Book club: lost in the library special

Most of you reading this will be far too young to remember the original DjHistory site. Ask your gran. Back in the before-times we published snappy book reviews about 100 words each. Of classics we loved, and new releases we managed to blag from publishers. A team of restorers has been working night and day and has pieced together the following.

Once In A Lifetime: The Crazy Days of Acid House and Afterwards – Jane Bussman, 1998

Acid house told as sit-com. A hilarious scrapbook chronicle filled with snippets, quotes, memories, and stories. If you were there, every page revives priceless forgotten details; if not, this is the best book for soaking up the sheer lunacy of the time. Bussman captures those crazy, hazy days of the summer of love better than anyone.

Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House – Matthew Collin, 1997

With Collin as editor, i-D magazine boasted the most insightful coverage of the ’80s emerging club cultures. Altered State was the first serious book about acid house, and for a ride through the social and cultural revolution that ecstasy and house music ignited, it remains the best. The 2006 update catches Tony Blair using an E anthem to get elected.

Pump Up The Volume – Sean Bidder

The TV documentary was strong on the origins of house, then got a little cabbaged when it tried to stand up and go anywhere. This accompanying book is similarly disorganised, but worth having for its acres of extended quotes: a veritable oral history. It would be churlish to point out the debt it owes to our own little history book, but we’ll do it anyway.

Adventures In Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture – Sheryl Garratt 1998

Former Face editor Garratt follows the arc of acid house from American origins to Clink Street, Shoom and the Hacienda, then along the M25 to raves, Ibiza and the Criminal Justice Bill, including interviews with all the major players. Having partied centre stage through it all she treads a bouncing line between history and memoir.

What Kind of House Party is This: History of a Music Revolution – Jonathan Fleming, 1995

When house was still in short trousers, champion raver Fleming self-published this psychedelic monster, took the pictures, did the interviews, wrote the theme tune, sang the theme tune, visited Detroit and Chicago, broke his leg, collected a load of flyers and a tall stack of his own photos, hosed it all into an stone-age version of Photoshop and hit the button marked ‘SWIRL!’

Energy Flash – Simon Reynolds

Step this way for ’ardkore… A rock fan bodysnatched by techno, Reynolds filters the UK dance explosion through grown-up music journalism, going deep with genre definitions and record-by-record analysis, but always coming up for air with rich writing and great musical descriptions. Dance music’s iconoclast. Published as ‘Generation Ecstasy’ in the US.

House Music: The Real Story, by Jesse Saunders, 2007

Though the name came from Knuckles’ disco edits and much of the musical spark from Italy, with ‘On & On’, Jesse was the very first to get Chicago’s home-grown minimalism onto vinyl, and here he stakes his claim as the originator of house music. A well-written, detailed and personal tale, evoking Chi-town’s teenage heroes and the music biz villains who stole their thunder (including a good old Tong-lashing).

Class Of 88: The True Acid House Experience, Wayne Anthony, 1998

‘Alright geez, hold this huge bag of money could you, I’ve just got to fix the smoke machine.’ While you were off your tits dancing in a cowshed, Wayne, founder of the Genesis raves, was coining it hand over fist, outsmarting the filth, facing down shooters, and generally living the life of smiley. Don’t worry, there’s no modesty to spoil the fun. The Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels of acid house.

Rave America: New School Dancescapes – Mireille Scott,1999

Written before ecstasy hysteria pretty much criminalised the flourishing US rave scene, Scott’s solid account of America’s dayglo dance teens feels like a first act in search of a climax. It chronicles NYC technophilia, west coast rave, including some great anti-Brit backlashery, and a trip to Sasha-loving Orlando, from whence emerged the cultural treasure we call breaks.

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

Old white music writer (a short story he wrote 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, 2001

Compton high school yearbooks have full-page ads for funeral parlours. Brit William Shaw’s South Central travelogue brings you kids whose lives are shaped by gangs, riots, drive-bys and… hip hop. Demo tapes, sad talent shows, scraping a living putting up Alkoholics stickers. The characters and scenery are vivid enough for a novel. Plus chats with Cube, Tupac and others who made it.

Rap Attack: African Rap to Global Hip Hop – David Toop, 1984

The first great book about hip hop, written back when it was def, fly and fresh as a daisy. After talking roots – African poets, soul preachers and doo-wop groups – Toop grabs Flash, Bambaataa and the rest, adding some classic white-gloved, fat boombox B-boy pics to boot. Rap Attack is essential old school literature; updated editions leave the original text and photos intact.

