life and writings of former Rolling Stone editor Paul Nelson, an imaginative talent who brought a literary bent to rock criticism. He's not as hellacious as Lester Bangs or as heady as Greil Marcus, but he is easily one of the more endearing rock/culture critics/writers of the latter 20th century. This book is a hybrid biography/essay collection, with anecdotal essays from lifelong friends and fellow writers that lead into his best writings on Neil Young, Patti Smith, the New York Dolls and, most famously, his defense of Bob Dylan “going electric."
4. (New) The Last Holiday — Gil Scott-Heron
   This is a memoir by the late jazz/blues-infused spoken word artist, musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron, the baritone-voiced polemicist identified as a major influence upon just about every seminal hip-hop artist from the 1970s through the early '90s. Come read the words, written and collected just before his death in 2011, from the man perhaps best known for writing/performing the prominent protest poem/song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
5. Rock N Roll Will Save Your Life — Steve Almond
   I've included this one on my list here only because there’s no better way to top off the music-documentarian/music-obsessive theme that I’ve locked myself into. The eloquently acerbic, articulate, glorified fan-boy Steve Almond ostensibly delivers an autobiography here, but it feels more akin to sitting down to listen to a staggeringly stacked collection of records with a close, quirky, offbeat friend — all too ready to rant, rave and debate the kinds of facetious yet profound nuances that any obsessive would regularly ruminate on but fear sharing in public for fear of social expulsion. (published in 2010)

Happy reading...

Ferndale Patch thanks Jeff Milo, circulation specialist at the Ferndale Public Library, for these recommendations! Check back soon for more ideas from library staff. Are you looking for recommendations on something specific? Email jessicalschrader@gmail.com, and we'll pass on your questions to the library.