Let It Be (33 1/3) [Paperback]

Colin Meloy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2004

One of the greatest moments of College Rock in the 1980s, Let It Be had a huge impact on the fans who fell under its spell. For Colin Meloy, growing up in Montana – a state that’s strangely missing from the tour itineraries of almost every band – the album was a lifeline and an inspiration. In this disarming memoir, Meloy lovingly recreates those feverish first years when rock music grips you and never lets go. EXCERPT The fact that the Replacements had to endure that sort of Midwestern environment while trying to keep up a hard-case punk-rock image really appealed to my predicament. That they had to live through 40 below winters and frozen pipes, while surrounded by what I perceived as being a wholesome cultural backwater, brought the Replacements closer to me, closer to Montana. They seemed like the kind of band that could be practicing in my garage, my basement, and still be crunching out the same indelible music.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Frontman for the band the Decembrists, Meloy reflects on his teenage discovery of the rock ethos and early appreciation of the Replacements, to whose work he was introduced by his uncle. Oddly, Meloy doesn't go into much detail about the recording of the album Let It Be. Instead, he offers an interesting coming-of-age story as an appropriate salute to an album and a band that were a consuming passion for him at an impressionable age. A nice period piece. Mike Tribby
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Review

"Willed or not, Meloy seems vulnerable in Let It Be, the 16th entry of 33 1/3's essays on really important albums series. The books typically boast chip-on-shoulder critical rigor; by contrast, Meloy reduces Let It Be to a small but crucial role in his own coming-of-age memoir. First reounting his purchase of the album as a grade-schooler, Meloy then concentrates on his punky, homoerotic adolescence in cornfed, homophobic Montana. In each anecdote, Let It Be plays deus ex machina, swooping down to rescue the young Meloy from his identity crises. These are solid short-short stories with bona fide epiphanies—that they shed light on Meloy's past only makes them more engaging." —Nick Sylvester, Village Voice, 1/11/05 (Nick Sylvester )

"Meloy is a student of fiction and his imaginative songs for The Decemberists document just that. But here, Meloy treats his affiliation with Let It Be as a metaphor for youth, his experience surrounding it almost a bildungsroman-all through the use of memoir. Meloy's voice is similar to that of David Sedaris, finding comedy in small things, finding uplift in sadness. In Meloy's remembrances we recall what it is to discover music, to fall in love with it (as many of us did before we fell in love with people, leaving the music of our youth our only true first love). This one's a keeper. —Zack Adcock, The Hub Weekly, 1/13/05

"Meloy skirts any sort of criticism or analysis of the Replacements' Let It Be, focusing instead on how the album fueled his love for music and performance in a memoir of his Montana childhood—guaranteeing frustration for Mats fans and glee for Decemberists fans." —Mark Baumgarten, Willamette Week, 1/5/05

"Growing up in cultural isolation in Montana means that whatever creative influences you encounter are ones you found yourself. For a young music fan, it's frustrating: no one tours there, cool people leave, etc. So when you run into something like The Replacements' seminal Let It Be, it's akin to water in the desert. If you're Meloy, leader of the Decembrists, it can change the direction of your life. This book won't tell you much about Let it Be or The Replacements, but it well conveys the grip that something like "Sixteen Blue" can have on a person- and why. When Paul Westerberg singe "Meet me anyplace or anywhere or anytime" in "I Will Dare," it can resonate like a call in the dark. Meloy recounts finding a shrine in the band at the 400 Club in Minneapolis in 2003, and his reaction is priceless. A great record becomes an active, emotional experience that stays with you forever. For Meloy, it helped in setting the course of his future, and he expresses how and why in a compelling, engaging style." The Big Takeover

"Willed or not, Meloy seems vulnerable in Let It Be, the 16th entry of 33 1/3's essays on really important albums series. The books typically boast chip-on-shoulder critical rigor; by contrast, Meloy reduces Let It Be to a small but crucial role in his own coming-of-age memoir. First reounting his purchase of the album as a grade-schooler, Meloy then concentrates on his punky, homoerotic adolescence in cornfed, homophobic Montana. In each anecdote, Let It Be plays deus ex machina, swooping down to rescue the young Meloy from his identity crises. These are solid short-short stories with bona fide epiphanies—that they shed light on Meloy's past only makes them more engaging." —Nick Sylvester, Village Voice, 1/11/05 (, )

