Joe Harvard Book Press - Best of New Orleans

OPENING ACT By Alex Rawls 06 22 04

Too often, musician biographies are little more than glorified, sober-minded gossip -- entertaining as hell, but no help for getting closer to the music. Continuum Books' 33 1/3 series is more effective, with writers examining single albums in small, attractive books, the longest approaching 150 pages. The charm of the series has been how the best of them are meditations not just on the album but also on some larger issue. Andrew Hultkrans looks at Love's Forever Changes discussing apocalyptic visions of California, while Elisabeth Vincentelli uses ABBA Gold to raise questions about greatest-hits albums. She wonders why critics appraise them as artistically a level below albums (theoretically) conceived as a whole. In the process, she raises the question of what an album really is.

Not all are that ambitious. Chris Ott's book on Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures is little more than the band's recording and performing history, though since the band's history has become lost in its legend, his book serves a purpose. John Cavanaugh's take on Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn similarly does little beyond give readers some insight into the band and Swinging London, suggesting a psychedelic undercurrent often overlooked. Then again, Joe Harvard plays detective in Velvet Underground and Nico, investigating the Velvet Underground's legend, debunking myths and presenting a clearer picture of the record as a musical object.

All the books are highly readable, and they only occasionally drown in jargon. More often, the writing moves swiftly, as if a smart person is telling you interesting stuff about albums you like. A staple of the series is a track-by-track account of the album, examining the creation or performance of the songs, sometimes simply recounting who did what and how, while adopting more subjective, critical approaches in other cases. Michaelangelo Matos' Sign o' the Times contrasts versions of the songs that appeared on Prince's classic album, noticing changes and the effects of his artistic decisions. The notable exception is the book on the Smiths' Meat Is Murder by the Pernice Brothers' Joe Pernice. In the most radical move in the series, Pernice wrote a novella set in high school to illustrate what he heard in the album.

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