The Last Book I Read

The 33 1/3 series of paperbacks are a bunch of short (about 100 pages) analyses of influential albums released through the rock era, often written by musicians who were among those influenced. I've been seeing these for years, often by the cash register in record stores, but only just recently picked up one to read-- surprised to see that there was an entire book devoted to my favorite Byrds album, despite its relative obscurity in relation to much of their other work. Rick Menck is the drummer for Velvet Crush, another favorite group, so I got hooked right away by his personal reminisce of how this record affected him, followed by some Byrds history and a cut by cut breakdown of the individual tracks on the album. Though I've been a Byrds fan for as long as I can remember (their Greatest Hits had to be one of the first dozen or so records I bought for myself way back when), I don't recall ever reading (or even seeing) a full book length treatment of their career. I'm not sure that Menck was super rigorous in doing his research-- that's not really the point of this series (besides, he was blown off by Chris Hillman when he informed the band's former bassist that he was in fact working on the book). But the final result provides enough detail and anecdotes to make it worthwhile and the loving attention to the songs themselves goes beyond what one finds in a typical band biography. The Notorious Byrd Brothers contains no hits (though one of its songs featured prominently on the Easy Rider soundtrack) but it establishes such a solid atmosphere that it's one of those albums that almost demands to be heard from beginning to end. It's not that the songs have an immediately evident narrative or thematic link, but that they work so effectively on an aural basis as they flow from one to the next (and this album is notable for its lack of breaks between the songs). Its unfortunate that this high water mark in creativity marked the end of the group's earliest incarnation, though they would weather subsequent personnel changes and produce some equally outstanding, albeit less sonically audacious, work (their next album would be the Gram Parsons dominated country rock classic Sweethearts of the Rodeo). After this introduction, I'm really looking forward to reading other titles in this series, including ones on Patti Smith's Horses, the Replacements' Let It Be, and Big Star's Radio City. If they're as good as this one on the Byrds, I should have an enjoyable time with each.