“Growing up in cultural isolation in Montana means that whatever creative influences you encounter are ones you found yourself. For a young music fan, it’s frustrating: no one tours there, cool people leave, etc. So when you run into something like The Replacements’ seminal Let It Be, it’s akin to water in the desert. If you’re Meloy, leader of the Decembrists, it can change the direction of your life. This book won’t tell you much about Let it Be or The Replacements, but it well conveys the grip that something like “Sixteen Blue” can have on a person- and why. When Paul Westerberg singe “Meet me anyplace or anywhere or anytime” in “I Will Dare,” it can resonate like a call in the dark. Meloy recounts finding a shrine in the band at the 400 Club in Minneapolis in 2003, and his reaction is priceless. A great record becomes an active, emotional experience that stays with you forever. For Meloy, it helped in setting the course of his future, and he expresses how and why in a compelling, engaging style.” The Big Takeover

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 118 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (August 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826416330
• ISBN-13: 978-0826416339
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #153,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Stuff, May 21, 2006

By 

harold 77 (orlando,fl usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Let It Be (33 1/3) (Paperback)

Colin Melroy writes off discovering the Replacements through a mix tape made by his Uncle. If you are looking for a breakdown of the albumn Let It Be this book is not for you. What this book did for me is bring back the joy of discovering a new song on a cassete mix tape made by someone. Then going out and trying to find the whole albumn. This book is great for discribing how amazing it is to find a new artist when you are stuck in a small town where the artist will never get airplay. Meloys discovery of the Replacements by way of his Uncles' tape is parelell to how the early 80's indie bands gained thier fans. Someone who heard them on a college stations passes along the music to a friend who would never get the chance to her them without the mix tape. Very good book about the joy of dicovering music in your early teen years.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly fresh, January 23, 2005

By 

Caleb Boyd (Centreville, al United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Let It Be (33 1/3) (Paperback)

I ordered this book because I am taking a class in Pop Music. Our instructor asked us to read one book from the 33 1/3 series and to prepare a short presentation on the book. I chose this book on The Replacements "Let It Be" album.

I expected the book to be a schematic on each of the album's tracks. I was happy that the book was small (just slightly over 100 pages), because I didn't feel ready to read a huge tome deconstructing one Replacements record. I was surprised to find that this book is written by Colin Meloy, lead singer of the Decemberists, a band that I had decided I liked around the same time that I had discovered the Replacements.

This book does not deconstruct each lyric of the album and explain any kind of broad sociological or musicological meaning. This book is more a short autobiography of Meloy himself, but he never strays from explaining the soundtrack of his life as he ages from middle school to high school. And the Replacements were always a big part of his adolescence to early adulthood. Meloy explains how the album affected his own life: how he came to discover the Replacements, how he took the album with him on bus trips with his basketball team, how he shut out the world during play practices and listened to "Androgynous" while others rehearsed, how he cried while feeling rejected by his classmates and listening to "Unsatisfied."

Meloy writes the book from the perspective of a listener, not a musician, journalist or amateur musicologist. His style makes this book appropriate for any reader, because all readers are also listeners.

I highly recommend this book to any music lover, whatever your tastes may be. Listeners from every niche of the music matrix can glean something from this. All listeners understand the power that music, or even one record, can have on a person's life. The point is not how many albums were sold, or how many singles went gold or platinum but rather what the music means to the listener. And Meloy understands this.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Soundtrack: Decemberists, not Replacements, October 8, 2006

By 

J. Curtis - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Let It Be (33 1/3) (Paperback)

I'm a huge fan of the Decemberists, and have never heard this Mats record - probably for the best, as the book is really an evocation of Colin Meloy's childhood, not a consideration of the album. As a biography, it's lovely, both quirky (when he and a friend play a video game, they "compete for the affections of a pixellated geisha") and universal enough to recall your own uneasy surburban adolescence, if you had one. It's the perfect length and the perfect format. My one problem: lack of editorial oversight. Weird, continuous homophone problems, like "a rye smile" and the "bow of a tree," could have ruined the book if it weren't otherwise so charming.