Re: Great Books That Have Changed Our Musical Lives

[mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com>]

Its taken me a while to get to this thread:
Like Kris, I could say that of course no book is gonna be the same as actually doing music, or experiencing other music.
But there certainly are some good books out there that HAVE contributed to my creative life, and I have no doubt that it has filtered to music. These might be The Naked Lunch, William Burroughs, A Humament, Tom Philips, Holy Blood Holy Grail. These are however not music books.

The books below reflect some different aspects of my musical life:

Silence: John Cage
Studied at college, continues to be a source of amazement.

John Peel: Mick Wall
I cried when he died, for us in the UK, he simply WAS alternative music for 30 years, (and definitely the sole reason for MY 15 minutes)

Rotten, No Irish - No Blacks - No dogs : John Lydon
I was just too young, but could not avoid head-on the influences of this man, the reason I bought a guitar, like millions of others

Never Enough - The story of The Cure: Jeff Apter

Actually a little bit of MY history. As support for The Cure in 1992, some part of my story is told in the book (mostly by me - I was interviewed and heavily quoted here)

Noise /Music A History: Paul Hegarty

Draws a line thru many musics that I have been fascinated by my entire life, and puts my influences in contexts that even I was not aware of. From The futurists thru Dada, to Stockhausen, the Beatles, Velvets, Kraut, Punk, Lo Fi industrial electronics, Techno, Electronica, Imrov to Noise.... Basically a list of eveything Ive ever been into! 

A Great Book, but slightly peeved cos I could have written it!!!

Mark

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