Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed [Paperback]

Kim Cooper (Editor), David Smay (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0415969980 | ISBN-13: 978-0415969987 | Edition: 1

Do you remember these great pop stars and their hits? Deerhoof's The Man, The King, The Girl , Butch Hancock's West Texas Waltzes and Dust Blown Tractor Tunes or Swamp Dogg's Cuffed, Collared and Tagged ? You will when you read Lost in the Grooves . Illustrated by cult comic book artist, Tom Neely, this fascinating guide to the back alleys of the pop music superhighway will send readers on a nostalgic trip to earlier years. Pop music history is full of little-known musicians, whose work stands defiantly alone, too quirky, distinctive or demented to appeal to a mass audience. This book explores the nooks and crannies of the pop music world, unearthing lost gems from should-have-been major artists (Sugarpie DeSanto, Judee Sill) and revisits lesser known works by established icons (Marvin Gaye's post-divorce kiss-off album, Here my Dear ; The Ramones' Subterranean Jungle ). It also spotlights musicians who simply don't fit neatly into specific categories, such as K. McCarty and Exuma. The book's encyclopedic structure throws off strange sparks as disparate genres and eras rub against each other: folk-psych iconoclasts face louche pop crooners; outsider artists set their odd masterpieces down next to obscurities from the stars; lo-fi garage rock pairs up with the French avant-garde; and roots rock weirdos trip over bubblegum. As such, this nostalgic collection will delight any jukebox junkie or pop culture fan.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For the past 12 years, the L.A.-based magazine Scram has championed the work of musicians who might otherwise fly beneath the mainstream critical radar. Here, Scram co-editors Cooper and Smay display the sense of fun that distinguished their previous collection, Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth, in an immensely entertaining, informative and sometimes exasperating encyclopedia, in which more than 75 contributors offer over 250 entries (a series of "miniature love letters") about their favorite artists and albums. With praise offered for works by Captain Beefheart alongside the Cowsills, no genre or artist is considered outside the sphere of this book’s interests: a sampling from the "Ks" includes late-’60s pop master Andy Kim, mid-’90s blues minimalist Junior Kimbrough, early-’70s conceptual art-rockers King Crimson and an overlooked 1971 masterpiece by the Kinks, Muswell Hillbillies, which influenced plenty an alt-country boy. While most of the albums and artists fall into the vast category that is pop music, there are also interesting offerings in the areas of Latin jazz (Cal Tjader), dub reggae (Scientist) and soul (Swamp Dogg). Spirited, knowledgeable writing by rockers (Meat puppets drummer Derrick Bostrom), novelists (Rick Moody and George Pelecanos) and a host of self-proclaimed music geeks might actually make you want to go out and buy Buckner & Garcia’s Pac-Man Fever.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Lost in the Grooves is a genre-surfing Smithsonian of overlooked musical marvels. Without fetishizing obscurity for its own sake, the Guide sidesteps cynical cool vs. uncool upsmanship and celebrates castoffs -- by both the forgotten and the famous -- which exude trend-transcending merit. Each entry compels you to seek out the music. -- Irwin Chusid, WFMU DJ and author of Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music
Caprice is everything, and SCRAM's lost grooves are a music geek's very heaven. The zinester spirit of lauding the officially uncool lives on in this eminently dip-worthy collection. -- Barney Hoskyns, author and editor of Rock's Backpages, The Online Library of Rock & Roll
Kim Cooper and David Smay have scored again with their invaluable guide to the best sounds you've never heard. Impeccably researched, refreshingly subjective, they almost make being obscure as much fun as being rich and famous. Of course, they forgot to mention my band.. -- Blag Dahlia of The Dwarves
Scram is truly a resource for those musicians just outside the windows of top-forty-land, those songwriters and guitar slingers looking for an outlet for their own particular brand of art. Accordingly, Lost in the Grooves takes up where Scram leaves off -- a compilation of ruminations from 75 critics and music aficionados detailing their favorite slices of the scene... Lost in the Grooves is not a book for fans mad about one band or one particular singer. Instead, this is a book for the serious music fan, for those serious students of the art form curious about who-influenced-who and what sound rose out of what region. Like turning on a radio station and listening to a feverish wounded-voiced DJ tell you the reason behind every record you never heard, there's 20 new things to be learned on every page here
. -- Electric Review
What makes Lost in the Grooves a real groovy read is the honest passion its contributors exhibit for their lost-and-found faves.

