Last CD you bought/ Book you read

[MonkeyMod]

I just finished reading "Digging The Vein" by Terry O'Neill (Wrecking Ball Press). One of the best accounts of drug addition I've come across. Written in a way Bukowski admirers would probably appreciate. Highly recommend it.

And been listening to Percy Sledge, Camera Obscura, The Monks and Pete Molinari - amongst other things.

 

[Buzzcat]

Latest CD. Um, well, I don't buy many cds anymore. That is if what I want on cd is on vinyl. So, to answer the question, my most recent vinyl purchace was Nine Lives by Steve Winwood. It's really, really good. Shit, I didn't even know he was still making music. Let alone music that harkens back to his days in Traffic. Very groovy album. Plus, it's one of the best mastered vinyl albums of the year so far, next to Van Morrison's latest, Keep It Simple. And yes, Van is still making great music too.

Chicagoburgers mentioned The Descendents. Hell yeah!! I was just listening to them a couple days ago. Here... in my Van!!!

Book I read. Again, shit. I have 8 books going all at once all the time. I've recent finished reading Reeling In The Years. A bio about Steely Dan. Came out in '94 or '95. Very interesting read. Neat stories about how their albums were make in their meticulousness in the studio. And the disasters in the studio, too.

Also just finished recently,

Dawkin's, The God Delusion.
The World Without Us, can't remember the author.

At the moment, I'm working my way through:

-The Story Of Psychology by Morton Hunt
-Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism by Daniel Pinchbeck
-4 Way Street - The CSNY Reader
-Good Blonde & Others and The Subterraneans by Kerouac (fuckin' sue me)
-Pleasures Of The Damned by Hank
-The Outlaw Bible Of American Poetry
and others I'm spacing off...

 

[snapsvisor]

It was a vinyl. Los Campesinos! - "Hold on Now, Youngster..."
And Buk's "Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed a Bit", can't wait to start on both of em.

 

[CarversDog]

Recent CD purchase: had to re-buy Bob Dylan's magnificent, reflective soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as backgrounder for a book review I'm writing for Pop Matters. Still one of the best damn soundtracks ever

 

[hoochmonkey9]

reading...

excellent so far.

 

[rjwink666]

I'm looking to read a few more muso books. On my shortlist is the Mark E Smith bio and Michael Azerrad's book 'Our band could be your life'. How does the book compare with 'Touching from a Distance' hooch?

 

[mjp]

'Our band could be your life'

Read that last year. Pretty good as oral histories go, but only when you're interested in, or have some first hand knowledge of, the band they are talking about.

For me the best chapters were on Hüsker Dü and the Replacements. The Black Flag and Minutemen chapters were also cool, but some of the later stuff really dragged, but that's to be expected as I wasn't really interested in those bands.

One thing they touch on, but don't go too deeply into, is the fact that touring in those days was a very tough proposition, and you were basically hacking new paths through a forest every time you went out. Maybe someday someone will write that book. It would be an interesting read.

 

[rjwink666]

Read that last year. Pretty good as oral histories go, but
One thing they touch on, but don't go too deeply into, is the fact that touring in those days was a very tough proposition, and you were basically hacking new paths through a forest every time you went out. Maybe someday someone will write that book. It would be an interesting read.

You've further wet my appetite MJP. I got a little taster initially from Simon Reynold's fine post punk book 'Rip it up and start again'

For a really great account of the hardships of touring read Henry Rollin's collection of diary entries from when Black Flag were on the road 'Get in the Van'. It's absolutely brilliant

 

[mjp]

Interesting time. I was sort of washing my hands of punk as that second wave came in. I read Get In the Van, but I'm not a big Rollins fan in general. He always kind of embodied the idiot-ing of punk to me - all those skinhead speed thrash dinks screaming about nothing. About how much society is oppressing them. Kind of funny, really, considering that so very few of them came from anything other than privilege and ease. Most of their oppression was self-inflicted.

But I digress.

As usual.

 

[hoochmonkey9]

I was always told I was missing out for not liking Black Flag and Rollins in particular. I wasn't being real.
apparently, middle class suburban oppression is the hardest to overcome.

