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Bookshelf Report: More Music Books Than You Can Shake A Drum Stick At

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where we ask 5 questions and share 5 pictures of a bookshelf  belonging to a Bushwick reader. Today’s bookshelf comes from long time Seattle music journalist Travis Hay. He has written for many notable publications such as MSN Music, the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, and Seattle Weekly, and is the creator of GuerillaCandy.com, an amazing website dedicated to documenting the Seattle music community.

photo4_TravisHay

What’s your favorite book on the shelf?

Asking me to name my favorite book is like asking me to name my favorite record. It’s a very tough thing to do. As you can tell, most of my books have something to do with music and I consider the music books in my collection to be good reference material. If I had to name a single one as my favorite it would have to be “Everybody Loves Our Town” by Mark Yarm. It’s a massive oral history of the Seattle music scene from the late 1980s to mid/late 1990s, aka the grunge era. I own quite a few local rock history books (“Love Rock Revolution,” “The Strangest Tribe,” “Sonic Boom” too name a few) but Yarm’s book is the definitive book on grunge and everything comes from first-hand primary sources. There’s stories about Eddie Vedder drinking bile as part of Jim Rose’s Circus Sideshow, The U Men lighting a pond on fire outside of the mural Amphitheater at Bumbershoot and tons of other really great stuff. It’s a must read for any fan of the Seattle scene from back in the day. Read more