a list, part 6: ekko's favorite music books, straight outta berkeley place

previously:
part 1: my u2 reading list
part 2: best rock bios (says jukebox graduate)
part 3: music-related books that heather likes
part 4: dr. bob k's list focuses on the beatles
part 5: extrawack! book picks

the sixth installment of the super-awesome book list comes courtesy of ekko from berkeley place. below are his own (quite diverse) picks in his own words. ekko describes his list as "my favorite books about music, in no particular order."

1. LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records' Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal. By Randall Sullivan.

As is evident from the lengthy title, this book explores the most important assassinations in modern music history. Not the death of John Lennon but the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. There’s no doubt that Mark David Chapman deprived the world of a musical genius and political revolutionary who would likely have continued what he was doing. But at the time of his death, Pac was already debating leaving rap and going on to something else. And B.I.G. was still at the beginning of his role as the East Coast’s dominant superstar. In addition, their deaths changed not only the way hip hop artists did business but the way gangs and gang culture evolved. That’s why I say that their deaths are the most influential on the modern industry.

The book doesn’t answer as many questions as it raises, but it provides novel theories and documents inside information that wasn’t printed in the L.A. Times. It explores how tight the two giants really were, and how Death Row Records' notorious C.E.O. Suge Knight figured into the plot. Sullivan is able to make the complex and labyrinthine relationships between the players both understandable and easy to follow. His news-reporting writing style is crisp and taut—and he even provides a neat timeline. Ultimately, he presents and supports a very believable hypothesis: That the police were directly involved in Tupac’s murder.

In fact, the only real problem is that the book offers no resolution. Of course, it can’t. Because there’s been none.


2. Conversations With the Dead: The Grateful Dead Interview Book. By David Gans.

It is what it says it is: Interviews with the Grateful Dead, who really were the first bloggers. Before there was this series of tubes we call the internet, the Dead expressed a “free music” philosophy, readily allowing taping and trading of their shows—which gave neither them, nor their record label, a dime. David Gans is arguably the world’s foremost Deadhead (he created and hosted the nationally syndicated "Grateful Dead Hour"), so when he has access to all the bandmembers, he really knows what to ask. He even sits down with the band’s crew, from recording engineers and sound men to roadies, who were responsible for music’s first wall of sound.

3. Can't Stop Won't Stop. By Jeff Chang.

The most definitive (encyclopedic) story of the hip hop culture that I’ve ever read, starting in Jamrock (Jamaica), moving through the BDB (Boogie Down Bronx), and ending with the music’s current, worldwide popularity. Along the way he covers the effect on the genre of unemployment, dance, block parties, guns, gangs, the movie The Warriors, the rise of suburbia, and, of course, commercialism. It’s chock full of quotes, stories, and commentary from all the major players and promoters, like Kurtis Blow, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D., Kool Herc (the father of rap), prominent B-Boys ... Everyone. I had to read this twice just to take it all in, and I’m due for another read-through.

Note: Chang doesn’t go into the shootings of Tupac and Biggie, so pick up the first book on this list while you’re ordering this one!

4. I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie. By Pamela Des Barres

Yeah, it’s tabloid fodder for sure. The ex-wife of a member of Power Station and a former member of an all-girl group formed by Frank Zappa tells all about her flings and adventures living, touring, and/or sleeping with the likes of Mick Jagger, Plant and Page, Don Johnson, Keith Moon, Ray Davies, Gram Parsons, Waylon Jennings, and Jim Morrison, and others. But it’s much better written than you’d expect, and it’s hilariously funny and kinky. Caveat: I understand the new edition has a forward by Dave Navarro and some new material. I haven’t read that version.

5. E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX

Last but not least, Earl Simmons offers a fascinating view on what it was like to get big on the Yonkers mixtape circuit in the late ‘90s. Yeah, some of it (most) is over-the-top bragging and his perspective of even truthful events obviously creates a bias in the retelling, but who cares? We forget that DMX’s first 4 albums went straight to number one and paved the way for the grittier sound on mainstream radio. Without him, would there have been a Mystikal or a Lil’ Jon? I dunno. Plus, those albums stand up over time as some of the best "thug life" records ever mad. He’s not like he used to be, for sure, but this book chronicles only how he became great—not what he did with that greatness. In other words, it ends before he winds up on VH1.

Still, this book is only for the true fans of the music of that era. It’s not about how to get a record contract and it doesn’t dish on his fame. It’s about the rise, and it spends a lot of time talking about fights, pitbulls, and trying to move product on corners. Consequently, it’s as rough and graphic as his early records (before he wrote that song for his Granny and completely fell off.)


visit ekko at berkeley place.


note to all peeps: if you have an opinion about this list, or you have a music book list of your own that you would like to submit, please do tell ...