Dave’s Comments (group member since Aug 02, 2011)

Dave’s comments from the Books That Rock (or At Least Try To) group.

J. wrote: "
I apologize if this is not correct etiquette; listing my own book. However I find there are few fiction rock books, so I felt it might be okay to alert ..."

There is no etiquette in rock 'n' roll! Your book looks good! I forgot about this group, since nobody has added anything to in quite some time. I might as share my own book: (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity

I just started reading Bill See's memoir, "33 Days: Touring In a Van, Sleeping on Floors, Chasing a Dream." All about the late '80s indie scene. See's band, Divine Weeks, got some airplay on MTV's "120 Minutes" and hit the road in 1987 to try and make it.

I should've read Savage's book a long time ago, but I feel like in recent years I've read enough about that scene that I no longer need to. Still, thanks for adding it to the discussion.

I just finished reading Life: Keith Richards and boy did I love it. I could go on and on about it, but I won't. Suffice it to say that the old boy has a great style (aided and abetted by author James Fox) and remembers EVERYTHING, which is amazing considering how much time he's spent on dope. I loved reading about how he and Mick write songs, how messed up Brian Jones was, how messed up Jagger is, how messed up Bill Wyman is, how messed up Keef is, and so on and so forth. Really great.

Just to get things going, I'm going to mention two rock-oriented works of fiction I've enjoyed in recent years. Feel free to comment on these, or add your own:

1) Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel by Neal Pollack. I was a big follower of his blog years ago, but have fallen off the Pollack blog wagon. This book is billed as "a scathing satirical look at the history of rock stars and the journalists who made them gods." It's funny and occasionally inciteful.

2) Meat is Murder by Joe Pernice (Pernice Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys) I'm not that into Pernice's music, but his writing in this book is really, really good. Funny, breezy, sometimes heart-wrenching.

In no particular order, here are a few of my recommendations for non-fiction, rock-related books:

1) "Our Band Could Be Your Life," by Michael Azerrad. Looks at punk/indie icons ranging from Husker Du and Black Flag and Butthole Surfers to Beat Happening, Mudhoney and Mission of Burma.

2) "Shakey: Neil Young's Biography," by Jimmy McDonough

3) "Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer," by Chris Salewicz

4) "The Land Where the Blues Began," by Alan Lomax. Fascinating memoir by legendary folklorist, who chronicles his travels through the Mississippi Delta in the 1930's and '40s, during which he recorded seminal artists such as Leadbelly, Fred MacDowell and Muddy Waters.

5) "High Adventure In the Great Outdoors," by Henry Rollins. Lyrics, poems, journal entries, humorous observations.

I recently read two books that I categorize as alt-rock fiction, as they are about guitar-based, West Coast bands of the late '90s. S.K. Rogers' "Jump Cut" is sub-titled, "a novel about love, sex and electric guitars," a boring description that, frankly, if the cover art were better, would be unnecessary. The book tells the tale of lawyer-turned-rocker Zanna Martin, who has a one-night stand with "Jeremy Kane, notorious frontman for the infamous rockers Sex Gun."

The story revolves around Martin and Kane (and their respective bandmates and lovers) and their complicated, on-again, off-again relationship. Let me tell you, that 359 pages is waaaaaaay too many for what really is a fairly simple love story. Sure, there are issues around trust, betrayal, the crazy rock and roll lifestyle, old flames, unrequited love, friends with benefits. But I'm reading a history of super-top-secret government site Area 51, a book that spans 60 years of the most unbelievable technical accomplishments by the U.S. government's spy programs, and it comes in at 384 pages.

I won't deny that I got involved in this book, and enjoyed reading about the trials and tribulations of trying to make it in the music biz. And I felt the characters were well developed, although the writing at times was a bit clumsy and awkward (hence the length of the book).

But a tighter edit would've make it more enjoyable.

Now, on to the second book: Tom Demalon's "Strangest angels play electric guitars..."

This is also a love story at heart, and it also suffers from insufficient editing (431 pages!) and occasionally awkward prose. It provided many of the same scenarios as "Jump Cut," in terms of the lovers/bandmates, but also as far as showing how much of a slog it can be to become successful in the music industry.

Demalon uses an interesting device to move the story along, but I won't give away the details here. The band in question is called Spriglet, a name taken from their pixieish lead singer, who rarely speaks but who is a powerhouse on stage. I liked that there's mystery in this story, in terms of who Spriglet (the woman) is, and whether the band will make it.

Both "Jump Cut" and "Strangest angels play electric guitars" present what I feel are realistic views of what it was like to be an underground rock band trying to carve out a career in the late '90s. And while I generally don't read books whose overarching theme is love, I felt that both Rogers and Demalon did very good jobs building their characters' respective relationships, made them seem real.

But they both should have edited out extraneous scenes and tightened up others in order to make their books easier to read and enjoy.