Buppies, B-boys, Baps and Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture – Nelson George, 1993

So a black yuppie, KRS-1, a Black American Princess and a bohemian Fort Greene intellectual walk into a bar… A collection of George’s Village Voice column, collating the varied characters and concerns of ’90s black American culture, along a personal 20-year timeline that winds from the Muhammad-Frazier fight to the debut of Urkel, ‘the first hip black nerd in history’.

Yes Yes Y’all: Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade – Jim Fricke & Charlie Ahearn, 2002

From the times when dinosaurs ruled the earth and Kool Herc rocked the Bronx. Back in the day – when it was fun, spelt F-U-N. Fricke and Ahearn (Wildstyle director) take us back, effortlessly, brilliantly, merging a barrage of photos and flyers with extended interviews starring a full cast of B-boys, MCs, graffiti writers and old school pioneer DJs. To the beat y’all, and it don’t stop.

DISCO

Love Saves The Day: A History of American Dance Culture 1970-1979

Tim Lawrence, 2003

A scrupulous historical document: Lawrence follows the New York disco underground with detail to suit a forensic scientist. Forget character sketches, here’s detailed biography; instead of snappy anecdotes you get careful reconstructions. There’s charm, wit and warmth here (and great photos), but the more casual reader might not hang around long enough to find it.

Painstaking NY disco history

Disco – Albert Goldman, 1978

Best-known for digging dirt on Elvis and Lennon, Goldman became fascinated with the disco underground after interviewing Francis Grasso for Penthouse. The result, an extended essay and photo album, is one of the classic texts of dance music (now an expensive collectors’ item), not least for the respect Goldman gave to a scene most people saw as a gimmick. Profound passionate and prophetic.

Revered disco timepiece

Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco – Peter Shapiro, 2005

Peter Shapiro’s forensic examination of disco is at its strongest in his early brilliant chapters detailing its genesis from Parisian speakeasies to New York bacchanals. He excels at socio-cultural theories while still managing to convey the excitement of the music and clubs he undresses. A genre history that lovingly redresses Mama Disco’s oft-maligned reputation.

Mama Disco gets the biography she deserves

The Last Party: Studio 54, disco and the culture of the night

Anthony Haden-Guest

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.”

New York club vulture

CLUBBING

The Manual – Ministry of Sound:

After a total of 148 years writing about dance music, Broughton and Brewster emptied their hard disks for the men from the Ministry, found some lovely photos and added some jokes. The result was this beautifully designed coffee table book, which laid the ground for their classic, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. A perfect present for tricky nephews. Doesn’t actually contain much Ministry.

ISBN 0747276366

Elegant clubland colourbox

Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital

Most sociology is just pub-level chat disguised in impenetrable jargon; this book is wonderfully different. Not only is it written in earth language, but it’s filled with proper research, interesting facts and provocative insight. American Thornton uses her experience as a UK clubber (plus a good deal of history) to examine why the hell we love to go out dancing.

Club sociology that isn’t wank

Night Fever: Club Writing in The Face 1980-1997 – Richard Benson (ed)

The Face and i-D were the first magazines to take clubbing seriously on a regular basis. This little time capsule fills your head with bygone dancefloors, including several classic articles that were first to shine light on a scene: Stuart Cosgrove’s ‘Seventh City Techno’, Sheryl Garrat’s Chicago House report and Steven Harvey’s 1983 NYC disco snapshot.

Classic style mag clublife articles

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Seduced And Abandoned: Essays on Gay Men and Popular Music – Richard Smith, 1995

‘Pop music’s a bit like boys. I mean, I just really, really love it.’ Smith’s enthusiasm makes for sharp insight that never forgets the cheeky fun of it all. From homo svengalis and closeted pop puppets, to fag hags, queercore and heavy metal’s gender confusion, a beautifully written account of a night in a gay club and a hilarious history of the penis in pop.

Cheeky smarts about music and gayness

The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Hackers, Punk Capitalists and Graffiti Millionaires are Remixing Culture – Matt Mason, 2008

Wonderful for spirited stories of rebellious creativity; infuriating for sloppy logic and wild overclaims (who knew graffiti ‘inspired amazing new technologies’?). Arguing for an open-source world, Mason flits from a WWII jetty with its own stamps, to tagging the president’s plane, to the DJ nun who inspired David Mancuso. Great fun, brimming with colour, but in need of a remix to bring home a serious argument about copyright.

