I recently purchased Our Band Could Be Your Life, Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad and, while I have only read the chapters about bands I'm more familiar with (Sonic Youth, The Minutemen, etc.), I have really been enjoying it.

This got me wondering what other books about music would be good reads. As summer approaches, I am all for hearing good book suggestions. Any ideas?

I hope this hasn't already been discussed, but I don't think it has.

man, the board is DEAD.

how about "please kill me" by legs mcneil. i haven't read this, but no one will shut up about it once it's mentioned in conversation, so i plan to soon.

info:
"As its sensationalist title suggests, this stresses the sex, drugs, morbidity and celebrity culture of punk at the expense of the music. Starting out with the electroshock therapy Lou Reed received as a teenager, working through such watersheds as the untimely deaths by overdose or mishap of Sid Vicious, Johnny Thunders and Nico, as well as the complicated sexual escapades of the likes of Dee Dee Ramone, the portrayal here of the birth of an alternative culture is intermittently entertaining and often depressing. McNeil, one of the founding writers of the original 'zine, Punk, in 1975 , is certainly qualified to tell this tale. But the book's take on punk rock as "doing anything that's gonna offend a grown-up" overemphasizes the self-destructive side of the movement. Details of Iggy Pop's drug abuse and seedy sex with groupies receive more attention than important bands such as Television and Blondie, which had comparatively puritan lifestyles. Constructed as an oral history, the book weaves together personal accounts by the crucial players in the scene, many of whom seem to have been so drugged out most of the time that their reliability is questionable. McNeil and McCain (Tilt) provide a vivid look at the volatile and needy personalities who created punk, if they do not offer perceptive musical or cultural analysis."

In my experience, the two books mentioned are first and second by a mile, in terms of popularity in "our subculture."