Serious Music by Percival Everett

Serious music by Percival Everett, 304 pages. This will be published on March 2, 2027.

Arthur is an African American music major and aspiring composer when circumstances lead him and his friends to serve in WWI. He returns to New York and Washington DC, where he uses his musical talents to fight racial injustice in unvonventional ways. This is standard Percival Everett, with plenty of "what might have been" alternate history and satirized people and institutions. It's not necessary to understand music theory to enjoy the book, but an appreciation for it definitely helps us understand Arthur and how he sees the world.

This was pretty good, at times beautifully written. The first third or so of the book is one of the best WWI narratives I've read (which admiitedly is not many). I'm definitely glad that I read it, though I found it really similar James and some other things I've read. If you like this one or James, I recommend a Everett's collection of western short stories Half and Inch of Water, which is sadly overlooked.

Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It By Bob Boilen

Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It

, 288 pages

The author, a music journalist for NPR, interviews various musicians about how they got interested in music and found their respective styles. I give it an emphatic “meh”. It felt like reading a podcast, and I’m curious why the author created it in this format. It might have been more interesting if the artists included had appealed to a wider range of audiences, and hadn’t been so NPR-coded.

The Chronicles of Doom

 The Chronicles of Doom: Unraveling Rap's Masked Iconoclast by S.H. Fernando Jr. 352 pgs. © 2024

This was a great introduction into a fascinating figure in modern hip hop. Doom was born Daniel Dumile and was the anti-rap performer--he didn't want notoriety, he didn't want to be recognized on the street or flash a bunch of cash and expensive cars everywhere he went. He grew up on a steady diet of cartoons and comic books and Japanese monster movies. His first music project with his brother Subroc was KMD in the late 80s/early 90s. When Subroc died young and the record label abandoned the group, Doom adopted his favorite comic book villain as his namesake and donned a eerily similar looking mask to that of Victor Von Doom, aka Doctor Doom from Marvel Comics. The mask gave Dumile anonymity but more importantly, it gave him a mysterious presence that was missing from the genre. Much of Doom's creative contributions to hip-hop include using old cartoon samples for his beats while rhyming in the third person. He played the villain for everything he could, even booking shows and having other people pretend to be him during the performances, infuriating promoters and concert goers alike, but his fan base never seemed to falter from hanging on his every word. 

The Maidenheads

 

 The Maidenheads by Benny B. Peterson, 336 pages

 A story about music, finding yourself in queerness, and rekindling a first love. 

This book will probably not be for everyone, it is messy, the protagonist is largely unlikable and the relationship that the novel follows is disheartening. However, I loved this book as it felt like a very accurate and honest depiction of being queer and navigating relationships. I thought the writing was beautiful and I felt like I was inside the main characters head, for better or for worse. 

Lollapalooza

 

Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour, 432 pages 

The last music book of the summer for the Rhythm n' Books reading club before we move on to our round of books for the fall. We haven't read anything quite like this, an oral history. Some folks liked it for it's candid anecdotes, some did not feel it was "journalistic" enough to merit an entire book. The problem with trying to dive into the past and document the concert in it's earliest days is that there probably is little documentation to go on. All of this was the brainchild of Perry Ferrell, the charismatic front man for the band Jane's Addiction, who were a more popular band at the time than I ever realized. In Perry's mind, this was something akin to Woodstock, but a little more organized--something to bring together the alternative counter culture that was starting to coalesce after the radio death of hair metal. In it's earliest heyday, Lolla included a second stage which consisted of a group of California circus performers who were more sideshow than side acts. Perry accidently tapped into a huge market and the festival grew into a concert that spanned cities and genres. Though it kind of reads like the script for a VH1 Storytellers episode, if you're looking to relive some of the early 90s, this is a good start. 

Record Journey Vol. 1

 

Record Journey Vol. 1 by Ryoichiro Kezuka (trans. Jan Mitsuko Cash), 256 pages.

