Tony Bacon reviews a gathering of '85's musicianly livres

JULIAN COLBECK "Keyfax Guide To Electronic Keyboards" (£5.99). A R DUCHOSSOIR "Guitar Identification: How To Date The Guitars Made by Fender, Gibson, Martin, Gretsch" (£4.95 via Chandler Guitars).

Mr Colbeck is a knowledgeable and critical writer on keyboards, which is why he's recently joined the One Two team of reviewers. His book is not an aid to exam-revising, but an attempt to evaluate virtually every keyboard on the market — and that includes obsolete classics like the Minimoog which can still be picked up second-hand. It's a thorough job, too, and though published a few months back is pretty current: eg the DX21 is here, the Akai sampler isn't.

Of course the mini-reviews are opinions, but brief specs and Julian's inherently sensible approach mean that you come away with a good impression of each item's worth — even if the "Quality/Value" ratings are a little imprecise. As Julian suggests, each keyboard's entry "will either make you run down to your local music store... or simply avoid it like the plague". And there are plenty in both category: none of that useless "everything is wonderful" tack that some so-called surveys we've seen recently have adopted. Run to your local book store.

Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins told me how he'd gone into a specialist vintage guitar shop recently and mentioned to them that he'd got a 1962 Fender Jaguar. "Oh yeah?" they sneered. "What month!" That kind of attitude is ideally served by Mr Duchossoir's book, a guitars-for-stamp-collectors kind of catalogue, wherein is assembled reams of serial number lists, fuzzy pictures of tiny logo lettering differences, densely packed and relatively unattractively presented words, and plenty of other fascinating minutiae.

You certainly have to search for information, but more often than not it's in there somewhere. The researchers can't have been aided by trying to document a maker so evidently haphazard as, say, Gretsch, and certainly the book brings together much previously scattered information. One for the know-all to buy under plain wrapper.


BILLY BERGMAN and RICHARD HORN "Experimental Pop" (£4.95). PETER MANNING "Electronic & Computer Music" (£19.50).

The stories these books tell could be similar, but the routes they end up taking are quite different, both in style and presentation.

Bergman and Horn's work is a brash, American glance at what they loosely call "the new sounds entering all levels of Anglo-American music". As if this was a new phenomenon. And almost, it seems, as if "Anglo-American" music was some pure innocent about to be defiled for the first time. These "sounds" turn out to be just about anything the authors consider unusual: the result is a rag-bag of events, people, compositions, instruments and noises. People who play music will be unsurprised to learn that the authors do not.

Musicians and composers like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson (she appears gaudily on the front of the book), Meredith Monk, John Cage, Edgard Varese and Karlheinz Stockhausen turn up more than most, but the book is on shakier ground when it tries to talk about, y'know, fusion, and comes up with the title-reversal term of "pop experimentalists" for the safe old team (now) of Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, Malcolm McLaren et al. It really tells you very little, although the discographies are useful to point you at the music.

Peter Manning's admirably extensive survey of electronic and computer music treats a broadly similar canvas, but his lines are more carefully and stylishly drawn.

The initial impression is of an academic work: Oxford University Press; a quite outrageous price; author a "Senior Experimental Officer in Music" at Durham University; a conservative, dense typeface; lots of figures; dull cover, and so on.

But Manning is not so dry a writer as this impression might lead you to suspect, and the early historical stuff, at least, had me riveted. Much of the material in those sections is familiar — Telharmoniums, RCA synths, Moogs, and so on — but the story is told in a direct and lucid manner which accurately conveys something of the eccentricity and genius involved.

The story continues to date, through many music-by-numbers computer-ish events, taking in the big research laboratories and campuses, and speaking of many important people's achievements and wishes.

Not exactly a light or cheap read, but a worthwhile one if you make the effort (via the library, perhaps?). Plenty of is-that-so?s are guaranteed, as in the late 1950s Tempophon, a sort of four-headed tape machine that you could quite easily call a seminal sampler and pitch transposer. Is that so? There you are, you see?


ROBERT & CELIA DEARLING "The Guinness Book Of Recorded Sound" (£9.95). ERNST JORGENSEN, ERIK RASMUSSEN, JOHNNY MIKKEL-SEN "Elvis Recording Sessions" (£7.95). MUSIC MASTER Eleventh Edition (£19.95).

Lastly, the facts and figures section. And a Guinness book, natch — oh good! You know, the one you sit with in a room full of pals and keep annoying them every few minutes with: "Ere, did you know that the first film actually recorded with stereophonic sound was Walt Disney's 'Fantasia', premiered in 1941 using Altec's multiple speaker system?" And then: "Ere, did you know that a dog barks quite distinctly during Ormandy's recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Scheherazade', Columbia ML4089?" Whereupon your chums say, "As opposed to Stockhausen's 'Scheherazade'?" and collectively walk out.

Actually, the Guinness book could be accurately re-titled "...Of Mostly Classical Recorded Sound", although a number of largely token poppy, rockish things squeeze into the chapters (on Edison, cylinders, discs, electrical recording, biggest, longest, shortest, and all that). We learn, for example, that Zig Zag magazine gets its name from "Zig Zag Wanderer" by the good Captain Beefheart, so all is not lost.

Personally, I can't put the Guinness book down.

"Ere, did you know that the largest records ever made were the 20in Pathe Grand series of 1906?"

The Elvis book is quite remarkable. It appears to catalogue in minute detail every single utterance, out-take, false start, live recording, TV special, master take, mistake and jam session ever committed to tape by the royal singer and his cronies.

The brave Scandinavian trio of authors have been putting it all together since 1970, mainly it would seem by rifling through record company files and obviously by listening to months and months of recordings — a big help must have been RCA producer Joan Deary, who even as we speak is still slowly working her way through that company's miles of Presley tape.

Everything that's listable is listed. The first is "I Love You Because", recorded at Sun studio, Memphis, in July 1954, master take number g2wb1086, this take released January 1974 on CLP1 0341, the Moore/Black/Presley trio backed by drummer Johnny Bernero and produced by Sam Phillips. The last is "Unchained Melody", recorded at Rushmore Civic Center, Rapid City on 21st June 1977 as part of a soundtrack for CBS TV's "Elvis In Concert", master take number gpa5 0443, released on PB11212, a large band and orchestra including guitarist James Burton and produced by Felton Jarvis.

In between is a fascinating document for anyone interested in studio practice in the 1950s and 1960s. Yup, we repeat, a remarkable book. We await "Shakin' Stevens Recording Sessions" with interest.

"Ere, did you know that Elvis' biggest selling record is "It's Now Or Never", released 1960, which has sold well in excess of 20 million copies worldwide?"

And lastly, honestly, to "Music Master", the latest (annual) whacking great tome listing every record and tape "generally available from British record companies". Seventy thousand items, they assure us (we haven't quite finished checking) on 1332 pages, in alphabetical artist mode — from Lee Aaron to Z6. Blimey, it's got everything! Cor! What is the point! Moral? Call your group Z7 and get in next year's mention.

"Ere, did you know that the most exhaustive and ambitious single-nation, multi-company record catalogue was 'Der Grosse Schallplatten Katalog', the first issue of which was dated 1967 and weighted 8lbs 9oz?"

Turn over.