Now that I’m not monitoring news feeds across the web for the latest breaking music news, I’ve been settling in with some old favorites. They’re beyond predictable, but I find it so refreshing to tune back in with music I was listening to nonstop when I first started getting interested in music criticism. Let’s just say I find it more rewarding than trying to figure out what people find so amazing about, say, Best Coast.

What am I listening to now? Here’s a quick list:

• The Byrds. There was a stretch there in the early part of last decade that I thought they’d get a critical revival from the freak folk crowd, but it didn’t really materialize. They opted for Crosby’s amazing solo work instead. Fair enough. Love the Byrds in all manifestations. Feel like they’re the American version of another of my favorite bands.
• The Kinks! Love this band so much and really haven’t listened to them much at all lately. Guess the last time I went totally crazy for their stuff was right around the time I caught Ray Davies at Irving Plaza in 2005. Going to see him in a few weeks. Cannot wait.
• The Rolling Stones. Watching Charlie dance to Exile on Main Street reminded me how much fun this band is. I know it’s quintessential dad-rock, but what can I say? I’ve been going back and checking out albums like Aftermath and Between the Buttons and loving every minute. Really need to pick up these reissues.
• Bob Dylan. Have to admit that Dylan’s a tremendous blind spot for me. I have a bunch of his albums, my favorite being Bringing It All Back Home, but I’m not exactly conversant. Now I can spend some time!
• Neil Young. It’s high time this old man took a life at his life, too. Have always loved Neil, not that that’s anything special, but feel like I was always scrambling to hear something new that crowded out my further appreciation of this living legend.
• Kate Bush, Vic Chesnutt, so many more. Long overdue.

There are plenty of other acts I’m leaving out. I’m not ruling out new music entirely, mind, but I’m so happy to have unplugged from the nonstop music PR circuit.

The book’s structure is strange. It first tells the story of how the album is made and the various stumbling blocks that the Kinks — or rather Ray Davies — ran into along the way. That’s the sort of story I’m interested in reading and it was an engaging one. However, once that story ends, it begins again, this time as a painstaking account of each song that was written and recorded during this period, along with some speculation about why it had or hadn’t appeared on the final version of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. It doesn’t sound as bad when I write it here, but trust me, reading the same story told two different ways smacked of a witness perjuring himself on the stand.

Such is the reputation of the 33 1/3 books series. Every author approaches his or her book differently, and even the most adventuresome  music fans approach the series with trepidation. These are beloved albums after all.

Now comes word that the series itself has hit a snag due to the current state of the economy. I’m not sure anyone would be surprised considering how both the music and publishing industries have fared lately. I just hope that Geeta Dayal’s Another Green World book sees the light of day. (Of course I’m rooting for Christopher Weingarten‘s It Takes a Nation of Millions book, too, but that’s in the more distant future.) As author Douglas Wolk once (infamously) wrote of 33 1/3, “the series that more people want to write than to read!” I guess that makes the 33 1/3 series the Velvet Underground and Nico of microniche music books!