33 1/3 Greatest Hits, Volume 1: v. 1

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By far the biggest name in the 33 1/3 roster of writers, Jonathan Lethem is no music critic, but an award-winning fiction writer whose novels Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude indulge long passages about pop music. His take on Talking Heads’ 1979 album forgoes fiction for first-person criticism, in which Lethem’s teenage self acts as a sympathetic protagonist. Even as he plumbs each song on Fear of Music for meaning and significance, he uses the album as a point against which he can measure his own growth as a listener, becoming older and wiser and hungrier for connection with each year and with each listen. The most unlikely album made the best 33 1/3: Celine Dion isn’t usually afforded the same respect as a Bob Dylan or a Joni Mitchell, but Carl Wilson uses her populist art and personal history to ask questions about class, taste, and race in an effort to figure out how one of the most popular singers in the world could be loved and hated in equal measure. The answers he finds aren’t always comfortable, but that only makes them more important and crucial to criticism in the 21st century. Originally published by Continuum, [3] the series was founded by editor David Barker in 2003. [1] At the time, Continuum published a series of short books on literature called Continuum Contemporaries. One-time series editor Ally-Jane Grossan mentioned that Barker was "an obsessive music fan who thought, 'This is a really cool idea, why don't we apply this to albums'. [3] PopMatters wrote that the range consists of "obscure classics to more usual suspects by the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones". [1]

Chapman is also an academic from Dunedin. But I’m more aware of his publishing, and have enjoyed some of his books a great deal. Sometimes there’s a mere surface skim, but always there’s the combination of academia and fan with Chapman, and I think that might be the perfect vibe for 33 1/3. It’s palpable that he had his world changed by seeing Alistair Riddell drip from the TV, sartorial and slightly gender-bender-y (for the time at least, in little old New Zealand). If we know anything about Dr Chapman, it’s that he’s a glam fanatic. And in the right way, this is also a book about himself. The best of the 33 1/3 books always situate the writer within the subject, it’s correct for the authors to put themselves right there in the text. You are reading as much for how the person writing discovered the album as you are for nuts-and-bolts stories around the making. Chapman gives you it all, or as much as he can give. A mix of digging through what’s already written, and fresh interviews with all the principals. It’s also a story of implosion – one album and then done. Band members heading off for success in other directions (Eddie Rayner of course with Split Enz, and drummer Brent Eccles first with Australian act, The Angles and then as artist manager and tour promoter with both Brett Eccles Entertainment and Frontier Touring). Riddell remaining a mercurial presence, written off in various ways by various people as a Bowie pastiche and a one-hit-wonder to boot. Chapman points out with a fan’s love that Riddell did Bowie better than almost anyone else, and also grabbed from a bunch of places New Zealanders in the mid-70s weren’t really looking (Van der Graaf Generator). And if there was really only one radio hit on the album there was certainly more substance than just that. I found this book charming and compelling. Which is exactly the space I want to end up in when reading a 33 1/3. In 2010, Continuum was bought out by Bloomsbury Publishing, which continues to publish the series. [3] Following a leave, Barker was replaced by Grossan in January 2013. [2] Leah Babb-Rosenfeld has been the editor of the series since 2016. [4]A: This time around we’re asking that you do not re-submit proposals. However, feel free to submit one on a different album. We are so excited to finally be able to announce our selections from the 2022 33 1/3 open call. We know that it feels like a long time since the submission window closed, but we’ve been hard at work reading through proposals, sending them on to external advisors*, discussing internally, getting in touch with authors, and making the projects official. So without further delay, here is the list of new titles:

I mostly really liked this. I like Matthew Bannister as a writer. I think his original memoir Positively George Street is absolutely one of the best NZ music books; it’s written with a delightful honesty – so much so that some of the Flying Nun stalwarts took offence. And now we have all these gushy Flying Nun books clogging the shelves, trying to tell “the real story” as a result. Bannister, a musician (Sneaky Feelings, The Changing Same, Dribbling Darts of Love, solo) was also briefly connected to The Mutton Birds, playing with them in their final iteration before the band imploded. So, he’s very close to the subject. But not too close. He compiles fresh interviews with Don McGlashan, Harry Sinclair and Jennifer Ward-Lealand and gives a great cultural context for The Front Lawn’s multimedia weirdness popping up like a pimple on the unexpectant face of late-80s New Zealand. He walks us through the album song by song, as you’d hope in this case (and often expect across the series) and he doesn’t drip too heavy in academia. Though there’s also not a whole lot to learn here, it’s more a survey. That said, it's pretty enjoyable. And I love this album so much that I wanted to cling to anything written about it. I wish he’d gone slightly deeper into his own love of the album, his own discovery. One thing that I hope the editors clarify is whether or not the series is still considering non-academic proposals. I have always liked that the 33 1/3 series welcomes a variety of approaches. There are ‘Making Of’ books like “69 Love Songs” and “Chocolate and Cheese.” There are literary approaches like “Master of Reality,” “Meat is Murder,” and Let it Be.” And, of course, there are the academic/analytical titles like “Let’s Talk About Love” and “Dangerous.” A big thanks to our external advisors, who were integral in our selection process: Samantha Bennett, Sean Maloney, boice Terrel-Allen, Sarah Piña, and Ryan Pinkard.

33 1/3

a b c Brown, Harley (February 25, 2015). "How the 33 1/3 Series, In Spite of Two Shrinking Industries, Continues to Thrive". Billboard. Archived from the original on July 26, 2017 . Retrieved May 5, 2016. A: Yes. There are two albums by Radiohead, two by the Beach Boys, two by David Bowie, and two by The Rolling Stones in the series already. A: Yes, in our textbook How To Write About Music there is a chapter titled “How To Pitch a 33 1/3″ that is worth reading. New to this submission round*: A one-line description of the book summing up its scope and content.

a b c Yoder, Anne K. (April 2, 2006). "Introduction and Interview with Series Editor David Barker". PopMatters. Archived from the original on May 22, 2018. Have you read any of the titles? Will you? What are your thoughts on either the individual titles so far, or what great New Zealand album would you most like to read about? Maria Callas's Lyric and Coloratura Arias (33 1/3) Ginger Dellenbaugh: Bloomsbury Academic". Bloomsbury Publishing.Today’s the day! We are thrilled to announce the next batch of 12 books for the 33 1/3 series. From Little Richard to Dolly Parton to Cardi B, we have a variety of new artists and albums to add to the series lineup. We look forward to seeing what our brilliant authors have to say about their music. Several independent books have been spun off of the series. The first, Carl Wilson's 2007 entry on Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love, was expanded for a 2014 Bloomsbury reissue with material not specifically pertaining to the Dion album and retitled Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste. Joe Bonomo, at the invitation of Barker, expanded his 33 + 1⁄ 3 proposal on Jerry Lee Lewis's Live at the Star Club, Hamburg album into a full-length book about Lewis, the album, and his career titled Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, published by Continuum in 2009. A rejected proposal from writer Brett Milano for an entry on Game Theory's 1987 album Lolita Nation was instead expanded by Milano into a biography on the band's leader Scott Miller; that project, titled Don't All Thank Me at Once: The Lost Genius of Scott Miller, was released by 125 Books in 2015. [5]