Random non-recommendation:
The
Daisy Jones and the Six book, despite the interesting concept (fictional oral history of fictional 70s band) and hit tv show (I haven't watched, but Elvis' granddaughter is the lead), the book was basically an intolerable read, with some of the worst music writing I've ever encountered.
I enjoy pretty much anything dealing with bands, origin stories, recording, etc, but the author apparently has zero idea about music, musicians, songwriting, recording studios, record labels (especially in the 70s), music economics, etc. etc, beyond listening to
Rumors a bunch of times.
I got it on sale for Kindle for $3 and I only finished it out of spite.
Random quotes:
Billy: I was writing about love. I was singing with a little bit of a growl. We were rockin’ hard on the guitars with some real blues bass lines. (p. 55)
Eddie: It just got worse from there. He changed the tuning on “Please.” Completely changed it and rerecorded it. As if I wasn’t going to notice he’d shifted to Nashville tuning. Like I’m not going to notice that the song has to be played on a different goddamn guitar. And everybody else, they saw it! They could see what he’d done. But no one was going to speak up, you know what I’m saying? Because Teddy and Runner were so happy with the record that they were talking about booking stadiums and pressing over a hundred masters and all this shit. They’re saying they want to release “Turn It Off” as soon as possible and they think it can hit number one. So everybody had dollar signs in their eyes and nobody said much of anything to Billy. Or Teddy.
(p. 239).
Artie Snyder: When we cut together the version with Daisy, it was so compelling—their voices together—that Teddy wanted to strip almost everything else away. He had me soften the drums a bit, amp up the keys, cut out some of Graham’s more distracting flourishes. What we were left with was this sprawling acoustic guitar and percussive piano. Most of the attention went to the vocals. The song became, entirely, about the relationship of the voices. I mean…it moved—it was still up-tempo, it still had a rhythm—but it was eclipsed by the vocal. You were hypnotized by Billy and Daisy. (pp. 92-93).
Their self-titled debut was a respectable entrance into the rock scene. It was straitlaced and economical, sort of a no-frills blues-rock album from a band that knew how to write a decent love song and had really perfected the art of the drug innuendo. A little bit folky, very catchy, lots of swagger, big riffs, hard drums, and that great Billy Dunne smooth growl. (p. 58)
Billy: I took a little bit of time off but then I went back in the studio with Teddy and we went through that album second by second, track by track, and we remixed and remixed and remixed until it was perfect. Teddy, Artie, and I were in the control room for what felt like twenty hours a day for three weeks or something. (p. 231)
SevenEightNine was a good album, in some ways a great album. It was more explicitly romantic than their debut—fewer allusions to sex or drugs. It still rocked, though. It had that driving rhythm section, those piercing riffs. (p. 98)
Pete: “While this is all out on the table, I’m taking full control over my own bass lines from here on out.”
Billy: I told Pete I was fine with him writing his bass lines. He’d been writing most of his bass lines for a while.
Karen: I said, “I’d like to step it up a bit. I think we can use me more often to round out songs. Maybe even do a song just keys and vocals.”
Eddie: I wanted a say in what I was playing. Everyone’s chiming in like Billy’s trying to control them—and he did. But he was really controlling me. I said, “I write my own riffs from here on out.” (pp. 148-149).
(Reid, Taylor Jenkins. Daisy Jones & The Six: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)
(And, since I'm having too much fun with the Kindle app on the computer)
the following terms did not appear in the book:
- royalty/royalties
- advance
- recoup
- percentage
- points
- loose
- (in the) pocket
- jam (maybe a good thing, actually)
- improvise
- Fender
- Gibson (it does appear once as a type of boat)
- hammond
- rhodes (there's a "keyboardist")
- strings
- tube/valve
- compression
- take(s)
- track/multitrack
- (mixing) board/desk
- stereo/mono
etc.
