BOOK REVIEWS:
ALL MUSIC GUIDE TO COUNTRY
2ND ED.
(Backbeat Books)
With country music and its manifestations reaching ever deeper into the world's
cultural psyche, All Music offers an in-depth encyclopedic guide to the massive
genre. The book covers the extended bluegrass scene given greater popularity
by O Brother Where Art Thou?, with entries from the close harmony traditionalists,
Osborne Brothers, to such progressives as Darrell Scott. Doc Watson gets four
pages and the FM country scene from Dwight Yoakam to popular western swing revivalists,
Asleep at the Wheel, is here. The alt-country scene is present, too, covered
from Bloodshot recording artist Robbie Fulks to the popular Old 97's. The entries
are in the expected form for these successful All Music 'cyclopedias. That is,
biographies and then key reviews with recommended starting points. This makes
for over 10,000 rated reviews. The well-indexed tome includes style descriptions,
a section for compilations and sound-tracks, essential albums by genre and two
dozen rich essays on aspects of country music, like "Country on Film" and "Country
Soundtracks." This is a valuable resource for the serious fan of any part of
the varied country music spectrum. Where else would you find that The Residents,
Savoy Brown, and Elvis Costello all drew on the early 70s countrified British
pub rock group Chili Willi & the Red Hot Peppers for members?—Tom Tearaway' Schulte
BORN TO ROCK
A Collection of Interviews
and Essays
Todd Taylor (Gorsky Press)
Interviews and essays, but mostly interviews, and not necessarily insightful
interviews, but typical fanzine fare. I much preferred the introductory essay
on why and how Todd got into punk rock as I never tiring of such cherry poppin'
stories. Todd's story seems unique in that he came to punk rock via a car crash
and the Boy Scouts of America. I would like to read more about Todd's time at
the late Flipside magazine and his subsequent fallout with its owner and creator
Al Flipside. Maybe that is in the works. At any rate, as far as interviews go,
we got Toys the Kill, Fletcher from Pennywise, Duane Peters from US Bombs, NOFX,
Strike Against and more!—Chris Auman
BUBBLE GUM MUSIC IS THE NAKED TRUTH
The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop from the Banana Splits
Kim Cooper and David Smay, Editors (Feral House)
A cast of contributors (from cartoonist Peter Bagge to the bizarre Partridge
Family Temple to Greg Shaw) document the history of, and opine on, and celebrate
the unknowns of bubblegum music. Pete Townsend once remarked, "some of the world's
best music is bubblegum" and most of these contributors agree. Their overlapping
and amorphous definitions of the genre cause the chronologically laid out volume
to act as a history of pop music from the 60s to today with a focus on that
music created with marketing in mind. Entertaining and enlightening, this lively
tome sheds light on the names behind the manufactured sounds, the true stories
of the real people leading or trapped in the movement, and institutions that
fostered its growth. As educational as it is fun, this excellent collection
of essays and interviews is a must for any music fan—Tom Tearaway' Schulte
DOSSIER
A Collection of Short Stories
Stepan Chapman (Creative Arts Book Company)
Cosmologies, creation stories, myths, fairy tales; Dossier, more than anything
else, documents the inner workings of a very strange and creative mind. In Stepan
Chapman's world, forgotten scraps of metal rebuild themselves into machines
in a warehouse on the edge of town; Wheelgirls, half flesh, half machine, circumnavigate
Centaura 5 perpetually, unable to stop lest they melt from the planet's scorching
lava surface; and in a bizarre rewrite of history, the course of the Russian
Revolution is forever altered as the hydrogen in the earth's stratosphere bursts
into flame. It's a thin line between the dreamworld and dementia from this 1998
winner of the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, (and Reglar Wiglar contributor!)—Chris Auman
I, SHITHEAD
A Life in Punk
Joey "Shithead" Keithley
(Arsenal Pulp Press)
Keithley formed D.O.A. in 1978, giving him a founder's eye view of the North
American hardcore scene and post-punk underground rock the world over. This
chronicle of his adventures shows the many sides of Shithead: musician, activist
and businessman. The meticulously researched book has all the names and dates
to make this detailed D.O.A. history extended from band autobiography into scene
history. The naturally arranged chronological history is full of lessons for
would-be independent bands and illustrative anecdotes of venues and scenes now
gone. You will not find this book pandering to a morbid curiosity about rock
'n' roll excess, but you will find a triumphant and inspiring testimonial about
plucky punk pioneers as loose knit islands of affinity grow from a casual network
to a global web of labels, venues and touring agencies. The book has plenty
of pictures and D.O.A. lyrics from Joey's own hand—Tom Tearaway' Schulte
LEXICON DEVIL
The Fast Time and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs
Brendan Mullen with Don Bolles
and Adam Parfrey
(Feral House)
Adam Parfrey's Feral House gives us another fascinating biography with the unique
format of chronologically arrayed series of short, paragraph-length quotes from
those that knew or experienced the subject. No attempt is made to rectify contradictions.
(Looking back, how often can the truth of biographical minutiae really be determined?)
The result makes for easy reading and provides a kaleidoscopic view of the subject.
Author/editor/ publisher, Adam Parfrey (Apocalypse Culture, Extreme Islam) stakes
a claim in the rich quarry of the violent and dark subcultures and counter-cultures.
Through this lens, Germs vocalist and songwriter, Darby Crash appears as both
a taunting jester of the burg-eoning West Coast punk scene as well as mischievous,
if not malevolent, pied piper leading impressionable thrill seekers into would-be
decadence of the type predicted by Oswald Spengler in The Decline Of The West.
Through the remembrance quips, Crash also reveals a side as an extre-mely image
conscious and thus insecure youth struggling more to obscure his homosexuality
rather than create a cohesive and worthy artistic legacy. Taken this way, it
seems that songs that still reverberate in the global punk community, are only
accidental revelations of writing genius whose suicide cut short a career that
could have been even more defining on this music genre. Full of black and white
pictures, this volume includes lyrics of songs by The Germs, a discography,
as well as a time line of gigs and key events—Tom Tearaway' Schulte
NUDE TENT TORSO #1
The Pink Couch Project
(Vireonyx Publications)
This premier issue of Nude Tent Torso is a collabo-ration of authors on the
theme of a pink couch. Gener-ally, the writing takes a humorous direction as
the many manifestations of the pink couch take on mythic proportions in mock
honorific poetry, short stories, graphics, and even a script. Some of the most
memorable pieces are "The Pink Couch Periodic Table Project" (multiple authors),
the imaginary film reviews of "Pink Couch Cinema: Films from the Pink Couch
Film Festival" (my favorite, by Mark Ashley), and Denise Thomas' surrealistic
piece that begins "Fresh baked pandemonium/tattooed on a pink couch."—Tom Tearaway' Schulte
THE ZINE YEARBOOK, VOL. 6
(Become the Media)
The Zine Yearbook, Vol. 6 samples from zines published in 2001 that had a circulation
of less than 5,000 copies. Arranged alphabetically, the article and comic excerpts
preserve the original layout. As such, each sample is a microcosm of the originating
zine. The varied compendium starts suitably with an analysis of the current
state of zines from Ache (more "meta-commentary in graphic form from Cat and
Girl) and thus begins a swatch that runs the gamut from personal rants (America?
and Etidorhpa) to the activist agenda (Media Reader and Resist). While, statistically,
most 2001 zines of small distribution were probably poetry and music publications,
The Zine Yearbook continues the worthy task of presenting a spectrum of guerilla
social criticism and the wit that arises from punk ideology—Tom 'Tearaway'
Schulte
