Words on words on music

I've been meaning to write something about Colin Meloy's book on the Replacements' Let it Be for months now. It's part of Continuum's series of books about major rock albums; I've reviewed two others elsewhere. Meloy's one of a few rockers who's contributed an entry to this series: Joe Pernice, Franklin Bruno, and Bill Janovitz have all chimed in on the authorial side of things as well. Meloy's book resonated deeply for me (in the same way that a lot of his songs do) because of its admission of, well, being someone who essentially stumbled into music.

Meloy takes the route here of writing about the album by evoking his life during the time around when he first heard Let It Be -- and thus, this 120-odd-page book is more memoir than anything else. And he captures, remarkably well, the feeling of buying a record when no one else you knew had heard of the bands you dug, of hearing something that sounded so alien, so far removed from anything you were familiar with, that it was positively thrilling. I can relate: I essentially stumbled into underground music, initially baffled by a friend's explanation of hardcore but fascinated by, say, Fugazi's Repeater. Meloy doesn't put on a jaded, seen-it-all persona here; he's charming and awkward and painfully honest. They're the same qualities that make the best songs he's written so memorable, and this book -- while it does evoke the college-rock hereoes of yesteryear -- also helps explain to a large extent the roots of Meloy's own music.