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In an era when artists' profiles are too often fawning puff pieces and album
reviews can largely be divided into insight-free, 150-word blurbs a la
Entertainment Weekly or dense, impenetrable and solipsistic essays for uber-hip
Webzines, Chicago music writer and National Public Radio contributor Mitch
Myers recalls the glory days of rock criticism's first decade, from the
mid-'60s through the mid-'70s, when pioneers such as Richard Meltzer, Nick
Tosches and Lester Bangs viewed their craft as part of the New Journalism,
aspiring to Tom Wolfe's famous goal of treating journalism and criticism as
literature, and using the skills and techniques of the novelist.
The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling
(Harper Entertainment, $25.95) is a much-needed and very welcome collection
of Myers' work for radio and various magazines. In the introduction, he
acknowledges his debt to the writers mentioned above and names an even
bigger hero: J.R. Young, a now-forgotten Rolling Stone record reviewer from
the '70s. Myers follows in Young's footsteps by crafting album reviews that
are really short pieces of fiction "parables," and if these sometimes skimp
on conventional info such as the producer, the best and worst tracks and
where the disc fits into the artist's oeuvre, they often reveal deeper
truths about the musician's work and the listener's role in completing the
experience.
Witness Myers' piece on the Robert Johnson box set, which begins with the
discovery of a mysterious 30th track that the bluesman never recorded and
ends with Satan showing up at the author's door; a nifty homage to Black
Sabbath wherein playing "Paranoid" reveals and kills the camouflaged aliens
in our midst, and a rumination on Brian Eno set in the laboratory of Baron
von Frankenstein. Together with his imaginative and captivating prose,
Myers' biggest assets are his boyish enthusiasm, pervasive warmth and
genuine love of eccentricity and distinctive art and artists, traits that
make a lot of sense if you know he's the nephew of the poet and cartoonist
Shel Silverstein and administrator of his uncle's archives. In its own way,
The Boy Who Cried Freebird is as much of a joy and inspiration as
The Giving Tree.
• • •
Another surefire winner on the recent rock reading list is White
Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s (Serpent's Tail, $18), a memoir by
American-born, English-based record producer and Hannibal Records founder
Joe Boyd. Though the New Yorker recently described Boyd as a Zelig-like
character who found himself in extraordinary places at exactly the right
time through rock's most turbulent decade -- he served as the stage manager
at Newport the day Bob Dylan plugged in, to cite one example -- this
description doesn't do justice to his extraordinary energy in creating new
forums for creative musicians (he was a co-founder of UFO, London's hippest
rock club during the Summer of Love) and for recognizing and fostering fresh
talent in the recording studio. Among his production credits: the first
single by Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and the timeless early efforts by the
Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Nick Drake.
Boyd isn't exempt from self-aggrandizement, though this is often
justified by his accomplishments and balanced by his clear-eyed
observations. "As for me, I cheated. I never got too stoned," he writes,
explaining how he managed to avoid joining the long list of acid casualties.
"I became the eminence grise I aspired to be, and disproved at least one
'60s myth: I was there, and I do remember." Indeed he does,
and the book leaves you hoping that Boyd has the opportunity to give us a
second volume chronicling his championing of world music in the '70s and
later productions such as R.E.M.'s "Fables of the Reconstruction" (1985).
• • •
Originally published in 1972 but long out of print, John Sinclair's
Guitar Army: Rock & Revolution with MC5 and the White Panther Party was
hastily compiled to make capitalistic hay of the Detroit political agitator
and rock hustler's infamous pot bust. The original was an unsatisfying mix
of pedantic essays, boring speeches, awful poems, sketchy clips from
underground newspapers and unintentionally funny photos of self-important
"revolutionaries" out to change the world and/or get high. It has long been
useful to researchers looking to understand the naivete of the times, but
since the new edition (Process Books, $22.95) adds only a hyped introduction
by Michael Simmons ("John Sinclair is a classic American hero who stood up
for what he believed in") and a hard to listen to bonus CD, it's not worth
your money -- though you could take a page from fellow radical Abbie Hoffman
and steal this book.
• • •
Other recent music books of note include:
• • Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories: True and Tall Tales of the
Glory Days Told by Musicians, DJs, Promoters & Fans Who Made the Scene in
the '60s, '70s, and '80s by Carlo Wolff (Gray & Company, 1995). The
comically long subtitle pretty much says it all, though I'll add that this
oral history is much more entertaining than anyone who's ever visited
Cleveland might guess.
• Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop (Basic Civitas,
$18.95), the latest from prolific West Coast hip-hop critic Jeff Chang, a
collection of essays, interviews and short pieces that serve as a nice
compliment to his definitive hip-hop history, Can't Stop, Won't Stop.
• • Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids & Rock 'n' Roll (Perseus,
$22), a witty and engaging autobiographical musing on those topics by Miami
Herald pop culture critic Evelyn McDonnell.
• • And finally, a footnote to a column that ran in this space last
year, paying tribute to Creem magazine rock critic Rick Johnson upon his
death in his native Macomb, Ill. Working with other friends and admirers,
Bill Knight has edited a collection of Johnson's work titled The Rick
Johnson Reader: 'Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies' (Mayfly Productions,
$14.99), which rounds up some of his best and most gonzo prose.
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