IP plunder and copyrighting wrongs

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.

beats-per-minute poetics

UK BASS

All Crews: Journeys Through Jungle/Drum & Bass Culture  – Brian Belle-Fortune, 2004

Intensive care nurse Belle-Fortune whipped up this spirited junglist scrapbook after partying his way from acid house, through hardcore, to jungle and drum’n’bass. All Crews is the closest to a classic text on the scene, fat with snippets, interviews, quotes and an extensive overview of the players, pirates and producers, including some evocative recollections and captured moments.

Spirited junglist patchwork

State of Bass : Jungle, the Story So Far – Martin James, 1997

James follows the early years of jungle, from its origins as a dark force emerging from rave, through its evolution into drum’n’bass, enlisting A Guy Called Gerald for a rousing forward. Strong on historical details, but written a little early for much in the way of perspective. The book ends on a plea for unity as he watches the genre splinter into shards of argumentative sub-scenes.

Early jungle d’n’b history

Cut ‘N’ Mix: Culture Identity and Caribbean Music – Dick Hebdige, 1987

This classic cultural history follows Caribbean music from slavery days, through the birth of ska and reggae, up to pirate radio and Smiley Culture, and ending around the emergence of ragga. Excels on reggae’s UK collisions and evolutions, from punks and dreads in Ladbroke Grove to the Hackney birth of lovers’ rock and the Coventry melting pot of Two Tone.

UK reggae culture classic

The Two Tone Story – George Marshall, 1990

A fan’s gushing love affair with ‘a stylish little number decked out on black and white checks.’ It charts Jerry Dammers’ biography and the rise of the Coventry scene, then lovingly chronicles each Two Tone release, complete with discography, scrapbook pics and details only a spotter could love.

Loving spotters guide to Coventry

SIXTIES

Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess – Danny Sugerman, 1991

It’s not widely known but the seventies were nearly cancelled due to a lack of drugs. This was because Danny Sugerman had taken them all. Classic rock craziness by the one-time manager of the Doors – groupies, overdoses and cars in swimming pools. Whenever you get used to the excess, a stripling Iggy Pop arrives with three girls and a family pack of angel dust to warm things up a bit.

Original rockstar behaviour

Give the Anarchist A Cigarette – Mick Farren, 2001

An angry punk let loose at the heart of London’s sixties psychedelic love-in. Farren’s memoir paints the decade (and after) with hard photographic detail where his peers have only managed glowing romantic impressionism. Rings hilariously true.

bit more

The muck-flinging sixties

NYC

Disco Bloodbath: The Story of Michael Alig, King of the Club Kids – James St James

He came, he partied, he killed. The true story of New York superfreak club promoter Michael Alig, who killed his drug dealer for being tacky, then hailed a yellow cab to take the corpse to the river. Elegantly written by co-freak St James, it pins down the candy-coloured drug-skewed ‘Club Kids’ scene of New York misfits in a surprisingly moral tale.

NYC killer club kid shocker

Downtown – Michael Musto, 1986

Village Voice clubs scribe Michael Musto sweeps you on a mid ’80s clubland safari, armed with an Andy Warhol cover quote no less, showing off New York’s post-Studio 54 places, faces and social graces. The arty be-seen scenes of Pyramid, Mudd Club, Danceteria and Palladium are the main stops on his tour; Paradise Garage doesn’t even merit a drive-past.

Eighties NYC nightlife safari

SOUL, FUNK

Nowhere To Run – Gerri Hirshey

Along with Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music, one of the greatest books ever written about soul music. Scores of original interviews, beautifully written and with rare passion, it will make you, like any good music book, want to own the songs it documents.

bit more

The In Crowd: The Story of Northern Soul and the Rare Soul Scene – Mike Ritson/Stuart Russell

The Northern soul scene is littered with well-meaning but rubbish books. The In Crowd is passionate, put together with style and a soul nut’s eye for detail. There’s only one book you need on Northern soul and this is it.

bit more

The Death of Rhythm and Blues – Nelson George, 1988

The classic account of how black music carved a place for itself in apartheid America, how ‘race records’ evolved into rhythm and blues, then soul and funk, helped by some wily entrepreneurs and the rapid social climb of the first black radio DJs. The ‘death in George’s story is when black music found white acceptance with the era of Motown pop.

