Articles written by authors, guests and the 33 1/3 team.
I was lucky enough recently to get an advance copy of Jonathan Coe’s upcoming novel The Rain Before It Falls (publishing this autumn in the UK and next year in the US). Coe takes a rather B.S. Johnsonian conceit (90% of the book consists of words spoken into a cassette recorder by an old woman […]
Jonathan Coe – The Rain Before It Falls Read More »
I got knocked out of my duties at this year’s Book Expo with the unexpected meeting of a taxi with a phone booth, so I figured I’d do a little blogging between baseball games on the radio… There is a new documentary out that covers my personal musical primordial soup called Towncraft. It’s all about
Another of the books we’ll be publishing in the autumn of this year is Scott Plagenhoef’s fascinating take on Belle & Sebastian’s second album, If You’re Feeling Sinister. Here’s an extract from near the start of the book. Together with a very early promotional photo of the band… *** Murdoch had taken to songwriting in
If You’re Feeling Sinister Read More »
Saw the Bowerbirds play for the first time last night, at the bottom of a Bowery Ballroom bill, and was thoroughly enchanted. I had tears in my eyes by the end of the second song, and felt spiritually cleansed by the end of their set. If they alight in a town near you, you should
We’ll be running sneak previews, over the next few days, of some of the books that’ll be publishing in the series later this year. First up is Stephen Catanzarite’s meditation on Achtung Baby – the first overtly religious/spiritual book we’ve had in the series and, I think, also one of the most interesting. Here’s a
It was a strange show at Webster Hall last night. Nothing particularly wrong with it, provided you went along with low expectations. On the one hand, you could witness a band unfurling a succession of some of the greatest, most basic, rock’n’roll songs ever written – Sidewalking, Blues from a Gun, Some Candy Talking, You
If you’re in the NYC area, you might want to put the evening of Saturday June 9th in your diary. It’ll be a full-on Bee Thousand festival, celebrating Marc Woodworth’s book and plenty of other delights including – presumably – beer. Here’s the flyer:
Bee Thousand Party, NYC, June Read More »
We’ve been getting some very good early feedback on our upcoming Fleshtones book – Sweat – written by Joe Bonomo, and publishing in September. Here’s an extract from the book, about the making of the astonishing video (by M. Henry Jones) for “Soul City”, an old Hi-Lifes song co-written by Lou Reed, that the Fleshtones
The Fleshtones: Soul City, and the Ham Sandwich Effect Read More »
Two pieces from across the ocean, today. The first is in the magazine “One Week To Live” – part of a whole series they’ve done on 33 1/3 books. It’s an interview with Eliot Wilder, author of our DJ Shadow book. The article itself isn’t on the magazine’s website, but Eliot has the PDF on
A couple of UK articles Read More »
Don Breithaupt’s book on Aja has just hit stores. It’s a very smart dissection of Steely Dan – one of those interesting pop acts where there’s almost no consensus as to what might be their finest achievement. The book includes some fascinating comments from Donald Fagen, as well as Breithaupt’s incisive analysis. Here’s an extract
