The latest contributor to Writers Read: Jim DeRogatis, the pop music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, the co-host of Public Radio’s “Sound Opinions,” the world’s only rock ’n’ roll talk show, and the author of several books about music, including Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic and Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma’s Fabulous Flaming Lips.His entry begins:
By necessity, as part of the music beat, I read almost all of the major pop-music books published in a given year, often because I have to reviVisit the website of Jim DeRogatis to read his Chicago Sun-Times blog and recent articles (including album reviews of R.E.M.'s Accelerate and Gnarls Barkley's Odd Couple), and to learn more about his books and other projects.ew them; these can range from the ridiculous (one recent assignment was to tackle Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga by Ian Christe) to the, um, if not exactly sublime (the four greatest rock books ever: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs; Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story by Nick Tosches; The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth, and The Night (Alone: a novel) by Richard Meltzer), than at least the slightly less ridiculous (Clapton: The Autobiography or Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan).
When it comes to reading for sheer pleasure, however, along with sucking up every issue of The New Yorker, I devour almost anything I can get my hands on in thetotally unrelated realm of military campaigns and the politics and social movements behind them, ranging from almost-current affairs... [read on]
Writers Read: Jim DeRogatis.
--Marshal Zeringue
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