. -- Mojo Magazine
Music trivia fans who enjoy the offbeat and odd get all the stories behind these selected notables-but-not-greats. Highly recommended
. -- Bookwatch

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (November 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415969980
• ISBN-13: 978-0415969987
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,473,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My most recent book is "Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In The Aeroplane Over the Sea'" (Continuum 33 1/3). I co-edited the anthologies "Lost in the Grooves" and "Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth," and edit Scram, a journal of unpopular culture. With my husband Richard Schave I lead curious souls on Esotouric's offbeat bus tours into the secret heart of Los Angeles (The Real Black Dahlia, Raymond Chandler's LA, John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill, Blood & Dumplings, East Side Babylon). I created the team time travel blogs 1947project, On Bunker Hill and In SRO Land, which offer alternate histories of early Los Angeles. My campaign to save the historic 76 Balls from destruction resulted in ConocoPhillips agreeing to donate the gas station signs to museums nationwide. Check out my 90-something grandparents' amazing video blog at http://www.the-ogs.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful source for overlooked joys!, January 31, 2005

By 

Edwin Letcher "Rama Lama Ding Dong Devil" (Lincoln Heights) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed (Paperback)

Reading Lost in the Grooves is the most fun and uniquely informative thing I have done in the last few months. Kim Cooper has been a fan of what she calls "unpopular culture" from the time she realized that "good" and "marketable" are often not synonymous. Her magazine, Scram has championed guilty pleasures such as Boyce and Hart records and TV chimp shows for years. David Smay and Kim collaborated to put out Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, which explored one of their shared maligned obsessions. They used the same modus operandi of soliciting music lovers to share their thoughts on what turns them on in this latest book venture. They asked a number of people who review records, for a wide variety of music publications, to talk about records they feel deserved more acclaim and acceptance than were initially bestowed upon them. Their picks, naturally, are anything but another "greatest hits" or "best of" list. I have discovered several records I had missed out on until now (Bee Gees - Mr. Natural and Johnny Cash - Bitter Tears) and will be checking out others when time and budget allow. If you're the kind of person who won't listen to anything that wasn't a number one radio hit, this won't interest you. If you are open minded and always looking for hidden treasures, you will find Lost in the Grooves to be a rare delight.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks Mom!, January 31, 2005

By 

James Thomas Neely "tomN!" (LA, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed (Paperback)

I'm a bit biased, since i was involved, but i really loved reading this book while trying to decide what i would illustrate. I've always considered my record collection to be diverse and obscure, but this book introduced me to a ton of new music (a lot of which is hard to find). It's an encyclopedic-style index of really obscure records with reviews written by all kinds of writers, critics, musicians, etc. The great thing is it's written without all the snobbery of many obsucure record collectors. This book loves the bizarre, ugly and ridiculous forgotten records without irony or shame.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Capricious," my friends, not "Ultimate" or "Definitive", July 20, 2006

By 

paul pirate (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed (Paperback)

The great late Lester Bangs would have loved, and hated, but above all enjoyed this book immensely. That is, after all, the point - a series of doors to (mostly) forgotten records (then again, it's all in the viewing - Captain Beefheart's "Safe as Milk" is pretty well-known already to anyone who cares). The reader may disagree, or smile with recognition, or realize that a small goldmine has been spotted and may be worth investigating. Much of the writing is informative and/or hilarious, some so-so, some a bit too coy - but, my word, people, It's Only Rock n' Roll (and a few other genres) and I Like It, and so does every writer here. Better, too, that this is a compilation of voices, not Siskel / Ebert (r.i.p.) / Roper with everything (or even Lester, as varied as his approaches could be). And I realize that $14 is a lot of money for a paperback, or it was twenty-five years ago - get real on that count (no one likes inflation, but, but...hope your local library has it, then). It's a great book for any place one expects to sit or lounge for a while, and can be read in no order whatsover. In other words, a "fun read!" Now, don't fret, just enjoy....