FAQ

What is this?

A set of companion guides for music books. You read the book; the guide gives you every record it names, in the order it names them, so you can listen as you go.

It started as something I made for myself while re-reading Harry Sword’s Monolithic Undertow, because there was no good way to hear the music he was describing without stopping every page to search for it.

Why are the records in that order?

Because that’s the order the book names them. Not chronological, not alphabetical — the author’s order, chapter by chapter, so the guide and the book stay in step as you read.

It means a 1972 record can sit after a 1979 one. That’s the argument the book is making, and rearranging it would break the thing the guide is for.

Why does everything link to YouTube?

Two reasons. A lot of the music in these books isn’t on the streaming services at all — white labels, dubplates, small-label twelve-inches. And YouTube is free to everyone, which mattered to me.

The links are searches rather than fixed videos, so they keep working when an upload gets taken down, and they resolve in any country.

Where do the quotes come from?

Straight out of the book — the sentence where the record is introduced, set as printed. Nothing is paraphrased and nothing is written by me.

Where a record has no sentence around it, because the author lists it rather than discusses it, the guide says so instead of inventing something.

A record I expected isn’t there. Why?

Most likely the book doesn’t name it. The guides only carry what’s actually on the page — they aren’t genre primers or best-of lists, and I don’t add records the author didn’t mention.

But I do get things wrong. Some of these books name hundreds of records across four hundred pages, and finding all of them is harder than it sounds. If something’s missing or miscredited, tell me and I’ll fix it.

I found a mistake.

Please send it over: [email protected]. Chapter and record is plenty — I’ll find the rest.

The guides get corrected as things surface. That’s ongoing and I’d rather know.

Are these official?

No. These are unofficial reader’s guides with no connection to the authors, the publishers or the labels. Nobody has endorsed them and nobody is paid for them.

They’re meant to send you to the books, not replace them. Every guide names its book, author, publisher and year, and if a guide makes you buy the book then it’s done its job.

Do you make money from this?

No. No adverts, no affiliate links, no sponsorship, nothing to sign up for. It’s a pet project and it stays that way.

The site uses Fathom for visitor counts, which is privacy-friendly, doesn’t use cookies and doesn’t track you across other sites. That’s the only thing running here.

Can I suggest a book?

Yes, please do — drop me a line. Several of the guides here came from suggestions.

The ones that work best name a lot of specific records and are clear about which is which. A book with a discography in the back is a gift.

How are the guides made?

Half by machine and half by hand. The text is read for every record it names, which gets checked against MusicBrainz where the credit is uncertain, and then I go through it against the book.

That last part is the slow part and there’s no way round it. A machine can find a title in quotation marks; it can’t always tell you whether the author meant the record or the phrase.

How do I know when a new one goes up?

There’s an RSS feed, and a News page. The feed carries whole guides only — a new book when there is one, and nothing else.

Can I share these?

Of course. Link to them, send them to people, use them in a reading group. That’s what they’re for.

The quotations belong to the authors and publishers, and the records to their artists and labels. The drawings on the site are original work made in the idiom of each book’s jacket, not reproductions of it.