This manga is a collection of short comics about the power of music. In one a girl learns more about her late grandfather from a strange record found in his things; in another young people run a pirate radio station to avoid censorship from an oppressive regime. There are many stories from different decades, but all of them feel thematically linked and cohesive.

I intercepted this book on the way to our new shelf, and I really enjoyed it! It has a very gentle, relaxing tone. I liked the characters and relationships, and thought this was a really nice, low stakes anthology. 

The Secret Public

 

The Secret Public: How Music Moved Queer Culture From the Margins to the Mainstream by Jon Savage, 784 pages.

This hefty book does pretty much what it says on the cover, tracing the intersection of queer history with music and pop culture. More specifically, from 1955 to 1979. I found this book a little lacking in focus, although supposedly about music, it also spent quite a bit of time on Hollywood and Andy Warhol. I'm also not entirely sure why the author decided to stop in 1979 after the fall of disco, when I think the 1980s might be one of the more interesting decades for this topic. 

That being said, it was still very informative, and I do feel like I learned a lot. This is indisputably a slow book, but everything in it is also thoroughly researched. I think I would recommend this more to people interested in the pop culture of the 1950s-1970s than anyone else. 

Transported

 Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams by Elizabeth Margulis, 240 pgs. © 2026

I saw the author speak at Left Bank two months ago and was really interested to read this. I've enjoyed reading other works about the latest scientific discoveries of music research. This one didn't quite hit the mark for me. Margulis is the director of the Music Cognition lab at Princeton so she's definitely in her wheelhouse, but a lot of this book reads like an extended version of a grad student's final paper. She relies on a lot of pop culture reference to illustrate her points about some of the latest research, probably to make it easier to understand for the layperson. And while connecting and quantifying imagination with music and daydreams is really interesting, it seems like a field that's still in it's infancy. That is to say maybe this book should've been written when there were more conclusive findings that actually pointed to answers. Still, there are some interesting takeaways, like how people in a group can hear a new piece of music and imagines similar themes and images--or how music can call forth autobiographical memories more readily in dementia patients. It's an interesting field, I'm sure there will be more to learn as research continues. 

A Chance to Harmonize

A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit South to Save America from the Great Depression--One Song at a Time, by Sheryl Kaskowitz, 272 pgs. © 2024

This was an fascinating read. As part of FDR's New Deal, a special agency is created to help bring the arts to resettlement towns, which are towns and encampments meant to transition destitute farmers and migrants during the great depression into planned communities. This was a huge agency that's main goal was to boost morale of Americans through the arts, specifically music--the music unit within the Resettlement Agency was even led by Charles Seeger, father of banjo folk-hero Pete Seeger. The book focuses on two women who were a boon to the success of the program, doing the most work and receiving the least amount of credit. The women learn to use the latest in recording technology and travel to the different resettlement towns, recording the folk songs and music of the community, bringing joy and optimism during a very bleak period in American history--the 1930s music program  is credited with the renewed interest in folk music that took place in the 1950s.

POPS

 Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong y Terry Teachout, 496 pgs. ©2010

Birth of an American legend. I picked this book in part because I, like many others, wrongly believed Armstrong's birth to fall on the 4th of July--even Louis himself believed this was his birthday. But he was actually born on August 4th. Teachout does a great job dispelling some of the other myths that arose during Armstrong's meteoric rise to fame during the birth of the Jazz age (he also was not the first person to invent scatting). For many players and aficionados alike, he's largely credited with solidifying the genre in the public imagination and making it synonymous with baseball and apple pie and Teachout shows how close the country came to missing out entirely on Armstrong's work. Born in poverty in New Orleans, he was picked-up and thrown in jail as a youngster for firing a gun in the street. From there, he was sent to a orphanage where a teacher made him play cornet. He cut his teeth learning the ins and outs of blues and rags, playing in brothels and gentlemen clubs and became so in demand that he went north on the riverboats to play with small combos, eventually making his way to Chicago to play with his trumpeter hero, King Oliver. Teachout documents the recording sessions and other musicians that he spent time with, detailing his strained relationship with his white manager Joe Glaser, who may have been funneling some of his money to the mob. Armstrong survives the Great Depression to see younger players helm the birth of the Swing and Bebop eras, in which he had little respect. In fact, many younger black players accused Armstrong of being an Uncle Tom and playing only to white audiences. But the real truth is that Armstrong was a musician at heart--he didn't care who heard him, as long as he could play music. His style was revolutionary and his technical feats laid the groundworks for jazz legends to come. 