 

[hank solo]

middle class suburban oppression is the hardest to overcome.

abso-fricken-lutely :rolleyes:

 

[jmoshea]

halfway through this right now...

It's good. The author is a bit excessive in his use of "big" words. But his analysis of Kafka's psychological make up is extremely interesting...at least to me.

 

[hoochmonkey9]

How does the book compare with 'Touching from a Distance' hooch?

rich, haven't read that one yet.
written by his wife? I think?
I'll probably get ti it someday.

I also want to read the Mark E. Smith book.

 

[Digney in Burnaby]

Read that last year. Pretty good as oral histories go, but only when you're interested in, or have some first hand knowledge of, the band they are talking about.

For me the best chapters were on Hüsker Dü and the Replacements. The Black Flag and Minutemen chapters were also cool, but some of the later stuff really dragged, but that's to be expected as I wasn't really interested in those bands.

One thing they touch on, but don't go too deeply into, is the fact that touring in those days was a very tough proposition, and you were basically hacking new paths through a forest every time you went out. Maybe someday someone will write that book. It would be an interesting read.

The book, I, Shithead, by Joe Keithley does go into some of the punk tour stories. Been awhile since I read it but I seem to remember the band in a van in Montana, or someplace, during a blizzard, the radio saying everyone should be off the roads for their own safety and DOA plowed through.
bp

 

[Kingcargo.jb]

I just finished The Metamorphosos and Other Stories by Kafka.

Currently working on:

Junky - Burroughs
The Road to Los Angeles - Fante
Journey to the End of the Night - Celine

Not completly taken by Junky, but not a horrible read.

I wasn't really digging Road to LA, but it sucked me in when I wasn't looking. Pretty good so far.

The Celine is unlike anything I've ever read before! I mean that in a good way.

 

[jmoshea]

The Celine is unlike anything I've ever read before! I mean that in a good way.

Hell yeah!

 

[Black Swan]

The last cd I bought is "From Fresh Water" Stan Rogers
It'is beautiful. The house of orange is my favorite so far.

 

[HenryChinaski]

BOOK: SNUFF BY CHUCK PALAHNIUK

record: HE HAS LEFT US ALONE BUT SHAFTS OF LIGHT SOMETIMES GRACE THE CORNER OF OUR ROOMS BY A SILVER MT. ZION. <- great!

 

[justine]

time to revive this thread. what i've read the last 2.5 months:

- Women by Bukowski. pretty funny, admittedly pretty shocking in places.

- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. heartbreaking. seriously. i felt pretty stunned at the end. i just bought a first edition of The Square Root of Wonderful which i hadn't heard of before.

- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. pretty good. didn't love the writing style so much, but a great story. i usually avoid family sagas, but this kept me interested.

- a bunch of raymond carver stuff. jordan has been building up my carver collection (i've got cathedral, where i'm calling from, what we talk about when we talk about love, in first editions. if anyone knows where i can get a first of 'will you please be quiet, please?' for under $75 please let me know).

- a bunch of alice munro short stories, mostly from The Love of a Good Woman. she's got a bit of dark side to her writing that i quite like.

- The Reasons I Won't Be Coming by Eliot Pearlman. australian writer. not loving his short fiction, but highly recommend his novel 7 Types of Ambiguity.

- Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. reminds me a lot of f. scott fitzgerald. captures the era really well, but very sad and tragic stuff.

- Tooth and Claw and Descent of Man by T.C. Boyle. really like this guy's short stories - very inventive and unexpected. also weirdly funny.


- Skels by Maggie Dubris. If you like Joe Connelly (Bringing Out The Dead) you'll like this. I found it slightly disappointing in terms of storyline/plot, but love her style and language. Weep Not, My Wanton is superior.

- Eleanor Rigby; All Families Are Psychotic; Hey Nostradamus!, all by Douglas Coupland. really like this guy's stuff. he's been described as shallow and too interested in hip pop culture, but mostly his stories are about loneliness. very fast, easy reads. i can rip through one in a couple of days.

okay, that's all i can remember.

