Short takes: Music

Reviewed by GRAHAM REID

Luke Crampton and Dafyyd Rees: Rock and Pop: Year By Year

The title and price tell you this is a glossy, hardcover, coffee table tome. It's one to flick through, but also slightly useful for pub-quiz swatting (which artist had the first commercially available CD? Billy Joel's 52nd Street in'78, apparently) and offers some arresting moments (Janet Jackson in '90 looks like Michael does now, aside from the nose, of course). Taking a month-by-month approach to music releases, concerts, scandals and relevant asides, this is trivia and turning points given equal space in gloriously illustrated pages, starting on January 1950 when Sam Phillips opens his first studio in Memphis with the motto "We record anything, anywhere, anytime". (The philosophy seemed to work, he later got Howlin' Wolf, BB King, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison). It ends with the death of Joe Strummer in December 2002. A loving, if superficial, 600 pages.

Publisher: Penguin

Price: $99.95

Anthony Bozza: Whatever You Say I Am: The Life And Times Of Eminem

Rolling Stone writer Bozza — who has interviewed and accompanied Eminem often — here offers an analysis of his subject, rather than a conventional biography. The pieces all fall into place, however, as he astutely teases out the faces and personae here (Marshall Mathers, Slim Shady and Eminem) and also places the artist in the context of reality television, escapist movies such as The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and the dominance of women in pop in the years immediately before his breakthrough. A few extravagant claims are made ("America is angry, poor, out of work, misunderstood and gunning for revenge ... America had to understand Eminem in 2002, America had become Slim Shady") but throughout this is an insightful and thought-provoking study of one who is a cypher, symbol, slightly disturbed hip-hop icon, canny businessman and keenly self-aware artist.

Publisher: Bantam

Price: $59.95

Edited by John Northland: Lester Bangs: Mainline, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste

Bangs' speed-fuelled rants and conversational record reviews — and the exorcising of personal demons under the guise of writing about rock music — saw him elevated into the pantheon of rock's greatest critics, helped no doubt by his early demise in '82. Some of his writing was superb, a lot was
unfocused, and a little was downright dire. The best was compiled in Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung, but what is in this companion volume — with a few notable exceptions, such as his demolition of the solo Beatles in'75, and his lengthy travel piece in Jamaica — leans towards the other. At his best, he skewers fearlessly and without mercy, delivers withering asides (the difference between style and fashion when writing about former New York Doll David Johansen) and when he's wrongheaded, at least he is bellicose and uncompromising. But, equally, some of this was therapy in print for the Bangs. The final line to a Wire review inadvertently sums it up: "Rock critics need media attention too."

Publisher: Serpent's Tale

Price: $34.95

Jay S. Jacobs: Wild Years: The Music and Myth Of Tom Waits

The myths and origins of this most innovative of musicians and sonic visionaries are explored in this excellent biography, which also places him in historical context (the Beats and booze in his early days, Captain Beefheart and Brecht later). Waits' music and recording methods are intelligently
interpreted and the author's impressive research is evident in quotes which come from radio shows, concerts, speaking engagements and interviews. Thorough, and thoroughly readable. Comes up to Waits '99 album Mule Variations.

Publisher: ECW

Price: $49.95