 by Steve McPherson
For a genre of writing that largely works in the vein of myth and legend, it seems appropriate that the origins of the famous quote, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” should be shrouded in mystery. In these very pages last week, Tom Hallett attributed it to Frank Zappa. Others hold that Martin Mull said it in the Village Voice circa 1983. According to Alan P. Scott and his website, the earliest completely verifiable citation comes from Elvis Costello in an interview from Musician magazine in October of 1983, a full five years after the release of Armed Forces.
 I
mention it because that album is, so far, Costello’s lone album to be
tackled by a writer in Continuum Publishing’s 33 1/3 Series, so
there aren’t going to be any easy answers to this debate provided by author
Franklin Bruno. If you haven’t seen them on your local bookstore shelves,
it’s probably because you haven’t been looking hard enough. In between
weighty tomes like The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD and Dylan’s
Lyrics: 1962-2001, these mini-odes to individual albums can get lost in
the shuffle. But if you look closer, you’ll find that, regardless of the
famous quote, this is some of the best music writing going on right now.
“It stemmed from a series I put together about five years ago, called
Continuum Contemporaries,” says series editor David Barker regarding the
origins of the line. “Those were short guides to contemporary novels (White
Teeth, American Psycho, Infinite Jest, Remains of the Day,
etc.), but they were aimed at the student market and were very rigid in their
structure. It seemed like it might be more fun to do a similar series about
individual albums, but to let the writers have more freedom to try different
approaches.”
Diversity is really the strength of the series as a whole, with writers like
Eliot Wilder tackling DJ
Shadow’s Endtroducing… by extensively interviewing the
artist himself, real name Josh Davis. Hugo Wilcken’s book on Bowie’s
Low hews closer to the age-old tradition of close and critical examination
of the album itself and the times in which it was recorded. Increasingly, it
seems author’s have been taking the novel (pun intended) approach of writing
fiction that either loosely or tightly orbits the album in question, the most
recent being John Niven’s Music from Big Pink, which begins with
the protagonist learning of Richard Manuel’s sucide in 1986 and his subsequent
revisitation of a long-gone period of his life. The fictional/personal approach
to albums in the series began, however, with two musicians’ books: Joe
Pernice of the Pernice Brothers’ Meat is Murder and Colin Meloy
of the Decemberists’ paean to the Replacements’ Let It Be.
 Asked
about their involvment, Barker replies, “I’d been a fan of Joe’s
for a while, and was pretty sure he had a good book in him [Pernice holds an
MFA in Creative Writing]. So I just e-mailed his manager to ask. And the same
thing with [regards to] Colin: I bought the Decemberists’ first EP and
immediately thought that he’d be a great writer for the series. I feel
very lucky that they both said yes.” Whereas Meloy’s book expressly
adresses its influence on the writer as a young musician in Montana, Pernice’s
book about the Smiths’ album sheds light through refraction; the album
hovers at the fringes of a story about a rash of high school suicides and unrequited
love. Flashes of lyrics or the incipient formation of a garage band playing
Smiths’ covers is all it takes to evoke the tone of the times, and Pernice
pretty much nails the appeal of the Smiths’ music to loners and outsiders:
too fey for the jocks and the punks, too mopey for the parents.
All told, the series comprises 27 titles as of now, with 15 more scheduled as
of right now, including books on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane
over the Sea and Guided by Voices’ Bee Thousand. Barker’s
own personal favorites have been “Warren Zanes’ book about Dusty
in Memphis, Douglas Wolk’s book about James Brown, Daphne Brooks’
book about Jeff Buckley and Erik Davis’ book about Led Zeppelin.”
As for whether the diversity of approaches was part of the series from its inception,
he replies, “Yes, absolutely. In a way it might have made more commercial
sense to make these books predictable, so that readers know what they’re
getting each time they choose to buy a new one. But there are so many various
ways you can write about music, and it just seemed like a great opportunity
to take advantage of that and maybe even push the boundaries a little. Not all
of the approaches work—two or three of the more ‘academic’
ones have just been too dry, but overall it’s worked out very well so
far.”
 Barker
himself hails from just west of London and grew up as “a teenage indie-kid”
in the 80s, eventually getting a Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle. After
temping at Penguin Books and getting a job at Continuum, he moved to New York
in 2001 and has been with Continuum (who publishes the 33 1/3 Series)
ever since. Displaying the diversity of musical interests that has no doubt
helped him evaluate such a broad range of titles, he’s currently listening
to “the Complete Motown Singles Vol 1 Box Set (or whatever it’s
called), and Voxtrot, a young band from Austin, Tex.” that plays indie
rock.
Music writing of the kind found in the 33 1/3 Series seems to belie that
old chestnut I opened with, but I thought I’d ask Barker what he thought
of it anyway. “I’ve never seen anybody dancing about architecture,
but if—when it’s done well—it can make you appreciate the
architecture more,” he replies, hinting at the goals of his own series,
“then this statement is correct.” ||
For more information on the 33 1/3 Series, visit David
Barker’s blog at 33third.blogspot.com.
|
