We all know that Vinyl Vogue sells records. It is a record shop, duh. Of course, there are CDs as well. There might be a cassette or two lying around. Matt also sells guitars and guitar accessories. He sells audio equipment and repairs all this stuff as well. There are knick-knacks for stocking stuffers. But Lou is excited that Vinyl Vogue has a book section. Before starting this blog, Lou was a big reader. He could bang out a good hundred books in a year. Almost strictly non-fiction. Essay collections, books about art and film. One of Lou’s go-tos was books on music. Lou is trying to stay away from Amazon and online purchases in general in favor of public libraries and brick and mortar independent stores. Like Vinyl Vogue. The inter-library loan at the Ellsworth Public Library has been a godsend and Lou hits it hard. Recently he bought a copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket from Blue Hill Books. Sure, he could have gotten the book quicker and cheaper from Amazon, but Lou is fighting the good fight. We will see how that goes.
Anyway, Lou bought The Best Rock ‘n’ Roll Records of All-Time: A Fan’s Guide to the Stuff You Love by Jimmy Guterman from the Vinyl Vogue book section. There must be dozens of books like this out there. Lou loves them all. As for Guterman’s book, he puts Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story at number one, so take that as you Maggie May. Lou owns this album, which he also bought at Vinyl Vogue. The record is good for sure but, come on. But that is why you read books like this. It is the literary equivalent of having a conversation in a bar. There is nothing better than having a few beers (Did Lou mention that Black Moon Public House has Narragansett on tap?) and hashing out the age-old Beatles vs. Stones debate. It never gets old. Guterman is team Stones, so he can’t be all bad. In fact, he has Exile on Main Street as number two in his book. Number 100 is In the Land of Salvation and Sin by The Georgia Satellites. Go figure. It is a fun book.
The concept of gathering a hundred short essays about a topic, like songs or albums, is common as cat shit. Not very creative. That is why Lou is doing it here on the Vinyl Vogue blog. Lou is nothing if not derivative. Some people have been asking Lou, “Will this become a book?” The answer is no. But not because it could not be a book. Everybody and their mother think they can write a book. It is the Thinking Man’s version of the Sports Guy thinking he could hit a major league fastball. The reason everybody thinks they can write a book is because they can. It is not that hard. Nonfiction that is. Novels are hard and beyond Lou’s limited abilities. Let Lou break down some basic math. The key to writing a book is simple routine. Just write a little bit every day. Not even every day. Treat it like a part time job. If you write 500 words five days a week, you will have roughly 130,000 words at the end of the year. If you take a page of a book to have around 400 words on it (and that may be high, because publishers pad the shit out of books with fonts and margins and chapter headings and all types of bullshit), that means that at the end of the year you have a 300-page book on your hands. Just write 500 words a day. It isn’t hard. There are 600 words right here and I haven’t even said anything. Edit it in post or let your editors do it. That is their job.
At Lou’s previous employment, his boss got to work in the office at around 6:30am and wrote for a couple of hours each workday. He would then go on to do his real job at around 9am. This guy with a full time, very demanding job wrote a book a year like clockwork. Lou knows this is true because part of his job was editing the chapters. Routine. That is the key to anything. It is like exercise. Or quitting an addiction. One day at a time and it piles up. Next thing you know a year has passed and you have a book. Or a sobriety chip.
Come to Vinyl Vogue for the records and linger around to look at the books. Who knows you may find one and then you can sit at the bar with your disgustingly hoppy craft beer and act like your reading in order to attract some attention from whatever sex you are hoping to attract.
You might be asking Lou to recommend some music books to read. There are lists of the best music books on the Internet all over the place. Many of the recommendations are great and Lou’s list, if he made one, probably comes from one of those lists, because one of Lou’s great pleasures is working his way through a best-of reading list. But what Lou will do for you is list a few music books he has lying around his desk at the moment. Lou has read some of these and some he hasn’t. Do with them what you will.
Suggested Sites and Sounds:
No links, go to your local library
Faster Than a Cannonball: 1995 and All That by Dylan Jones
Massive Pissed Love: Nonfiction 2001-2014 by Richard Hell
Rock and the Pop Narcotic: Testament for the Electric Churchby Joe Carducci
Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio by Katherine Rye Jewell
Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes by Saul Austerlitz
That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound: Dylan, Nashville, and the Making of Blonde on Blonde by Daryl Sanders
— Lou Waxman