Steven Pilling mentioned it might be a good idea to run music book recommendations on Sombrero Fallout. On Friends of Sombrero Fallout, I asked for contributions and these were the responses. I trust the FOSF community implicitly, so these come “sight unseen” in many cases, but strongly endorsed:
Clothes, clothes, clothes. Music, music, music. Boys, boys, boys, Viv Albertine
To Throw Away Unopened, Viv Albertine
Bass Culture, Lloyd Bradley
One Two Three Four, Craig Brown
Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, Carrie Brownstein
I Wanna Be Yours, John Cooper Clarke
Head On, Julian Cope
Grant and I, Robert Forster
Girl In A Band, Kim Gordon
Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, Peter Guralnick
Bad Vibes, Luke Haines
The Big Midweek, Steve Hanley and Olivia Piekarski
Young Hearts Run Free, Dave Haslam
Seeing Sideways, Kristin Hersh
Rat Girl, Kristin Hersh
Fargo Rock City, Chuck Klosterman
Sing Backwards and Weep, Mark Lanegan
Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, Tim Lawrence
Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus
Inside Out, Nick Mason
Please Kill Me, Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain
Walls Come Tumbling Down, Daniel Rachel
Rip It Up, Simon Reynolds
Powder, Kevin Sampson
England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage
The Fallen, Dave Simpson
Pig City, Andrew Stafford
Yeah yeah yeah, Bob Stanley
The Rise, The Fall and The Rise, Brix Smith Start
My Rock’n’Roll Friend, Tracey Thorne
Black Postcards, Dean Wareham
No Future, Matthew Worley
There are many on there I haven’t read, so looking forward to staying home and reading now Melbourne’s finally going to be moving out of lockdown.
So I also thought it would be a good idea to activate a theme I’ve had bubbling in the background for a while and do songs about books. The tracks are probably a bit (though not entirely) on the earnest, occasionally slightly twee side, being about nerdy old books and all. But what’s wrong with that, if you’re in the mood? Absolutely nothing.
Tracklist:
The book I read, Talking Heads
Library, Julia Brown
Young adult friction, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
Tom and the library, Lonely Tourist
Books from boxes, Maximo Park
We used to wait, Arcade Fire
Reading in bed, Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton
All u writers, !!!
I’m writing a novel, Father John Misty
Wrapped up in books, Belle and Sebastian
Books written for girls, Camera Obscura
Library pictures, The Arctic Monkeys
We could send letters, Aztec Camera