What I read

I read all kinds of stuff all the time--newspapers, magazines, fiction, non-fiction, whatever, so I'm going to have to pick something. How about the 33 1/3 books? Those are a series of books about musical albums. (33 and a third rotations per minute is the speed a 12" record plays at on a turntable.) I've read two lately, about albums I like. One was good and one was terrible. The good one was about The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. The book was full of all kinds of interesting background information: what the Beastie Boys were doing at the time (partying in Los Angeles), who the weirdos who produced the album were (The Dust Brothers and the reclusive DJ Matt Dike) and what they were like, what samples they used for the songs, how they wrote and recorded the songs. It really gives you a lot to think about when listening to the album. The bad one was about the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime. It just rehashed the same old stale personal reactions about how cool the album was and how the author listened to it on cassette in his car. I had tons of questions about the album that weren't answered, and he just missed lots of things. Like, he speculates, song by song, about why they left certain songs off the album when they put it on CD... but if you look at the songs, you realize that THEY LEFT ALL THE COVER VERSIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE'S SONGS OFF! One book was written with readers in mind. The other seems to be written for the personal gratification of the author. That's fine, but don't publish it for people to buy then.