Yeah Yeah Yeah (2013)

At the moment I am very high on Bob Stanley's massive thunk of a history of pop music. It's one of my favorite kinds of pop music book, telling the curious history of youth music from 1955 on. Nik Cohn did it. Charlie Gillet did it. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll did it. Even I did it, by way of dead rock stars. Scott Miller too! Miller and Stanley cover the greatest amount of sheer metric tonnage of years, taking their histories well into the 21st century. Miller's (and Cohn's) are idiosyncratic and rooted deeply in quirks of taste, whereas Stanley is encyclopedic. And rooted deeply in quirks of taste. Stanley also has a day job as a principal in the (essential) band Saint Etienne, which may help you know where he is coming from. I'm tempted to call Yeah Yeah Yeah the best of the class and the new standard by which all others, etc. For one thing, no book has yielded up so many prizes for me (and so tested the capacities of my streaming service—at least a quarter were too obscure even for its seemingly vast holdings) as I root-hogged down and filled my playlist to capacity for most of a year. Besides Saint Etienne Stanley has also made his way as a music journalist in London, where for years three or four or five papers spent years operating at the level of the Village Voice or Boston Phoenix in the US. He is as opinionated as anyone but somehow more mild-mannered in the expression, which helps reduce friction of any peevish inclination to quarrel with his odder lapses or views. By and large he is impeccable on the history. I learned a lot from reading this, about house and techno and rave culture, and was often impressed by the connections he can make. They were sudden little illuminations about things I've lived with all my life and suddenly saw anew: all of R.E.M. in one song by Them, all of the Ramones in one song by the Bay City Rollers, all of Electric Ladyland in the music of the Impressions. You never agree all the way with anyone, but I was happy to have some of my own eccentricities affirmed: the best album by Todd Rundgren is A Wizard, a True Star, it's impossible to overestimate Joy Division, and Blondie's Parallel Lines is life-changing. Yeah Yeah Yeah was an immersive experience for me, I just read it and I didn't take very good notes. But I think I noticed there was good stuff literally on almost every page, wonderfully thought through and argued delicately, with no doubts whatsoever about his points. Then I spent a year listening to as much of the music he writes about as I could get my hands on—some of it old favorites I knew well, some entirely new to me (e.g., see my February 2020 Top 40). In practical terms, it's a goldmine.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.