Almost as a rule, musician autobiographies are a chance to settle scores, name names, spew vitriol; essentially an exercise in one-sided venting. Obviously, someone forgot to mention that to Johnny Marr. And while this revelation may turn off some of the realty TV-warped Smith out there, for those looking to get an honest sense of who Marr is as a person, Set The Boy Free makes for a fascinating read.
There have been a slew of great stories around the Rolling Stones for generations now, maybe more so than any band, so you’d be forgiven if you’re sporting a tattoo of the Tongue logo, but can’t exactly recall the short-lived band, The New Barbarians. Thankfully, rock journalist Rob Chapman’s got you covered.
If you can’t tell the difference between a Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul, this is clearly not the book for you. However, if you know Hendrix was a Strat guy and underneath that black spray paint and all those stickers, Joe Strummer always rocked a Tele, then this is likely to be your new Bible.
At this point there’s a pretty set template for writing rock memoirs (with a few exceptions, of course). Most roll out like a version of VH1’s Behind the Music: future rock star has dreams of making it big, so he practices all the time, stopping only for the occasion drug and drink binge; he/she hooks up with future band mates, they sign a really shitty record contract but end up…
One of the problems that role-playing gamers typically run into when they have to move locations for their gaming sessions is the sheer weight of the books that they must lug around. One understands the logic for these companies creating luscious tomes that are typically hard cover and full of amazing illustrations and further clarifications about nuances to the game play. The simple fact though is that if you are a…
Yes, there are already a slew of books about Bruce Springsteen out there. Add to that, the fact that he’ll finally be putting out his autobiography this fall, but Boss proves there was room for one more book about one of the best rock starts to ever come out of the U.S.
Rosenblum creates a compelling narrative during her latest title, Good Neighbors : The Democracy of Everyday Life.The importance of those individuals that live near us has been decreased in importance over the course of the last thirty years. There have been a number of titles that have dealt with the ramifications that this lack of community has had (most prominently, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone), but this Rosenblum text showcases the importance of…
Frank Turner is a stellar musician and songwriter with an appeal that attracts folk fans just as much as punk rockers. But on the surface, despite an increasingly higher profile with each new record, he seems like an unlikely candidate for a traditional rock memoir. Just shy of a decade into his solo career, all indications are that he’s still a long way off from putting the guitar in the…
“The first time I drank piss was on a fire escape overlooking downtown Los Angeles.” So begins the memoir on NOFX. If you can get past that first sentence, the payoff is worth it.
As far as I can tell, this is the only one book out there on the genre-defying traveling carnival known as The Butthole Surfers. But given the amount of research that went into Let’s Go To Hell, there is no need for anyone to ever attempt another tome on the band. The author, James Burns, who also runs the Texas band’s archive (christened “Anal Obsession,” naturally), has pulled off a…