Black music takes America

fashion style culture

Street Style – Ted Polhemus

The 1994 original was issued to Japanese fashion students at the UK border. Now this classic spotters’ guide to ye olde street tribes of England is repacked and beefed by the lovely folk at PYMCA. Insightful essays about the evolution and importance of street fashion, and stacks of brilliant pics. Thanks to Ted Polhemus Japanese cities have a shopping mall crew assigned to each chapter of the book.

tribal gathering

Leigh Bowery The Life and Times of an icon. Sue Tilley

I saw him ‘give birth’ at Heaven. Some Italian boys were so horrified they were flicking lit cigarettes at him. Now that’s what I call an impact. From Club Kids to nu-ravers, so many have fingered Bowery’s ideas, we lose sight of what a 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 revealing biog written by his best friend.

Life.

Garments as legend

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 to nu-rave. A few lapses: Leigh Bowery ranks next to Duchamp as a revolutionary artist, so it’s a crime to give him 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.

Shoreditch crowns a century of clubbing

Skins & Punks: Lost Archives 1978-1985 – Gavin Watson, 2008

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!).

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The Look: New Romantics – Dave Rimmer, 2003

With their post-glam, post-punk love of Bowie, Roxy and Berlin, the New Romantics definitely did their bit for the European eyeliner mountain. The Blitz kids also launched eerie synth futurism, scads of proper pop and the self-transformational genius of Leigh Bowery. Rimmer’s clued-up account details the movement’s influences and influence to show the substance behind the foundation. Forgive the clumsy ’80s pastiche design and buckle that swash.

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MUSICOLOGY

The Recording Angel: Explorations in Phonography – Evan Eisenberg, 2005

Before recording, to hear your favourite tune took a special occasion and a roomful of musicians, and owning or collecting music was unimaginable. In this quirky and thought-provoking treasure Eisenberg muses on the culture-quake of records and the love affairs with music they made possible. Originally published in 1987, the new edition adds digital musings.

Our love affair with recorded music

Will Pop Eat Itself: Pop Music in the Soundbite Era – Jeremy J Beadle, 1993

The guy who invented the sampler laughed when someone suggested it might be the future of music. Written in the aftermath of the ’90s remix revolution, with a resolutely chart-based pop perspective, this chronicles the rise of post-modern musical recycling, from scratching, through Stars on 45 pop-medleys and Coldcut’s cut-and-paste collages to the rise of house and techno.

Soundbites and sampling in pop

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain – Oliver Sacks, 2007

What’s your problem? Fear of music? tunes cause you pain? it’s all just noise? Call Oliver – ‘My wife’s not a hat’ – Sacks, famous neurologist, to help and explain with odd tales of melodic malfunction. Sadly it’s all genteel case histories with a classical bent – he blithely ignores the millions of brains who’ve done their own weekend pharma-musico-neurological experiments.

Star neurologist on music

Big Bangs: The Story of Five Musical Discoveries That Changed Musical History – Howard Goodall, 2001

Not content with writing the Blackadder theme tune, Goodall is on a mission to educate the masses in the mysteries of classical music, focusing on five ‘big bangs’: the inventions of written music, the piano, opera, recording and some cleverness called equal temperament, the secret that keeps the world in tune. A fascinating intro to the principles behind all music.

The foundations of (classical) music

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 build emotions to bring you to your knees? Did music come before language? 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. Dejected, you lose interest and put some music on.

Music, language, rhythms and emotion

SOCIAL HISTORY

Satan In The Dance Hall: Rev. John Roach Straton, Social Dancing, and Morality in 1920s New York City – Ralph Giordano, 2008

Once they’d hoodwinked the country into banning alcohol, America’s fundamentalists targeted dancing. Lincoln Nebraska outlawed eye contact between dance partners, while many cities banned ‘animal’ (ie black) dances, like the scandalous Charleston. Forgive the lifeless academic prose, this is a book of amazing revelations, leaving no doubt that jazz culture was more threatening than punk.

the original dance revolution

Social Dancing in America vol 1 & 2 – Ralph G Giordano, 2006

The author’s passion is clear, so it’s a shame he’s written this truly epic two-volume history in a style so neutral it might be aimed at Vulcans (at one point he even stops to define ‘house party’). From 1607 up to the twist, it’s an unbeatable academic reference, packed with social context and cultural insight. There’s not much thread to pull you along however, and it creaks badly once it reaches disco.

academic history of dance

Swing Under The Nazis: Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom – Mike Zwerin

Quiffs, platforms, cut-off zoot suits, sunglasses and pop-socks, set off with a Neville Chamberlain umbrella and a smirk: les Zazous of wartime Paris kick-started club culture with swing records in secret cellars. Along with jazz musicans across Europe they showed up the Nazis as the squarest, grouchiest daddios in history. A laid-back look from American Parisian Zwerin.

