Sun Ra: Space is the Place

(def second the Wu-Tang Manual—great book. kinda short for an airline ride tho)

okay Space is the Place is not “good and garbage-y”—sorry.

Instead I recommend the “Sly and the Family Stone: Off the Record” book. Best tell-all EVER. Sadly out of print also...

I like the first three books quite a bit, but Lords of Chaos is really only tangentially about music.

X-Ray is pretty good as rock bios go.

tangentially about music is fine, perhaps preferred! i’m looking for dirt! and i haven’t read any of the books i list at the end there, they’re the ones I’m considering buying...

the Dr. John bio “Under a Hooddoo Moon” is marvelously filthy (stories about dumping aborted fetuses, stealing heroin, etc.)

Well there is a lot of dirt in Lords of Chaos definitely.

yikes! those stories must be from the period when he did the theme to Blossom...

I wish I could find a copy of Black Monk Time—it’s out of print

by the way, I just read The Other Hollywood—Legs McNeil’s oral history of porn... pretty entertaining

ben watt’s patient is very readable though not strictly about music (and possibly a painful read if you’ve known someone to be hospitalised recently)

I forget which one I read, but the Beach Boys books are THE sleaziest around. When you get to Charles Manson and Dennis dating Mike Love’s daughter or whatever, while Brian lies in bed....

totally, and their crazy dad too... and Mike Love is suck a putz. Heroes & Villains is great.

I bet that Anthony Kiedis biog is something.

Songs They Never Play On The Radio

“Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” is def. not of THE DIRT variety.

Nick Kent’s “The Dark Stuff” is fun/dark/has THE DIRT.

You are looking for Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With The Band. Since you mentioned Hit Men, you also might like Fred Goodman’s The Mansion on the Hill. More industry-dirt than band-dirt (though you get some of that too).

if you like disco and 70s history at all, i recommend Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. admittedly, it is a bit of a fan’s book (ie- if i hadn’t already known a lot of the songs the book mentions, i would have been lost)). but still really good, and out in paperback! like $12 or $13.

only very tangentally related but a good book is “From A to B and back again”, Andy Warhol’s sort of autobiog. Seems kind of thematically suitable for airports also.

Am sick of getting out books that claim to be biogs of musicians, but are predominantly literary critique type analysis of the subjects lyrics. Just read a Lou Reed one along those lines.

This isn’t about rock’n’roll, but it’s a great, easy read. Basically it’s just a collection of anecdotes of what people did during the glory days of acid house and rave, written in a wonderfully humorous way.

i spent a fantastic couple of delayed-flight hours in barcelona airport accompnied by RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN by simon reynolds and a few beers. it’s a *bit* sleazy in parts i guess.

you want twisted personal history read TRansformer the Lou Reed bio by Victor Bockris a heart-tugging tale of superhuman drug abuse and exquisitely assholic manipulative behavior. I still like a lot of lou’s music but if a quarter of this book is true — and people like John Cale who know Lou say more than that is — then he’s gotta be one of the nastiest pricks of all time.

“speeding or coking his brain pan shiny” haha lester you had no idea

classic decadence:

David Lee Roth—Crazy From The Heat

and speaking of the Beach Boys:

Timothy White—The Nearest Faraway Place

and if you dig all things southern:

Stanley Booth—Rhythm Oil

tangentially-related-to-music bio:

Nick Tosches—Dino

Up and Down With The Rolling Stones

oooh I second Crazy From the Heat. Total airport read.

Nick Tosches—Dio

If it’s sleaze you want Charles Mingus’s Beneath the Underdog is pretty unbeatable. The guy’s insane—can barely keep it in his pants.

Julian Cope’s autobiographies—Head On and another one I can’t remember the title of—have got plenty of acid-fuelled hilarity and band in-fighting.

Nick Tosches—Dino

Hellfire!!

The Bockris Reed-bio is certainly trash, but if I remember correctly, it’s also sloppy and, despite sordidness, dull (and there’s nothing as good as the PKM “okay, I’ll put a plate on my mouth and you can shit on the plate” story).