KEY BACKLIST A readers’ advisory challenge to myself for Women’s History Month (March): “Dear H-Dude, can you turn up at least ten highly readable works of criticism, memoir, and/or biography about women in popular music by women writers? These titles must be available in ebook format, or no deal.”
The answer is yes, I can, and, yes, I did, as the jackets above and my shelf in our buying tool attest. Your lucky readers can start with Sonic Youth co-founder Kim Gordon’s new memoir, Girl in a Band, as well as two notable fall 2014 releases, Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys; and Lisa Robinson’s There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll.
The reason for the uptick in women writing about their lives in the music business is Patti Smith’s new classic, Just Kids, in case you didn’t know. Read it! Ahem, Courtney Love, we’re still waiting on you to deliver your “disaster.”
Confession: I was hamstrung by not having a contract in place to access a writer of gargantuan import (e.g., former New Yorker critic Ellen Willis, whose The Essential Ellen Willis from the University of Minnesota Press is a must) or books not having been digitized (Willis’s first superb posthumous collection, Out of the Vinyl Deeps; Twitter rock nerd favorite, Jen Trynin’s Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be: A Rock & Roll Fairy Tale; and two personal bibles, Debbie Harry’s Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie and Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap, edited by Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers).
Still, many colorful lives and intelligent ideas to celebrate. Go forth and collect!
