Well, it’s that time of year again where we all collectively attempt to slow down the pace of our roundabout lives, and for good reason. Shit, we all need to partake in some summertime activity, like some going to the beach or pool, or some eating of some hot dogs and drinking of some beers at a baseball game, or, you know, in some being especially lazy. Let the summer breeze blow through the jasmine of your mind, as it were. Record releases come to a proverbial halt, so we’re following their lead, however inanimate they are. What we’re trying to say is that we aren’t publishing for the next week, due to a twice-a-year necessity to hit the reset button and come back refreshed and ready for more rollickin’ rock journalism. The good news is that we’re keeping up the tradition of our bi-annual book review! This summertime edition features music-related books that have come out in the last six months. You should pick up a few and add them to your summer reading list, and really, really focus on taking things down a notch. Enjoy!

Family
Photographs and text by Lauren Dukoff
(Chronicle Books)

A coffee table book for people who’d rather sit on zafu pillows, Family compiles Lauren Dukoff’s intimate photographs of the artists who orbit the gravitational pull of her good friend, the charismatic songwriter Devendra Banhart.

“I am ready to say,” says Banhart in a brief, poetic foreword, “that everyone in this book is my family, and my source of inspiration and consolation.”

Being that Dukoff is one of the family, as such, this couldn’t be called an objective photo essay. For her part, however, Dukoff wouldn’t have it any other way.

“For a long time,” Dukoff writes in the 10-page introduction, “I thought that one’s job as a photographer was to stay the hell out of the way… I was wrong… Looking back… I realize that… I have always been a part of this circle of friends, not just an outsider documenting them.”

As such, Dukoff portrays Banhart’s ever-expanding cabal as a communal caravan of artistic types—imagine if Charlie Manson founded an art colony and not a homicidal cult—in often candid (some posed) black-and-white and color portraits that seek to convey the essence of their chosen brood, which at times features Vetiver, Bat for Lashes, Priestbird, Vashti Bunyan, Luckey Remington, Espers, Matteah Baim, Hecuba, world’s hippest harpist Joanna Newsom, and fellow travelers like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

Dukoff was, at one time, the studio manager and producer for photographer Autumn de Wilde, whose own book, Elliott Smith, was a clear inspiration to this one. In addition to the pictures, we get some selected prose and biographical background about “family” members and a link to some digital music downloads.

Family treads that fine line between self-mythology and one of those early D.A. Pennebaker cinéma vérité documentaries, but one could also see it as a kind of yearbook from the trippiest Montessori school, ever. – Paul Myers

Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott
by Zac Crain
(Da Capo Press)

On December 8th, 2004, exactly 24 years to the date John Lennon was murdered in New York City, Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell Abbott and his brother Vinnie Paul mounted the stage with their new band Damageplan at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio. Minutes into the first song, ex-Marine Nathan Gale came from behind a stack of amps straight towards Dimebag, putting four bullets into the metal guitar god before shooting at security guards and band personnel that tried to subdue him. Moments later, a Columbus police officer ended Gale’s life with a shotgun blast to the head. The story, which David Draiman of Disturbed called “the 9/11 of rock,” shocked rock fans around the world. But who was Dimebag Darrell, this teen guitar virtuoso turned heavy metal hero in whose casket Eddie Van Halen placed his prized black-and-yellow striped guitar? Spin and Rolling Stone magazine contributor Zac Crain explores with vivid detail the 1981 birth, rise to fame, and ultimate demise of Pantera, as well as the rebirth of the Abbott brothers and rock’s bloodiest onstage tragedy. Interviewing Abbott’s inner circle of friends and bandmates, Crain reveals the trajectory of Dimebag, the kid from Arlington, Texas who used to stand in front of the mirror imitating KISS’ Ace Frehley before learning the chords to “Smoke on the Water” and launching into a legendary career as one of metal’s cornerstone guitar greats. “He was born to become a musician,” writes Crain, “he wanted to become a musician; he became a musician. He was a textbook case.” Black Tooth Grin (named after Abbott’s trademark drink—a double shot of whiskey with a splash of Coke), is the long-awaited story of Dimebag Darrell, and a tour de force of American music journalism. – Ben Corbett

Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music
by Greg Prato
(ECW Press)

The Pacific Northwest is home to a lot of pop culture myths. The term “flying saucer” was coined there, Bigfoot roams the woods, and spirits haunt the pines. But the biggest myth that ever breathed life was a beast called grunge. To most of us, that particular Sasquatch came bounding out of the woods, flannel-clad and un-showered, Doc Martens stomping to the beat of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, while a media circus snapped pictures and penned fiction.

For those of us who were too young to remember, or for those of us who believed the hype, there is no document more valuable to setting the record straight than Grunge Is Dead, Greg Prato’s oral history of Seattle rock music. His collection of accounts tells the story of the scene in the words of those who lived through its most explosive moment. Of course, it’s not a complete history: Even as one reads what Mark Arm, Kim Thayil, Eddie Vedder, and countless others had to say about Seattle, it’s impossible not to feel the absence of players great and small—those still with us, and those who have passed on. While Prato gives brief consideration to early garage rock, Hendrix, and other grunge “roots,” the majority of the book focuses on the mid-’80s to mid-’90s. Most attention is paid to the bands that “made it”—and the tragic costs associated with their success.

Prato is shrewd enough to tap sources that offer different points of view. This book would not be as good as it is if it did not find both merit and fault in its subjects. The accounts are balanced, insightful, and humanizing—anecdotes that entertain, inform, and document the players of a scene that was, in its time, quite misconstrued by the mainstream. The Dwarves’ Blag Dahlia is a refreshingly vicious gadfly. Nancy Layne McCallum, mother of late Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley, offers insights that are both frightening and heartbreaking.

While Prato isn’t the first to attempt documentation of Seattle’s major moment in rock history—Doug Pray’s documentary film Hype!, as a musical survey, does a better job displaying the scene’s diversity (for better or worse)—Grunge Is Dead is a must-read for anyone wishing to gain an insider’s understanding of the scene that wasn’t. Grunge Is Dead is Please Kill Me for the Seattle sound. – Andres Jauregui

My Bass and Other Animals
by Guy Pratt
(Orion Publishing)

Guy Pratt’s memoir, My Bass and Other Animals, is, among other things, an excellent reminder that nobody gets wasted like the British.

Before I was handed his memoir, Pratt was, for me, an unknown. I had a vague recollection of reading his name on a David Gilmour DVD, but that was about it. By the end, I realized it would be very hard to find a respectable record collection that didn’t have Pratt and his bass in there at least once. The artists he’s played for and writes about vary widely, from Madonna to Pink Floyd, and the only real constant is the intense partying, which is in the background (or foreground) of nearly every chapter.

If Pratt didn’t have a self-deprecating way about him, his memoir could chafe from what appears to be a charmed life. That he is often flummoxed by how he ended up elbow to elbow with the likes of David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Johnny Marr, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, and the late Robert Palmer makes his stories feel pub-like, which makes them go down like a perfectly poured pint. Still, it is hard for me to believe that you can play bass in Pink Floyd and not be Roger Waters.

Pratt’s early days remind us of the thin barrier between those who make it in the business and those who never will. Sometimes knowing when not to pass out seems the only difference between getting the glory gig and sucking down piña colada songs at a Holiday Inn. Well, maybe not quite. Nonetheless, My Bass and Other Animals is a wonderful, tuneful argument against sobriety, and nicely sheds light on what it takes to thrive in one of the world’s most deranged industries.

It also makes you realize that those horrible drunken moments you never talk about make for great stories. I give it four-and-a-half pints, six rails, four shots of unpronounceable Northern European liquor, a liter of grappa, six red pills, five green pills, and 11 red and green pills. Oh, and enough pot to stuff a large waterfowl marinated in LSD. – Max Mobley