In the Court of King Crimson

This may be in the wrong sub-forum, so please correct me if it needs to be moved.

A few years back, I picked up the book listed in the topic title, which was a pretty solidly researched and written bio on King Crimson that had input from all members past and (then) present and covered some of the stories behind the albums. Some were interesting, some were funny, some made you wonder why some members of the band weren't killed by other members of the band, etc.

Has anyone else on the boards read this one? For that matter, are there any other music bios that come highly recommended from folks on here for reasonable lack of bias, good information and just being entertaining?

For fairness, let's try to keep it to books that weren't written by members of the band. Kiss springs to mind as a band with so many books on the subject within and without that you'd get bogged down easily trying to figure out if it was a "fair" account or not...

Sadly, my copy of ItCoKC made it to a used bin a few years back and it's now one of those "out of print, costs a car payment" tomes, so I doubt I'll have a chance to re-read it unless I either get lucky in a used bookstore or a new ed comes out, so I'm solely operating on rosy 20/20 hindsight on this one.

Note to self: scour used bookstore in town for this on next visit.

Seriously... I wish I could comp together a list of the most expensive modern books just so I'd know one of these pulp and glue goldmines when I saw them on a thrift store shelf for $2...

I've found that, in general, the 33 1/3 book series is pretty good for in-depth dips in to specific albums (although there are one or two stinkers, as it's all done by different authors - by all accounts, stay away from the Use Your Illusions book). They're typically more 'classic' pop / rock albums than metal, but definitely worth looking in to. Surprisingly, there was a book on Andrew W.K.'s I Get Wet released earlier this year - I couldn't put it down, read the thing in a day.

I must have picked the wrong entries in the series to page through, but the writing just came across really stiff and scholastic in the books I checked. It's the same problem I had with the book on London Calling by The Clash (not 33 1/3). I have an interest in behind the scenes, but the authors of that book seemed to think I needed to know every blues or rockabilly riff the band mined to create their songs. It kind of disappeared up its own ass.