Jazz sticks it to Hitler

The Twist: The Story of the Song and Dance That Changed the World – Jim Dawson, 1995

Despite the cancer of Strictly Come Dancing, most of us shake it without worrying about the rules; we can thank the twist. A bum-wiggling transatlantic dance craze, it ushered in the shocking idea of dancing without a partner, showed the new power of youth culture and niftily de-coupled dancefloors forever. Along the way there’s racism, payola, mafia dons and a ton of great stories.

Screwy dance revolution

Teenage: The Creation of Youth – Jon Savage, 2007

The teenager is a post-war creation, but what were the ingredients? American industry spat out ‘juvenile delinquents’ as early as 1810, while in Victorian London gangs of hooligan scamps ran wild. WWI thinned a generation of dreamers and turned the survivors wild and weird, leaving the Hitler Youth to take advantage. When American swing and rock’n’roll turned up, the job was already done.

Glorious prehistory of the teenager

Low Life: Drinking, Drugging, Whoring, Murder, Corruption, Vice and Miscellaneous Mayhem in Old New York – Luc Sante, 1998

In 1860s New York, the poorest drank poisonous alcohol from rubber tubes and whole families lived in the cupboard under your stairs. ‘Suicide Saloons’ had hatches in the floor for the cleaners to drop bodies in the river, and warring fire brigades would leave buildings burning while they fought their rivals. The bare-knuckled reality of ‘Gangs of New York’-era Manhattan.

Wonderfully grim 1860s NYC

Out Of It; A Cultural History of Intoxication – Stuart Walton, 2001

Not enough drug books are written by wine writers. Walton’s thesis is that getting fucked up is a human right and a biological imperative, and he shows us piss-head hamsters and silver Edwardian ladies’ syringes to prove it. He treats legal and illegal drugs alike, arguing with a flawless objectivity that mainlining skag is not so far removed from necking too much Kenko.

A refreshing look at refreshments

Cocaine: A Definitive History – Dominic Streatfeild, 2002

Your gram of toot left an acre of virgin rainforest drowned in petrochemicals and made sure a peasant family can’t grow their own food. Sobering tales, smugglers adventures and a deal of hidden history to bore your mates with in this ripsnorting read about the devil’s dandruff. Not least, the truth about Coca-Cola’s central role in the worldwide trade in blow. Not to be sniffed at.

Full speed down the white line

TECH HISTORY

How to Wreck a nice beach: The Machine Speaks – Dave Tomkins

The Vocoder started life as a phone scrambler for Churchill – five tons of valves and some self-destruct double decks, went on via late funk, early electro, Kubrick,  Stalin and the Muppets – and ended up as the autotune chip that powers X-Factor and wibbles out of every sodcaster’s mobile. A bonkers story, but an exhausting read – as if in tribute to his material Tomkins writes so obliquely you have to decode every sentence.

The amazing life of the Vocoder

Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music Paperback – Greg Milner, 2010

Is recorded music ever the real thing? Or always better? A mesmerising tale of man’s relationship with music, detailing the leaps of recording technology and the genius of producers who made the studio their artform. You learn how the industry’s obsession with volume prevented CDs reaching their potential, and is marching us into a world of over-compressed flatness. Curious, fascinating, poetic.

Curious history of recorded formats

The Long Player Goodbye – Travis Elborough, 2008

Wagnerian epics to triple concept albums: the LP brought it all home. A smart history of listening, from 33 triumphing over 78 in the speed wars, up to the iPod uprising. Great details – his charity shops 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.

Charting the album

Old rare new: The Independent Record Shop,

In Lincoln’s ‘Rockabilly Shop’ Colin and Mary Chapman sold me battered James Brown albums. Here’s a book of people who measure their time on earth in dusty vinyl: collectors sleeping in warehouses, shopkeepers too attached to their stock, handmade signs, groaning shelves. Inspired by a US road trip (film to follow), and centred on a touching memoir from Bob Stanley. Lovely and loving.