Boys in the Trees

 

Boys in the Trees by Carly Simon (2015) 376 pages

A deep dive into the life of Carly Simon reveals a non-idyllic life for a girl who felt that something was wrong with her because her father didn't like her, a girl who constantly compared herself to her beautiful older sisters. She indicates that she was sexually abused by a neighbor during the summers when her family would stay at their second home in Connecticut. She began to stutter, and felt ridiculed at school, but her mother suggested that she try to sing rather than say what she wanted to convey.

The Simon family also spent a few weeks per year on Martha's Vinyard, which is where Simon first met James Taylor when they were still young

The Simon family dynamics became quite strange when their mother moved a young man into their home, a college football player half her age who was intended to be a role model for Simon's younger brother Peter, but who apparently became their mother's lover. Simon wonders why her father didn't send the guy packing, comparing this issue to her own, when she and James Taylor were married and their relationship was stalled (or worse).

This memoir is filled with names; so many famous people get to know each other when recording with each other or opening shows for each other. It's a compelling read, and shows that in spite of Simon's early advantages regarding her family's resources, that doesn't mean that she was always in a place where she could enjoy storybook outcomes.

The Rolling Stones

 The Rolling Stones: The Biography, by Bob Spitz, 704 pgs. © 2026

It's an old question--Beatles or Stones? Not that anyone probably cares anymore, both groups have certainly aged out of creating anything new with any cultural significance. But Spitz's book makes a compelling case for the Stones as the greatest rock band in the world. At first, the band gave themselves that title but soon it started to stick and followed them wherever they went. This is a mighty tome filled with basically everything that happened to the group from their auspicious start to playing a sold-out in St. Louis in 2021 (I was there!), just after they lost drummer Charlie Watts to cancer. If nothing else, the Stones might just be the greatest band in the world because--unlike their contemporaries and sometimes nemeses, the Beatles--the Stones stuck together through it all--drugs, infidelity, bad shows, lost band members, more drugs, new band members, bad reviews, even more drugs, etc. It's insane the number of times Keith and Mick stood in front of a judge and faced the prospect of doing serious hard time for drug possession--and somehow got lucky each time and managed to sidestep prison in order to keep rockin'. While I appreciated Spitz's researched approach, he's clearly a superfan and there's little deep reflection here about many of the Stones' must challenging days. Sometimes it almost reads like a laundry list, with lots of events happening in quick succession--there's only one chapter devoted to the mysterious death of Brian Jones, for example. And only one covering the disaster at Altamont. And there's no mention of Chuck Berry decking Keith Richards during the filming of concert documentary Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll. Still, this is a fantastic read for anyone interested in the overall life and times of one of the most iconic rock bands in human history. Recommended for adults. 

LET'S TALK ABOUT LOVE

 Let's Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson. 176 pgs. © 2007

This is quite a little brilliant book. The 33 1/3 series are short tomes on popular music by a variety of authors and each one is unique. One could be a straightforward album review and the next could be a memoir on the author's relationship to the music. This one falls under criticism but it's not criticizing Celine Dion per se--the author is critically evaluating their own critical evaluations--meta, right? 

Wilson uses Dion's award winning yet polarizing album to dive into a larger philosophical discussion about taste and makes some unique points while observing the artist through multiple lenses. What is taste? How do we come by it? Is it the amalgamation of imagination and understanding of an object, as Immanuel Kant suggests? Or is taste a marker of social class in society that we use to exclude others and rise in social ranks? How can an artist who is so reviled and made fun of also be so enduring and loved the world over? The prose is witty in a way that only good critics can achieve but gets the reader thinking about their own perspectives on the things they like and dislike. In the context of Dion, Wilson doesn't let anyone off the hook--not even himself.  He criticizes his own tastes while still getting in good punches on Celine, but by the end he’s found some common ground with her.  The book hits on larger conversations about art that aren’t really talked about enough—we can always argue over what makes good art/bad art, but we rarely stop to ask ourselves, why? This is a great entry text into that process and lends itself to multiple conversations. 

Sorcery and Small Magics

 Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy, 416 pages.

Despite his father's aspirations, Leovander Loveage is a writer of only small magics, minor charms to cause fireworks or change people's hair color. Any time he has tried to work great magic it's backfired spectacularly, so he has sworn it off for good. A conviction that is shaken when a magical mix-up involving forbidden magic leaves him compelled to follow the orders of longtime rival and perpetual stick-in-the-mud Sebastian Grimm. As the spells magic tightens the two grow increasingly desperate to break the spell, even as their forced cooperation seems to be irrevocably changing something between them.

This book grabbed me completely right from the start. The magic system, which relies on one person to write magic and someone with different capabilities to do the actual casting, leads to some fascinating character possibilities and world building ideas. I also found Leo to be a really compelling character, expertly balancing humorous deflections with genuine emotional feeling. The adventure is fun, while giving enough of substance to chew on to be really satisfying. I'm only sad that there is no release date for a sequel yet. I'm really looking forward to discussing this one with Orcs & Aliens on Monday!

Do Not Sell at Any Price

Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78 rpm Records by Amanda Petrusich, © 2014, 288 pgs.

This was a fun read for the Rn'B book group. Petrusich is a freelance music writer working on a story about the rise in vinyl sales (at the time in 2014 they were trending up; in 2025 they reached a billion in sales) when she's tipped off to a sub-sub genre of record collector--the 78 collector. For the unvitiated, 78s were the original records, made of shellac, very heavy and very fragile--if you dropped it on the floor it would shatter like a plate. These records spin at 78 revolutions-per-minute (or rpm's) and were typically played on the only players available at the time, the victrola. Millions of 78s were sold in the 20s and 30s before the techonolgy improved and turned to the vinyl records we know today. When that happened, 78s fell by the wayside, collecting dust in basements, attics and landfills. But in the 60s and 70s, a rag-tag group fell in love with them, particularly the 78s that were recorded by some of the earliest blues players. In fact, many of the recordings we have today of these musicians were sourced directly from the collections of 78 enthusiasts. Blues artists like Ma Rainey, Charlie Patton and Skip James would be lost to time. The author takes a deep dive into the materials, catching the 78-collector bug and begins trying to find her own rare blues records. 

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene that Transformed Rock by Jonathan Gould, 512 pgs. © 2025

Is it art? Is it music? For the Talking Heads it's probably both. This is a great book for music lovers. Probably the definitive book for the band but also a nice dive into the late 70's New York art scene and how influential it was for musicians trying to escape the old ways of traditional rock and roll, which was starting to become so bland that it was sometimes referred to as 'conservative' rock and roll. I live for this kind of nonfiction--it's well written organized, packed with great research. You come away with a greater understanding of how tight-knit the NY art community was and how this band come out of nowhere to carve their own unique niche in the new wave landscape. Gould did very well in this endeavor, even without interviewing anyone in the group today. Gave me a greater appreciate of Stop Making Sense, one of the greatest live concert docs of all time. 

YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY

 You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles after the Breakup, by Peter Doggett, 2012, 386 pgs

Fab four? More like drab four. If you're a fan, this book is sure to take the group down a notch or two on your "greatest bands ever" list. Very in-depth and well-researched, Doggett's focus here is how The Beatles became less of a band and more of a corporate entity--one that they were not really ready to handle, seeing how they had little experience in business to begin with. After Sgt. Peppers, the group's solidarity is starting to fray, mostly due to creative differences, but also due to the fact that three members (minus McCartney) are doing copious amounts of drugs. Lennon seems to lose a sense of self that his best friend Paul cannot fill the void for. As a result, Lennon finds creativity and meaning in his relationship with avant-garde artist Yoko Ono. Towards the official end, the group gets a new manager that McCartney does not want. Egos get petty, insults get personal (and published in tabloids). Subsidiaries of Apple Corps are created, shell companies to help them ease the tax burden and earn more on royalties than they have before. Eventually, the friendship is in such disarray that everyone essentially goes their own way, trying to create solo music and rebuild a singular identity separate from The Beatles--which proves extremely difficult. Their entire lives, the four men are bombarded with questions about reunions. This book also helps to dispel some of the 'John as saint' myths after he was murdered outside the Dakota building where he and Ono had been living. Harrison sort of grew to despise the group, even denying the possibility for new material to be released (until he needed money from the Taxman, of course). I've often thought that they if the would have compromised in 1969--they could have stayed as The Beatles, but just release 4 solo albums all together in one package--sort of like OutKast did with Speakerboxx/The Love Below. It's fun to imagine, but it was not to be. They were the biggest band in the history of pop music, even to this day, but they still could not escape the machinations of money, lawyers and ultimately, themselves. 

Mood Machine

 

Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by Liz Pelly (2025), 236 pgs. 

In today's age of technology, much of the world's music is available to stream anytime--with just a subscription and a click. Is this system actually working for music discovery though? Is it fair to musicians? Is it ethical? Liz Pelly, music journalist and commentator, tackles these questions and more in this deep dive into Spotify, the Swedish streaming giant. Pelly uses interview accounts from artists, music industry bigwigs, and Spotify employees alike to chronicle the changes the platform has made to music industry practices in the face of a constantly transforming system. 

This book is very dense, each page jam-packed with good information--often from interviewed sources. As a Spotify user since 2015, I was really surprised to see how well my own experiences with the platform fit into the narrative Pelly laid out. I got to see the story behind why different songs and different playlists have popped up in my recommendations over the years. This book very persuasively explains why Spotify is set up the way it is and why its algorithm works the way that it does. 

The River Has Roots

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, 144 pages

Esther and Ysabel live in a small village near the edge of Faerie where they tend to the magic willows that border the river, singing to them and thanking them for their magical blessings. However, when Esther spurns a powerful suitor for her lover in Faerie, the suitor doesn't take kindly to her rejection, throwing Esther, Ysabel, and their family's livelihood into danger.

This was a short and lovely fairy tale, one that somehow seems both brand new and well-worn. El-Mohtar's language and the beautiful woodcut art in the book work to create a book that can be treasured. Highly recommend this book!

Dreams

 Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac by Mark Blake, 432 pgs. © 2024

It took me a bit of time to get used to the structure of this book--it's not written as a narrative history of the band but more as episodes and vignettes of the band members and the songwriting that came about--of course, filled with anecdotes about the absolute dysfunction of the group as a whole. Really, there were two Fleetwood Macs--in the mid 60's they were doing what everyone in Britain was doing at the time, chasing the American blues sound. That was before their guitarists left the band and were ultimately and, pretty much on a whim, replaced with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, two LA-based songwriters who were strapped for cash and looking to make it musically. Along with Christie McVie, there were now three official songwriters in the group. The band became so well known for their romantic entanglements with each other (and the copious amounts of cocaine they ingested) it's a miracle they were able to maintain the group the way they have over the decades. At a certain point, it's obvious that the band members are really just enamored of the money and lifestyle they've been able to achieve and each subsequent album and tour was really a call-to-arms for making cash, as opposed to creating something of artistic value. Be that as it may, the band were able to consistently recreate pop hits well into the late 80s. It was interesting to learn about Stevie Nicks--such a polarizing figure. I don't know how you write songs for a living when you can't play any instruments. But her voice was and is so unique--it's one of the voices you recognize immediately when you hear it. Her kitschy mysticism routine was inspried by both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Throw in Buckingham's need to push the musical envelope and you have had something different entirely from anything else on the radio in 1977.