My Very Favourite Dances About Architecture

I just read an enjoyable book called 'Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music' by Michael Robbins.

I consequently made a list of my favourites book about music, the ones which really got me thinking what the whole thing was all about.

Michael Robbins writes with great authority on both poetry (which is his profession) and pop music, yet his view and his frame of reference is often completely different from mine. And in compiling this list, I realised how many of the supposed classic books on pop music I haven't read, though I've read a considerable amount on it.

There's a time when you're young and you read a lot and you think you might have time to read everything ever, so you put off this and that, and then you reach a time when it's hard to read one book in an aeon and you think "bugger, I'll never read all those books, I should have read faster when I was younger (oh, hang on, it's just now I'm just mainly reading shit about the same shit over and over again I find on the internet)".

The same is slightly less true of pop music itself. I've devoted myself to listening to pop music and I'm still at - sometimes I think I really will listen to all of it, all of it that matters. But then Michael Robbins comes along with his completely different frame of reference, and I realise that's not possible either.

Anyway, here are my favourite 20 books on pop music (in truth, there might have been more Bob Dylan books, I've read an awful lot of good Bob Dylan books, but I thought two would do for this list). There are lots of other good ones ... these are in no order ...

• Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music – Michael Robbins (ESSAYS)
• Chronicles Volume 1 - Bob Dylan (MEMOIR)
• High Fidelity – Nick Hornby (NOVEL)
• 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs: Dorian Lynskey (HISTORY/ESSAYS)
• The Commitments – Roddy Doyle (NOVEL)
• A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day With the Clash – Johnny Green (ROAD DIARY)
• 45 – Bill Drummond (ESSAYS/UNCLASSIFIABLE)
• On the Road with Bob Dylan – Larry Sloman (ROAD DIARY)
• White Bicycles: Making Music in the 60s – Joe Boyd (MEMOIR)
• All the Madmen: Barrett, Bowie, Drake, the Floyd, The Kinks, The Who and the Journey to the Dark Side of English Rock – Clinton Heylin (HISTORY/ESSAYS)
• The People’s Music: Selected Journalism – Ian MacDonald (ESSAYS)
• This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco – Garry Mulholland (ESSAYS/COMPENDIUM)
• I'm a Man: Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll – Ruth Padel (ESSAYS)
• The Secret Life of the Love Song: Nick Cave (LECTURE - I'm not entirely sure I've ever seen this written down, but, in my head, it's become something of a sacred text)
• The People’s Songs: The Story of Modern Britain in 50 Records - Stuart Maconie (HISTORY/ESSAYS)
• Where You’re At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet – Patrick Neate (HISTORY/ESSAYS)
• Stuart Sutcliffe’s Lonely Hearts Club – Pauline Sutcliffe (BIOGRAPHY)
• The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock – John Harris (HISTORY)
• A Bit of a Blur - Alex James (AUTOBIOGRAPHY)
• A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan (NOVEL)

And, while I was it, here are my favourite 15 books on sport. I could take it up to 20 but the last 5 would also be cricket and boxing. I think cricket and boxing are the most literature-worthy books, and plenty of people agree with me, but still, I think a list of 20 would over-expose my bias ...

• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami (GENERAL MUSINGS/MEMOIR)
• Full Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino – Tony Cascarino and Paul Kimmage (AUTOBIOGRAPHY)
• The Clicking of Cuthbert – PG Wodehouse (SHORT STORIES)
• Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack (1996) (ALMANACK)
• A Cultured Left Foot: The Eleven Elements of Footballing Greatness – Musa Okwonga (ESSAYS)
• War Baby: The Glamour of Violence: Kevin Mitchell (BIOGRAPHY/ESSAYS)
• Night Train: The Sonny Liston Story – Nick Tosches (BIOGRAPHY)
• Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing – Donald McRae (HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY)
• The Cricket Match – Hugh de Selincourt (NOVEL)
• Netherland – Joseph O’Neill (NOVEL)
• Beyond a Boundary – CLR James      (HISTORY/PHILOSOPHY)   
• In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens – Donald McRae (BIOGRAPHY)
• A Lot of Hard Yakka: Cricketing Life on the County Circuit – Simon Hughes (MEMOIR) - only just beating Phil Tufnell's What Now? when it comes to engaging memoirs by Middlesex players of the 80s and 90s ...
• King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of the American Hero – David Remnick (BIOGRAPHY)
• Raging Bull  - Jake LaMotta (AUTOBIOGRAPHY)