 

[slimedog]

Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a great, great book. She's probably my favorite female writer, after Danielle Steele, of course. Buk liked her and Women is his best novel, you must of read that before.

I'm reading short stories by Heinrich Boll who I like for some reason and just read a short story thing by Tennesee Williams which was great-Eight Possesed Ladies or somesuch, reread Junky by Burroughs, very good-why couldn't he write normal because when he did-I read Steinbecks, Winter of my Disco Tent-which was okay, though I really like him. I got some 500 page book about the Clash to read next.

READING IS SUBVERSIVE-Shut up and eat your hamburger and turn on your tv.

 

[Hosh]

BOOK: Vintage Didion
Essays by Joan Didion--she's top drawer.

CD: King Hokum - CW Stoneking

Any Didion fans?
Anyone know/like this new kid Stoneking?

 

[Purple Stickpin]

CD: Beatles Anthology 3 The version of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," a song I really never liked, is 1,000x better than the version on the White Album.

Book: For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed... by one Hosho McCreesh. Great stuff, as usual. It may be a chapbook, but the words are heavy enough to make it feel like a book.

 

[Hosh]

Book: For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed... by one Hosho McCreesh. Great stuff, as usual. It may be a chapbook, but the words are heavy enough to make it feel like a book.

<slips PS a fin...>

Thanks man, appreciate it!

 

[CRBSMILE]

CD: Beatles Anthology 3 The version of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," a song I really never liked, is 1,000x better than the version on the White Album.

Book: For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed... by one Hosho McCreesh. Great stuff, as usual. It may be a chapbook, but the words are heavy enough to make it feel like a book.

Just a note on the Beatles; my sixteen year old Daugter has fallen in desperate love with The Boys! She saw 'Across The Universe' and has not stopped asking for Beatles stuff since! She took down all her other posters and has replaced everything with Beatles pictures! I have always made sure my kids had exposure to 'oldies'; classic rock, Motown, (oh GOD-even 80's stuff). Anything you can think of that dosn't fit the 'norm' for her age group. (she learned how the 'skat' in 4th grade). She sings stuff that I don't even know the words to. I love it! The music makes her HAPPY. Which is a hard thing to be, at 16. SMILEcrb.

 

[MeNoHary]

CD: Motorhead Bomber
Book: Hollywood, but have not started reading it yet.

 

[Buk94]

Watership Down by Richard Adams? Anybody? I'm in the middle of it.

 

[Gerard K H Love]

Garrison Keillor a great storyteller from Minnesota and is famous for his radio program A Prairie Home Companion writes and tells very down home midwestern stories. I am reading Leaving Home a nice collection of short stories about Lake Wobegon a fictitous place in Minnesota.
It's as clean and middle America as mayonnaise. I only lived in North Dakota for 4 years but his stories take me back to a comfortable place I never appreciated when I was there.
Most of the short stories in this book were published in The New Yorker magazine.

 

[marina del rey]

Just finished reading And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

Pretty interesting book. It was written before either of them were well-known, and it was unpublished until this year.

It is based on the true story of the famous David Kammerer murder committed by Lucien Karr. Both were friends with Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg in NYC. It is written from two different alternating perspectives.

There was an agreement that it wouldn't be published until all involved parties were dead. Good reading if you're into the Beats.

 

[bukwyrm]

Last CD/Book joint release Doseone's The Pelt
Then I read South of the Pumphouse by Les Claypool
I am currently reading Pulp by Bukowski

 

[hoochmonkey9]

just finished Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey.

it's excellent, one of the best novels I've read lately. description here

after I finished it I went online to find out more about Harvey, and came across this bit from an interview he did with The Danforth Review in 2003:

My influences include: Richard Brautigan, Mickey Spillane, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Sherwood Anderson, the Brontes, Flannery O'Connor, Guy de Maupassant, Leonard Cohen, Charles Bukowski, Nikolai Gogol, Paul Bowles, Timothy Findley, JD Salinger... I read all sorts of authors in many different genres. They need only be the best at what they do.

my kinda guy. ;)