You spin me right ’round, baby
Favorite records are like assholes: everyone has one. But it’s a rare person who knows exactly why a record is his or her favorite. In the case of the four writers who read their work at Powell’s this past Monday, the "why" is everything.
The 33 1/3 series, published by Continuum, features various critics, musicians and writers who pick their favorite albums and write about them any way they want. The novella-length books can be fiction, memoir, criticism, whatever. It’s all up to the writer.
Colin Meloy, better known as the lead singer for the band The Decemberists, and sounding like a punk-literate David Sedaris, read from his memoir inspired by the Replacements’ Let It Be. The section he read concerned his attempts as a middle-schooler to ingratiate himself into his school’s skater/punk crowd.
Next came Douglas Wolk, who read from his book on James Brown’s Live at the Apollo, deftly using a CD player to play-call-and-response with his writing. When Wolk mentioned the chilly weather in Harlem the night of the concert, on cue James Brown screamed, "It’s cold outside!"
During the Q & A session after the reading, all of the writers admitted that while the albums they had chosen were certainly among their favorites, there were certain records they loved that they couldn’t imagine taking apart or critiquing. Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks was at the top of most of their lists as one record that’s almost impossible to dissect. All of the writers also explained that they couldn’t imagine listening to the albums they wrote about until at least a couple years had passed, teaching us that if a record is your all-time desert island favorite, you might be better off writing about your second favorite album.