The record shop has its day

TECHNO

Modulations: A history of electronic music – Peter Shapiro (ed), 2000

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 to rigorous health and safety standards by academics in white coats and Polyveldt shoes. There might be some interesting things in here: interviews with Robert Moog and Giorgio Moroder perhaps, but the layout is designed to appeal to barcode machines, so I have no idea.

electronic chronicle killed by design

Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk – Dan Sicko, 1999

The allure of Detroit to eggheads means most books on techno are written for cyborgs. Sicko’s sharpened pen cuts through the crap, with great humour and precision, finding the human stories behind all that Third Wave futurology. Later chapters spread thin into a global checklist of techno’s many tendrils, but his journeys through Detroit’s pre-techno scene are outstanding.

Fine Detroit techno primer

GENRES, sounds AND LABELS

Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats & Pieces – Stevie Chick and Peter Quicke, 2010

‘We are ninja, not geisha’. Ninjatune was always about stealthy insurrection more than anything else, as it snatched the hip hop aesthetic for the UK and took it into the future and beyond. From Coldcut to Scruff to Roots Manuva, the label’s big guns paved the way for legions of research mixologists. The best labels have an unmistakeable identity, and this jam-packed retrospective nails it beautifully.

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BLACK DOG COSMIC BOOK?

As definitive a book of long-haired German Kosmiche freaks as anyone could desire, packed with knowledgable essays and an abundance of information: band by band, label by label, plus enough tripped-out psychedelic artwork to set off most smoke alarms. Its only fault is a lack of discographies, but an ausgezeichnet Buch nonetheless. Worth buying alone for a shaggy shot of pre-haircut Kraftwerk.

Tangerine Dream posing by a wall of computers.

WAX POETICS ANTHOLOGY VOL 1, 2008

If DJhistory smoked bigger doobies, knew Pete Rock, lived in Fort Greene and did capoeira at the weekend it would be Wax Poetics. We’d be kicking back with Idris Muhammad, Bernard Purdie, the RZA, Prince Paul, cat’s like that. We’d have James Brown’s drummers, graffiti nostalgia, and acres record porn. The best of the studious magazine’s first six years. Fine, detailed, earnest and pure.

WAX POETICS ANTHOLOGY VOL 2, 2009

meets more powerhouse musicians who keep the samplers in business, plus the intense-looking beatmasters who’ve done the sampling. Scrupulous collector-stiffening pieces on Sun Ra, Deodato, Randy Muller and 90s A&R wunderkind Dante Ross, and much more. Danny Krivit picks out 12s, and DJ Premier confesses he’s a Smiths fan. Mind you, I still think ‘Wax Poetic’ would have been a cleverer name.

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The Sound of Philadelphia – Tony Cummings, 1975

With the march of an obsessive, and some friendly words from the musicians, Cummings traces Philly soul power from its gospel and doo-wop roots, up to Gamble and Huff, Sigma Sound Studios, the O’Jays and MFSB – ‘a rag-bag assortment of leather-capped soul brothers and near-sighted Jews, renegade jazzmen and moonlighting symphonians.’ With some less-than-household names for the spotters.

Dedicated Philly groove

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.

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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 off-piste trails among them.

Bucket-list xxxxxxx

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.

Keep it Peel

The Human League: Perfect Pop – Peter Nash, 1982

Written like an Ultravox video, every sentence swirls around in dry ice and contrast lighting, wearing a batwing blouse. Though clearly a chart-friendly cash-in there’s also a solid biog in here, including interviews with Oakey and the girls, quotes and clippings from the Heaven 17 half of the band, plus a decent discography and clever Martin Rushent telling production stories.

No longer working as a waitress

DJing

Danny Rampling

Why settle for just learning to DJ when you could learn the secrets of success and positive thinking at the same time? On the one hand this is a comprehensive DJ manual written by a spiritual figurehead of house music, filled with clear tutorials and solid insider advice. Turn to the second half and it’s a self-help programme written by The Danny Lama himself. Follow it to the letter and Mr Rampling will, ‘personally GUARANTEE your life will take on a whole new level of depth, happiness and success.’

DJ yourself into a brighter future

DJ Culture Ulf Poschardt

I was a wanker when I was a student; this book has much the same faults: it believes everything that it’s read on the subject, adds nothing new, regurgitates it with the best pseudo-intellectual vocabulary it can lay its hands on, and expects you to admire it for being original. Anyone who references Hegel and Descartes to explain DJing is not really at the same party as everyone else.

