McSweeney's Books
San Francisco - (c)2002 - 146pp
Illustrated by Marcel Dzama
ISBN: 0-9719047-7-4
A collection of essays/reviews of pop music. Including:
Teenage Fanclub - Your Love Is The Place That I Come From
Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road
Nelly Furtado - I'm Like A Bird
Led Zeppelin - Heartbreaker
Rufus Wainwright - One Man Guy
Santana - Samba Pa Ti
Rod Stewart - Mama, You Been On My Mind
Bob Dylan - Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
The Beatles - Rain
Ani DiFranco - You Had Time
Aimee Mann - I've Had It
Paul Westerberg - Born For Me
Suicide - Frankie Teardrop
Teenage fanclub - Ain't That Enough
J. Geils Band - First I Look At The Purse
Ben Folds Five - Smoke
Badly Drawn Boy - A Minor Incident
The Bible - Glorybound
Van Morrison - Caravan
Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture - So I'll Run
Gregory Isaacs - Puff The Magic Dragon
Ian Dury - Reasons To Be Cheerful
Richard and Linda Thompson - Calvary Cross
Jackson Browne - Late For The Sky
Mark Mulcahy - Hey Self-Defeater
The Velvelettes - Needle In A Haystack
O.V. Wright - Let's Straighten It Out
Royksopp - Royksopp's Night Out
The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist
Soulwax - No Fun / Push It
Patti Smith - Pissing In A River
This collection is really more like a series of mini-essays with a song or songs providing the purpose behind the essay, rather than a series of song reviews. It's always interesting how Hornby gets from point "A" to point "B" in these collections, but few of them actually get me to want to listen to any particular song. Worth the read, but I'll admit that I'm glad to have read the library copy rather than buying my own.
+++++++++++
trade paperback version
Riverhead Books/Published by The Berkley Publishing Group
New York - (c)2003 - 207pp
ISBN: 1-57322-356-5
Includes all of the above plus:
"It's a Mann's Worlds"
"Alternative Earle"
"Sweet Misery"
"The Entertainers"
"Pop Quiz"
Discography
The above set of essays are not about any particular song, but albums or sets.
The gem found here is Hornby's description of the ever-present pop music as "aural smog." Again, I'm glad to have read these, but I'm not likely to wish I had the book on my shelf to read again or hand out to friends. (Actually, most of my friends already have a copy.)
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