Our Authors Pick Their Favorite Music Books of 2024

What a year!

Dec 31, 2024

This first year of Music Book Club was so much fun! Thank you to all our authors and members for being here.

I asked this year’s lineup of authors if they read any new music books in 2024 and had a favorite to share with the group. I only asked for a title since I didn’t want to ask for too much labor around the holidays, but some respondents added additional thoughts. Here’s what they said.

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Lance Scott Walker, author of DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution, picked Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze by Mellow Brown and DJ Ben Ha Meen with art by Tom Mandrake.

“We have always wondered what would have happened with Hendrix if he had lived past 27 years of age,” he says. “This is a graphic novel that imagines not only what he would have become, and where his principles would have stood, but illustrates what timeless magic and power he had, and how our vision of the future would have evolved if he were still with us.”

DJ Disciple (The Beat, the Scene, the Sound: A DJ’s Journey through the Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of House Music in New York City) picked my favorite-named book of the year, Smokin Jo’s You Don’t Need a Dick to DJ, as well as our friend Matthew Collin’s Dream Machines: Electronic Music in Britain From Doctor Who to Acid House.

“Smokin Jo’s You Don’t Need a Dick to DJ delves into her life from a challenging childhood in 1970s London to becoming a pioneering female DJ in a predominantly male industry,” Disciple explains. “The narrative addresses themes of racism, sexism, and personal struggles, providing an unfiltered look into her ascent in the dance music scene. Jo’s story is both inspiring and candid, shedding light on the obstacles she overcame to achieve success.

Dream Machines, he says, “explores the evolution of electronic music in Britain, from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to the rise of acid house.” We hope to reschedule a postponed conversation with Collin in the new year.

Alison Fensterstock (NPR’s How Women Made Music) picked fellow Music Book Club author Ann Powers’ Traveling: On The Path of Joni Mitchell and Elijah Wald’s Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories.

“I think in different ways they both found back doors and surprising perspectives for telling true stories about music that include/address the listeners and the actual writers of history,” she says. “I love a history that acknowledges how mutable and fluid ‘what really happened’ is, if that makes sense, and they're both so expert at that!”

The amazing Kid Congo Powers (Some New Kind of Kick) picked The Ballad of Speedball Baby: A Memoir by Ali Smith as his favorite music book of the year.

The book “focuses on her being a woman in a man’s Lower East Side scuzz punk world in New York City. Harrowing antics and moving observations of her own self.”

Kid’s co-author Chris Campion recommends Freaks Out!: Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll by Luke Haines.

“That was very good and laugh out loud funny,” he says.

Three of our authors all picked their fellow Music Book Club scribe S.H. Fernando Jr.’s The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast as their favorite music book of 2024: Scott Woods (Prince and Little Weird Black Boy Gods) as well as co-authors Rob Swift and Rasul A. Mowatt (The City of Hip Hop: New York City, The Bronx, and a Peace Meeting). They all have great taste!

Spencer Kornhaber (On Divas: Persona, Pleasure, Power) really enjoyed reading Health and Safety: A Breakdown by Emily Witt.

“Not a full-on music book, maybe, but it's very much about how music and the culture around it can shape a life,” Kornhaber notes.

Last but not least, Music Book Club’s co-producer Carly Eiseman was especially attached to Spencer Kornhaber’s On Divas: Persona, Pleasure, Power and Lili Anorak’s Didion and Babitz. She calls the latter the “most fun book of the year about California culture and rock n’ roll in the ‘60s/’70s.”

As for me, I read 50 books this year for the first time ever, and I truly cannot pick a top favorite! I loved and learned from all the books we featured here this year; they are all helping me improve in my own book projects in some way.

We can’t wait to bring you more in-person and virtual events in 2025. Please keep us in mind if you have any panels, events or festival opportunities that we can join in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, NYC or anywhere else.

Spoiler: I’m also going to start a second book club on a different topic, but more on that soon…