The Seattle Public Library loves to promote books and reading. This column, submitted by the library, is a space to share reading and book trends from a librarian’s perspective. You can find these titles at the library by visiting spl.org and searching the catalog.
Seattle is a city of music, especially during the summertime when festivals like THING, Capitol Hill Block Party and Bumbershoot host some of music’s biggest names.
If you anticipate attending this season’s events or just want to stay in that frequency, here are five books about music and musical artists to keep you on beat this summer.
Have you ever coveted an object related to an artist or band you loved? “Nina Simone’s Gum” by Warren Ellis is a testament to the enduring power of our idols.
Simone inspired Ellis, an Australian multi-instrumentalist from the bands Dirty Three and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, so much that when he saw her perform at Nick Cave’s Meltdown Festival in 1999, he took the gum and towel she left behind at the piano as a treasure.
Ellis describes Simone as “the divine incarnate” and calls that show “a religious experience.” No footage exists of that show — just some photographs and the gum.
Years later, this connection to the great Simone will lead Ellis on a journey of artistic reverence and replication, showing how meaning is made in the most peculiar of ways. This gorgeous book is replete with personal stories and artful photographs.
Guitarist Kid Congo Powers was also a musician in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but his memoir, “Some New Kind of Kick,” co-written with Chris Campion, is a different kind of story.
Growing up as a queer, Chicano kid in East Los Angeles in the 1970s, Powers’ entry to the vibrant punk scene was fandom: As the president of the West Coast Ramones Fan Club, he found people as influenced by counterculture and music as he was, which ultimately set him on a path of creative connection with bands like The Gun Club, The Cramps and the Bad Seeds.
While his time with The Cramps was fraught, it also opened a sense of belonging and possibility: “Setting yourself apart, whether gay, straight, sane, or insane, was to be celebrated.” Powers also reflects on how queerness was largely undercover in the punk scene and shares his struggles with substance use and recovery in a memoir sprinkled with stories of whirlwind tours, parties and friendships with punk legends.
“Rebel Girl” by Kathleen Hanna is getting buzz for good reason. It is a punchy and vulnerable memoir of growing up in a challenging household and laying claim to power and community through music and activism.
Hanna’s years in Olympia and Portland as lead singer for the feminist punk band Bikini Kill in the 1990s shine as she finds feminist spaces where she is able to explore her artistic voice through spoken word and singing.
If you didn’t know that the title of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was gifted to Kurt Cobain from Hanna — written on Kurt’s wall in Sharpie after a debauched night of drinking — then you may be delighted to discover Hanna’s many other stories of the burgeoning Northwest music scene. The memoir explores darker territory, too, including her father’s predatory behavior as well as instances of rape.
While the riot grrrl movement galvanized a generation of women, Hanna spotlights its limitations, including its white cisgender defaults, encouraging others to find their own, more inclusive approaches to music and activism.
If you like to read about fictional bands, Dawnie Walton’s debut “The Final Revival of Opal & Nev” offers a rockumentary-style look at a 1970s band’s rise to fame and dissolution.
Through interviews, we meet Opal Jewel, a Black singer from Detroit with dreams of making it big. When Opal meets British singer/songwriter Neville Charles, they embark on a journey as fellow musicians that will seismically shift both of their lives. They tear up the charts and become a musical sensation until their label signs a band sporting a Confederate flag and Opal’s opposition leads to violence that breaks them apart.
Decades later, Opal’s legacy as an outspoken Black woman fighting for equality takes on new dimensionality as the duo considers a reunion tour. If you enjoyed Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones & the Six,” Walton’s debut will also make you feel like you are hanging out backstage with the band.
In August, check out “The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs That Shaped a City” by Eva Walker and Jacob Uitti.
With a foreword by Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, KEXP DJ and musician Walker and music writer Uitti explore 80 years of the “Seattle sound,” from Ray Charles to Sleater-Kinney, and Foo Fighters to Sir Mix-A-Lot. This is bound to be one of the most talked about local books of the year.
