100 Books Like Lost Highway

DIY. Do-it-yourself. An ethos that seems simple enough now, but it was a revolution that started in underground music and eventually changed popular culture.

These in-the-trenches perspectives by bands that were immensely influential spoke directly to the eco-system of clubs, stores, bands, labels, and artists that I later tapped into with my label.

An almost inadvertent “How-To” primer for someone like me, who was disinterested in what the arbiters of popular culture were trying to sell.

Often written in the crude, frequently profane, street lingo of mid-century Chicago, I could smell the cigar smoke and cheap likker, and hear the crackling amps and heated arguments in the recording studios and street corner bars.

I was totally immersed in the Nelson Algren vibe as the book described the bare-knuckle, world-changing events surrounding one of the great American music labels EVER, as some of the greatest music—the linchpins of rock and roll—were being birthed in a figure-it-out-as-you-go Chicago way.

At a time when anything that smacked of “punk rock” was dismissed as prurient, insignificant, and, ultimately, irrelevant, Greil hit me as something of a philosopher king.

He lent legitimacy and heft to the premise that I intuitively felt—but couldn’t articulate—that punk rock was more than offending the masses with loud music, torn clothes, and spiky hair. Rather, it was a deeper phenomenon that reverberated throughout our cultural landscape with a rich history behind it.

This was a welcome affirmation for me that this music, this lifestyle, could be a genuine agent of lasting social change.

Like most people, I thought songs were songs. They were just there, as they always had been. I didn’t think much of their provenance or their context.

This book popped my brain wide open and hipped me that all those benign, been-there-forever items in the Great American Songbook were haunted by the ghosts of a country founded under some troubling circumstances. It is an endlessly fascinating and eerie dig through the graveyards of our shared musical heritage.

I will never hear the songs he shines a lantern light on in the same way again. 

I have known the amazing author Danyel Smith for over 15 years. At first, I only knew her through her incredible writing, but I grew to know her personally when she hired me as a Managing Editor at Vibe magazine when she was the Editor-in-Chief. During that time, I was able to personally witness her knowledge of music and the entertainment industry, as well as her unwavering passion for storytelling behind the music. 

Her new book, Shine Bright, which she has been writing for more than five years, seems so fitting as part of her journey. Described as “a weave of biography, criticism, and memoir” it’s a history of Black women’s music as the foundational story of American pop.

In the first of two books, Stiefvater introduces us to Deirdre, an accomplished teen musician who has just met the mysterious Luke—who just happens to be a faerie that none of her friends or family can see. Oh, and he’s also an assassin. Caught between a mundane life of music recitals, school, and her family on one side, and the dangerous world of faerie on the other, what’s a girl to do? As a nerd and a loner growing up, what I wouldn’t have given for a secret faerie friend who dragged me into a world of magic and danger! Although Stiefvater has gone on to write more complex novels, her faerie duology will always have a place in my heart.

More music-and-magic—this one is an alternate history, part of a series set in the invented European country of Alpennia that explores the lives of a community of queer women in the early 19th century. While not exactly a romance, Mother of Souls focuses on the relationship between Serafina, who can see magic, and Luzie, who has musical powers that only Serafina can perceive. Both women are struggling in different ways, and I loved seeing the way their relationship and their musical connection helped them both to move forward. I also loved the depth of the worldbuilding—the city of Rotenek feels as real as any place I’ve been to.

Mo Williams has hit all the right notes in this lushly illustrated book for young readers. How does one grow up to be a classical musician? Well… one beautiful moment leads to another…and another…and another.

Just as in this book, one magical experience in my young life changed everything. Because my 4th grade teacher took our class to see the original Disney Fantasia film, I heard, for the first time, the sound of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Shadows of violin bows danced across the panoramic movie screen as the musicians, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, performed Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Because of how that moment sounded and felt, I found my calling ̶ the violin. That’s how it happens. One precious musical moment leads to another, to places you never dreamed you would go.

If I were allowed to have only one novel about German culture and the coming of the Nazis, this would be it. And, if I were allowed only one novel about the price paid by those who create great art, this would also be it.

I have never read a better fictional account of what it means to make music, and there is something truly thrilling (but also quite chilling) about the story of the composer Adrian Leverkuhn’s Faustian pact with the devil.

I was also captivated by the way that Thomas Mann has his narrator tell this story, from the recent German past, from the “present” of bombs falling on Germany at the end of World War II.

Wasif Jawhariyyeh was a musician and composer belonging to the Greek Orthodox community of Jerusalem who lived in the city during the late Ottoman and Mandatory eras. 

He was acquainted with many of the ruling families in the city and worked within the British administration. This book chronicles his life and provides a vivid depiction of the city throughout the Ottoman and Mandate periods until 1948 when he went into exile. 

The book offers a captivating perspective on the lives of the city's inhabitants during those times and the amalgamation of diverse populations. Jawhariyyeh occasionally reminisces through a nostalgic lens, suggesting that issues between various groups only arose after the British arrival. 

Nonetheless, the book provides an insightful and engaging glimpse into the city's social fabric.