Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003
Guest Editor: Matt Groening, Series Editor: Paul Bresnick
Da Capo Press, 312 pages, $16.95

Some of the stories behind the music can be as inspiring as the music itself. Take the case of James Brown. Philip Gourevitch, in "Mr. Brown" from The New Yorker, sketches Brown’s tough, lonely upbringing in the woods, his criminal delinquency from childhood to (that famous) car chase, his earliest crawling-on-the-floor performances, where he screamed "Please, Please, Please," and the blatant capitalism and measured activism that have marked his lengthy, tumultuous career. Interviewing and getting to know Brown wasn’t simple, as Gourevitch explains:

In her story "Play It Like Your Hair’s on Fire" for GQ, writer Elizabeth Gilbert meets Tom Waits at an old inn in Sonoma County, CA, near the secret location where Waits lives in the countryside. Gilbert is a huge fan of Waits, and they hit it off. In her revealing article, Gilbert discusses Waits’ fixation with dads and old people after his father left him when he was a youngster. From then on, he pretended to be an older man. Waits tells the drunken story of his falling in love with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and their hastily planned 1 a.m. wedding a few months later. After jabbering for hours, Waits invites Gilbert to go to his favorite place, the dump, and she’s thrilled. But he then realizes that it’s late and his wife is probably wondering where he is, while Gilbert has a plane to catch in San Francisco. "I still have 15 minutes before I have to leave," she says. But it’s a no go. "Fifteen minutes would be an insult to the dump," says Waits.

Another knockout feature is Terry McDermott’s "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" from the Los Angeles Times Magazine, which tells the story of how gangster-rap forefathers N.W.A. changed the face of rap music for better or for worse. It’s one of those reverential, detailed, humble-beginnings-to-great-stardom tales that makes you want to find their old records and play them.

Similar in its close-up look at a bunch of fuckups who overcome poverty and tragedy to create significant music, is Jay McInerney’s New Yorker essay "White Man at the Door." McInerney is a friend of Matthew Johnson’s, the head of Fat Possum Records, who once sold him a car, which he later found out was stolen when his wife was pulled over by a Tennessee state trooper. Johnson created his record label to record the last of the original Mississippi bluesmen.

In McInerney’s story, which hits every note perfectly, we meet R.L. Burnside, Johnson’s biggest success story, who admits that he once murdered a man. In court, the judge asked Burnside if he intended to kill the man. "It was between him and the Lord, him dyin’," said Burnside. "I just shot him in the head." Later, T-Model Ford, who’s even more crooked than Burnside and also a murderer, is introduced. Both Ford and Burnside have endured incredible suffering throughout their lives. Ford was beaten so badly by his father that he lost a testicle when he was 11, while most of Burnside’s family was murdered in separate homicides in Chicago. Of course, these two are responsible for the most stirring blues, and might have gone undiscovered if Johnson, also a perpetual mess, had never gone searching for them.

Since it covers such varied ground, Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003 will likely inspire the reader to seek out a lot of new music. One of the more useful pieces, "Rocking Around the Clock" from Vanity Fair, has Elvis Costello suggesting listening to music every hour of the day.

Among the book’s most amusing articles is an uncredited piece that pokes fun at the indie-rock scene. The Onion article, titled "37 Record Store Clerks Feared Dead in Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster," is pitch-perfect: