If you haven't heard of the 33-1/3 Series of books, each of which explores a single influential album of the past forty years, you really should check 'em out. It's an awesome concept and some of the titles are brilliant. I've been buying one of the books, ripping or downloading the album it covers, and then listening to the recording on my iPod at night as I read the text. Most of the books are written so that each chapter covers a track on the album. It's fun to read about a song's context, composition, and recording and then listen to it. It can really get you inside the music in a very deep, insightful way.

I just finished the book for David Bowie's Low. Check out this teaser for it:

"'One day I blew my nose and half my brains came out.' Los Angeles, 1976. David Bowie is holed up in his Bel-Air mansion, drifting into drug-induced paranoia and confusion. Obsessed with black magic and the Holy Grail, he's built an altar in the living room and keeps his fingernail clippings in the fridge. There are occasional trips out to visit his friend Iggy Pop in a mental institution. His latest album is the cocaine-fuelled Station To Station (Bowie: "I know it was recorded in LA because I read it was"), which welds R&B rhythms to lyrics that mix the occult with a yearning for Europe, after three mad years in the New World.

Bowie has long been haunted by the angst-ridden, emotional work of the Die Brucke movement and the Expressionists. Berlin is their spiritual home, and after a chaotic world tour, Bowie adopts this city as his new sanctuary. Immediately he sets to work on Low, his own expressionist mood-piece."

It's ironic that this album is called Low, 'cause, in my opinion, it and the other Berlin albums represent Bowie's creative high watermark. Great stuff in here about the making of Iggy Pop's "The Idiot" as well (I never realized to what extent these two albums were tied together) and the beginnings of Bowie and Eno's amazing collaborations.

The 33-1/3 books are pocket-sized and brief, like an extended essay/meditation on the album. This makes them sometimes frustrating, as you frequently are found wanting at the end. They're also very personalized (the publisher gives the authors some latitude in each volume's tone and style), which can make them feel very uneven. Some are more intimate in feel, others more historical/scholarly, and some are both in the same book. But ultimately, I think they have the formula just right and have created a truly unique history of significant late 20th century popular music.