Scholarly guff with Nietzsche in the mix

superstar DJs Here we go

‘Yeah, I used to be a superstar DJ. Do you want fries with that?’ As Mixmag Editor through the ’90s, Dom had the beans to spill. A personal record-bags-to-riches-to-ditches journey, from the rise of Sasha, Cream and Ministry of Tescos, to Millennium Eve when things finally went all Paul Oakenfold. The icing on the cake is that since few jocks racked up any catalogue assets, most are destined to haunt Chinese superclubs until they die. Great, on their dosh, dirt, snort and skirt – Sasha mislaying a car, his mate Sparrow burying squillions in his gran’s garden, and the truth about how drugs actually keep Dave Beer alive.

Confessions of the superstar DJs

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 be a hero to all should. 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

Extended remix of the classic dance history

How to DJ (Properly)

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’?

The Haynes manual of DJing

The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way) – Bill Drummond & Jimmy Cauty 1988

Back when number one was tops, this tiny book told you exactly how to get there – smash-by-hit. From those nice KLF boys, it’s a mash-up of devious cynicism, industry wisdom and gleeful Top-of-the-Pops-loving innocence. It’s also an uncannily accurate prediction of the sample-based no-experience-necessary future of music-making. I left a million quid on that table, anyone seen it?

KLF pranksters’ pop insurrection

Design After Dark: The Story of Dancefloor Style – Cynthia Rose, 1991

The story of the eighties club scene told through its visuals, from the early days of i-D and the Face’s influential Neville Brody right through to acid house and the post-house graphics of Trevor Jackson and Derek Yates. Filled with flyers, posters, record sleeves and magazine layouts, plus biographies of the era’s leading designers, it’s essential reading for fans of graphic art.

Nightlife on paper

PARTYING

Last Nights Party

“Yeah luv, it’s for a magazine/website/casting couch/really important wank – could you just get your knickers off, snog your friend and smear tequila on your boobies.” For Merlin Bronques it not only gets him laid, but thanks to lastnightsparty.com it’s made him famous, too. Erectile images of wasted kids and lurking slebs at slutty Williamsburg parties; with better tattoos, stronger drugs and skinnier, more expensive genes than you’ll ever fit into. All those times I took my camera to clubs, I knew I should have put some film in it.

EDIT

“Yeah, it’s for a magazine/website/really important wank – just get your knickers off, snog your friend and smear tequila 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.

Happy Daze: A Personal Insight Into The Acid House Era – Samantha Williams

It’s great looking at pictures from your rave-past, great to make a personal album with flyers and stories. But to give it a 30 quid price tag? Sam runs RaveReunited.co.uk and this is her time capsule, mostly of the early ’90s free parties. It’s zigzaggy jpegs, and acres of average snaps. But though the images are flat the moments are timeless, and hey, isn’t that what it was all about?

Discombobulated: Dispatches From The Wrong Side – Simon Morrison (2010)

We were somewhere around Brighton on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. Morrison’s low-level international mayhem is not quite as out-there as he thinks. Still, he writes with real panache and the scenery flits by too fast for you to care. As he lurches between far-flung clubs and surreal celebs (Judith Chalmers) he turns a phrase like an intoxicated David Attenborough.

MANCHESTER

24-hour Party People – Tony Wilson,

Manchester’s slippery culture uncle traces the proud, daft idealism of Factory and the Haçienda – all the way to Sean Ryder selling Eddy Grant’s sofa for crack. No-one enjoys pricking Tony Wilson’s pompous Baudelaire-quoting ego more than Wilson himself, and for hilarity and detail his mythologised memoir outstrips even the glorious lunacy of the movie.

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The Haçienda Must Be Built – Jon Savage (ed), 1992

Despite the fact most of them were mooching around Rafters in dirty overcoats Rob Gretton was convinced Manchester kids needed a glossy New York disco. The rest is all hit and myth. A completist’s account, with joyous pics of the hallowed dancefloor, interviews with everyone involved, acres of Peter Saville flyers and complete event listings to May ’92.

The Haçienda

“We had a fookin’ blast, if only we’d known it was our own money.” Hooky manages to rewrite this sentence enough times to fill a whole book. There are solid anecdotes and much detail (a complete events list, including some DJ set lists). But as he sets the record straight, and you wade through talk of licensing boards, bar managers and operating costs, you realise you much preferred the legend.