Best Music Writing 2007

Edited by Robert Christgau

(Da Capo) $15.95.

33 1/3 Greatest Hits, Vol. 2

Edited by David Barker

(Continuum) $15.95.

Musical compilations come in many forms. At best, there’s the
thoughtfully sequenced, carefully selected mixtape given for the sole
purpose of exposing the listener to great music. At worst, there’s the
sampler, a teaser advertisement for a label or stable of artists, made
with the intent of selling the artists’ full-lengths. (Somewhere in
between is the DJ mix and the tribute compilation.) Best Music
Writing 2007, then, is like that mixtape; 33 1/3 Greatest Hits,
Vol. 2 is a sampler.

Fired Village Voice music editor and “Dean of American Rock
Critics” Robert Christgau edits Da Capo’s Best Music Writing
2007, and it’s tempting to read the editorial appointment of such
an old-school heavy as a jab against certain forces in music
criticism—the corporate homogenization of alt-weeklies (hi, New
Times!) or even the rapid rise of new media such as Pitchfork. But
Christgau makes his intentions pretty plain, and they’re not political,
just editorial: “So to be perfectly clear I’ll yell a little: I wanted
the best writing. THE BEST WRITING.“

The obvious highlight here is Jonathan Lethem’s “Being James Brown,”
originally published in Rolling Stone, in which Lethem (Brown
hilariously calls him “Mr. Rolling Stone”) gets a rare glimpse inside
the “hardest-working band in show business” shortly before Brown’s
death. Lethem digs deep into his subject, revealing Brown as absurd
tyrant, perpetually wounded hustler, and supernatural entertainment
machine. Also outstanding is Rob Harvilla’s “Spankmaster and Servant,”
in which the Pitchforker and Christgau’s replacement at the
Voice (see, no politics here) manages an assessment of probably
mentally ill rapper Kool Keith that’s simultaneously gaping-mouthed and
clear-eyed. Also good are Dave Simpson’s attempt to track down the many
axed ax-men and -women of the Fall (entitled “Excuse Me, Weren’t You in
the Fall?”) and Chris Ryan’s satirical, all-caps (“THIS BEING SOME WEB
2.0 SHIT”) take on Jay-Z’s out-of-retirement, midlife, CEO rap. What
makes all of these pieces fine examples of BEST WRITING is that
you don’t need to know about or even like their subjects to enjoy
reading them (although Ryan’s references get a little oblique).

Presumably, 33 1/3 Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 is also looking for
the best music writing, but it has a narrower field to draw from:
installments 21 through 40 of the 33 1/3 series. Each book in the
series examines a single album by a different artist, but each writer
tackles the task differently, ranging from oral history to interview to
effusive rant. As advertisements for the complete books, these 20
selections are compelling; taken on their own, they can seem
frustratingly incomplete. Matthew Stearns’s
caffeine-and-cigarettes-fueled rave for Sonic Youth’s Daydream
Nation‘s magic liminal spaces and life-altering “scariness” is just
building up steam when it abruptly crashes into its own endnotes. The
excerpt of Ben Sisario’s book on Pixies’ Doolittle begins with
enormous promise—a road trip with Black Francis!—but it
ends before even getting around to the Doolittle recording
sessions.

Even at full length, the 33 1/3 series’ tightly framed focus and
track-by-track, session-by-session detail caters to the musical
obsessive in a way that the selections in Best Music Writing don’t. So it’s more tempting to skip around, bypassing less familiar
artists. And when a selection does pique interest, it’s over too soon.
Which means that, just as Best Music Writing succeeds as a
self-contained mix, Greatest Hits succeeds as a sampler,
inspiring the reader to seek out the series’ individual editions.
ERIC GRANDY

The Fox and the Flies: The Secret Life of a Grotesque Master
Criminal

by Charles Van Onselen

(Walker & Company) $34.95.

In the late 1800s, a creeped-out jewel thief, loan shark, gunrunner,
pimp, and possible serial killer tried to keep ahead of the law by
hopping steamships out of London, New York, and Cape Town. Joseph Lis,
aka Joseph Silver, set up his rip-offs and procurement operations in
gambling dens, poolrooms, and cigar stores across four continents,
including a brothel floating down the African coast and a casa de
tolerancia in Rio de Janeiro. A debonair master criminal, Silver
had fine suits, starched collar shirts, a felt hat, a fob watch, and a
handsome face slightly pockmarked by secondary syphilis.

Although he had an edge as one of the first global criminals, and at
times even conned the police with his brazen duplicity, Silver still
spent about nine years in jail in various stretches over his 30-year
life of crime, from his teenage years until he disappeared during the
First World War. During the war Silver left New York and returned to
his hometown in Poland, where he was arrested with several accomplices
by an occupying Austrian force. Sentenced to death for theft and
espionage, it is not known whether the sentence was carried out. But
likely Silver dangled on a rope or was shot since he was never heard
from again after 1918.

Enter our detective, a century later. Charles Van Onselen, a social
historian at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, has
meticulously reconstructed Silver’s life using a variety of sources,
including newspaper accounts and police dossiers, among them the
records from a stretch up the river in New York’s Sing Sing prison.
Silver did two years in the big house on third-degree burglary, but
later he also beat a police bribery rap with the help of a high-priced
attorney. Van Onselen says Silver learned a crucial lesson from that
con: “There was no limit to what a good, well-connected lawyer could
achieve.”

Van Onselen worked on the book on and off for over 20 years. At 607
pages, The Fox and the Flies beautifully illustrates how an
academic can hit his zenith through an obsession with a minor character
who, with a little help from a cunning historian, emerges as a major
player. In this case the player turns out to be a man who, Van Onselen
says, left “a lasting presence on the Western imagination.” In the last
two chapters of the book, Van Onselen makes the (shaky) case that
Joseph Silver was none other than Jack the Ripper. He points out that
throughout his adult life Silver consistently took great pains to
conceal the fact he lived in London’s East End in 1888 when the
notorious serial killer was disemboweling prostitutes—the class
of women Silver exploited, loathed, and at times threatened with death
if they did not pay him “protection” money. Van Onselen lists a dozen
verifiable facts to make his case, and asks: “What then are you,
members of history’s jury, to make of this case?” BOB
ARMSTRONG