Book reviews about DJs, dance music, club culture, disco, hip hop, house, funk, soul, reggae | DJHistory.com

MUSIC BOOK REVIEWS... Sssshhhh! it's a library. Let us recommend a good read. These are the best books we know on DJs and dance music.

Raving ’89 – Neville & Gavin Watson, 2009

An amazing collection of photos from 1989, the year acid house exploded into a nationwide phenomenon. Gavin Watson captures the revolutionary moment like no-one else, with intimate portraits of mates and strangers alike having the time of their lives. It's all here: the crowds, the lasers, the villains, the crimes against fashion. With hilarious recollections from Gavin and his brother Neville.

The Disco Files 1973-78: New York's Underground, Week By Week – Vince Aletti (2009)

With reviews of every disco record worth knowing about, weekly reports from New York’s club scene, classic magazine articles and 800 contemporary club charts, this is the definitive chronicle of disco. It's the personal memoir of Vince Aletti, the very first writer to cover the emerging scene, bringing to life the clubs, the characters, and above all the music. The first book from DJhistory.com

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey – Bill Brewster & Frank Broughton, 2006

Bill and Frank’s classic chronicle digs deep to find DJing started in 1906, the Nazis invented clubbing and Jimmy Savile should be a hero to all. Arguing that DJs not musicians are pop music’s true revolutionaries, it details with love all the scenes that matter. The new edition is beefed up with entirely new chapters covering techno, acid house, Ibiza, jungle, UK garage and cosmic disco

How to DJ (Properly): The Art and Science of Playing Records – Frank Broughton & Bill Brewster, 2005

Best-selling DJing bible, fat like a car manual with pictures and diagrams, taking you from first day at school to beat-juggling and stadiums. Practical, no-bullshit advice with plenty of laughs. Bill and Frank instill a healthy attitude in the young and/or jaded, putting a love of music and personal taste above all. And who could miss ‘How to get into a helicopter without looking foolish’?

Modulations: Electronic Music, Throbbing Words on Sound – Peter Shapiro (ed), 1999

The least inviting book I own – actually a “multi-media exploration.” If martians read this they’d think dance music was an industrial process done in vacuum chambers by academics in white coats and Polyveldt shoes. There might be some interesting things in it: interviews with Robert Moog and Giorgio Moroder perhaps, but the layout is designed to appeal to barcode machines so I have no idea.

Leigh Bowery: The Life and Times of an Icon – Sue Tilley, 1997

I saw him “give birth” at Heaven. Some Italian boys were so horrified they were flicking lit cigarettes at him. Now that’s an impact! From Club Kids to nu-ravers, so many have fingered Bowery’s ideas, we lose sight of how revolutionary he was. A fearless explorer, he did for dressing up what Picasso did for painting or the drum machine did for dance music. An affectionate biog by his best friend.

The Last Party: Studio 54 Disco and the Culture of the Night – Anthony Haden-Guest, 1997

Debonair Vanity Fair hack Haden-Guest details the monied world of upper-crust New York clubbing in a history that climaxes the day Bianca Jagger rode a horse into Studio 54. It's the full saga of Studio itself, populated largely by people with titles, racehorses and Truman Capote’s phone number; then Palladium, Limelight and other gossipy spots. Best picture caption: “Andy Warhol is in the rear.”

Last Night's Party – Merlin Bronques (2008)

“It's for a magazine/website/really important wank – could you pull your knickers off, snog your friend and smear vodka on your boobies.” For Merlin Bronques it not only gets him laid, but thanks to lastnightsparty.com it’s made him famous. Slutty images of kids wasted at Williamsburg parties; with better tattoos, stronger drugs and skinnier, more expensive genes than you'll ever fit into.

Superstar DJs Here We Go!: The Incredible Rise of Clubland's Finest – Dom Phillips (2009)

“Yeah, I used to be a superstar DJ. Do you want fries with that?” Ex-Mixmag Editor Dom knows where the bodies are buried. A personal record-bags-to-riches-to-ditches tale, with great confessions from the moneypigs and king caners, about when things finally went all Paul Oakenfold. Sasha mislaying a car, his mate Sparrow burying squillions in the garden, and how drugs actually keep Dave Beer alive.

Slumberland – Paul Beatty (2008)

DJ philosophising of a higher fidelity. Beatty cracks post-racial satire like no other, and his third novel does for music what ‘Perfume’ did for stink. Trying to erase notions of ‘negritude’, Los Angeles DJ Darky gets his blackness caressed as “jukebox sommelier” in wall-time Berlin while tracking missing jazz ghost ‘the Schwa’, whose chops are destined to wail over his perfect beat.

Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap – Nik Cohn (2007)

Old white music writer (he inspired Saturday Night Fever), dying with hepatitis, settles in New Orleans, city of his personal demons, and as a musical last rites tries to connect with local rappers. It’s all doomed; their styles are too local and they don’t want to be helped. Filled with scenes of poverty, struggle, hope, despair, and that’s even before Katrina hits. Beautiful in its futility.

Westsiders: Stories of the Boys in the Hood – William Shaw (1999)

Compton high school yearbooks have full-page ads for funeral parlours. Brit William Shaw’s South Central travelogue brings you kids with lives shaped by gangs, riots, drive-bys and, above all, hip hop. Demo tapes, rip-off talent shows, scraping a living putting up Alkoholics stickers. Characters and scenery vivid enough for a novel, plus great insight from Cube, Tupac and others who made it.

Skins & Punks: Lost Archives 1978-1985 – Gavin Watson

Subculture-liggers will grab this as an eye-spy style manual. In fact the skinhead thing is close to irrelevant; better to see these photos as tender and revealing portraits of a gang of mates tumbling through life together. A first tattoo, at the fairground, outside dad's, after school at my house... The last pic shows the day the world changed thanks to acid house (Gavin's next book!).

The Olivetti Chronicles: Three Decades of Life and Music – John Peel, 2008

When he died, a generation (or three) were as bereaved as if he were family, such was his place in our musical lives. So here’s another chance, via 30 years of his articles, to let the great man’s wearily mellow tones and life-affirming sarkiness infuse your evenings. All you need to complete the picture is a can of Tizer, some maths homework and your finger on a cassette-recorder pause button.

Club Kids: From Speakeasies to Boombox and Beyond – Raven Smith (ed), 2008

A sparky volume on the club faces who’ve led pop'n'fashion, from ’20s flappers all the way to nu-rave and beyond. A few major lapses though: it’s a crime to give genuine visionary Leigh Bowery less space than some of the cheeky Hoxton peacocks currently recycling his ideas. Still, this is their book and if they want to portray the history of clubbing as merely a lead-up to Boombox, fairy nuff.

Warp: Labels Unlimited – Rob Young, 2005

It was originally going to be called Warped records, trivia fans. A scrap-packed coffee-table compendium on the Sheffield label, from the bleep era, through the ‘intelligent’ techno rave-backlash, up to cutting edge filmmakers. Despite a section on Sheffield’s electronic prehistory, it’s fairly light on context. Lashings of Designers’ Republic artwork and a solid 1989-2005 discography though.

This Is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession – Daniel J. Levitin

Explain the unspeakable magic when rhythms enter a human. How can vibrating air + flesh = emotions? Did music come before language? Coldplay: why? Exciting questions with astonishing answers. And Levitin, a neuroscientist rock producer, is the man to give you them. But his writing travels like treacle, his explanations meander endlessly. Let down, you lose interest and go put some music on.

The Human League: Perfect Pop – Peter Nash, 1982

Written like a New Romantic video, every sentence swirls around in dry ice and contrast lighting, wearing a batwing blouse. Clearly a chart-friendly cash-in but also a solid biog, including interviews with Oakey and the girls, quotes and clippings from the Heaven 17 half of the band, plus a decent discography and the great Martin Rushent telling production stories. Now back to that cocktail bar.

1000 Songs to Change Your Life – Will Fulford-Jones (ed), 2008

The inevitable lists are well wrapped in engaging essays, as Time Out guidemaster Fulford-Jones collects music for goosebumps, adding smart top tens (Thatcher’s Britain, dance crazes, awkward time signatures...) and clips from the T.O. cupboard. Many of its 1,577 tracks will be old news to obsessives like you, but there are plenty of intriguing off-piste trails to explore, too.

The Long Player Goodbye – Travis Elborough, 2008

Wagnerian epics to triple quadrophonic concept albums: the LP brought it all home. A smart history of listening, from 33 beating 78, up to the iPod uprising. Great details – his charity shop theory of tastelessness, the scandalous first edit (an operatic high C), even the well-worn pop stories feel fresh. But Elborough don’t dance: DJ-mix albums, a key innovation, get no mention.